BalletMet: a renaissance in Ohio - ballet company BalletMet Columbus

Dance Magazine, Jan, 1998 by Barbara Zuck

Bagels and ballet would not seem to have much to do with each other, but for a few years in Columbus, Ohio, they coexisted. BalletMet Columbus, the official name for what was a small amateur organization originally called Ballet Metropolitan, was functioning out of a single studio over Bernie's Bagels shop when opportunity knocked. Like many places in the United States in the 1970s, the city had no professional ballet company or other dance organization. Then a study completed by the Junior League of Columbus in 1977, at the request of the community-oriented Battelle Memorial Institute Foundation, put professional dance on a wish list of cultural opportunities that the city should be able to offer its citizenry. The founders of the fledgling organization quickly realized that they could fill a void and, with luck, play a significant role in a city then poised for a major growth spurt in the arts.

They applied for a seed grant and received $200,000 from the Battelle foundation to help make the transition. BalletMet, then comprised of twelve dancers and three staff members, was incorporated as Columbus's first professional ballet company in July 1978. Shortly thereafter it hired an artistic director, Wayne Soulant (who died last year at the age of fifty-two), and produced its first Nutcracker that December.

Since then, BalletMet has experienced almost nothing but steady growth. The company's first annual budget was $300,000; this season it will be $4.8 million. It has more than doubled in size, with the roster for the 1997-98 season at an all-time high of twenty-five full-time dancers. The BalletMet Academy, under the institution's umbrella since 1980, has an enrollment of 1,000, and its summer workshop attracts 170 students from around the world. The troupe, which has toured twenty-two states and three countries, now divides its season at home between the 750-seat Capitol Theatre and the 2,900-seat Ohio Theatre. And it has maintained a long-term relationship with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, which provides music for most performances.

In fact, as it heads into its twentieth-anniversary season, the company appears to be successfully bucking today's alarming trend of declining fortunes for dance. It continues to enlarge both its offerings and its audiences. For instance, attendance at repertory programs has increased an astonishing 100 percent in just the past three seasons. And, to aptly celebrate two decades of dance in Ohio, the company plans to perform more than ever next year: it will offer its dancers thirty-five weeks of work, give forty-seven performances at home (a 60 percent increase since the 1994-95 season), and present the world premieres of two fully staged, evening-length story ballets.

Much of the company's recent success is due to David Nixon, artistic director since September 1994. These positive statistics may be surprising to anyone familiar with the company's condition just a few short years ago. Nixon, a former principal dancer with National Ballet of Canada, assumed direction of BalletMet at a critical juncture, the most difficult moment in the institution's history. In the spring of 1994, the company had gone through a very public, wrenching divorce from its artistic director, John McFall. After disagreements between him and the board of directors, his contract was not renewed. About half the company resigned, including most of the strongest dancers; the remainder unionized. (McFall is now director of Atlanta Ballet.) Attendance immediately following McFall's departure was pitifully small. Spirits were further dampened during this period by the death from lymphoma of ballet mistress Violetta Boft, a former prima ballerina with Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre Ballet in Moscow, who had strengthened the company with enlightened coaching of the classics and an attentive eye to detail.

Despite the bad publicity and angry feelings surrounding McFall's ouster, development director Nancy Strause, who has been associated with BalletMet almost since its inception in 1977, says, "I never thought the institution was in danger of dying. I don't think we could have predicted how tough the transition was going to be. But we had a healthy and diverse contributed revenue base that was retained over that period." (As the power behind the throne for years, Strause is considered one reason for the company's reputation for fiscal responsibility.)

With Nixon, BalletMet may have found the person who could become the salvation of professional ballet in central Ohio. "David is certainly my hero," said board chairman Stephen J. Rotella, executive vice president of Chase Manhattan Mortgage Company. "The successful turnaround of the company after our problems was a concerted effort by the board, the staff, and the artistic side. But clearly the motivation behind that and the reason we have been able to pull together is that we all had faith in David's vision for the company and felt incredibly good about David as a person and as an artistic talent."