BalletMet: a renaissance in Ohio - ballet company BalletMet Columbus

Dance Magazine, Jan, 1998 by Barbara Zuck

"There are not that many people who want to do story ballets and who can do them well," he says. "After I did the new version of The Nutcracker, I thought I should try another family ballet. Stories like Beauty and the Beast have a certain popularity and familiarity. There is a risk to that because people come with preconceptions. But I wanted to go with something that was already in people's minds. We wanted to marry two elements, an adult element and a child element, with enough things to entertain children and enough dancing for adults. If you can come up with the right pieces, maybe you can attract the public."

For Beauty, Nixon took an ancient tale and customized it, creating characters such as good and bad fairies that have equivalents not only in other fairy tales but throughout ballet history. He even invented roles, such as "pillows" that perform acrobatics, for the smallest and most adorable of his academy students.

The community responded enthusiastically to Beauty, which ended the 1996-97 season with sold-out houses for five out of the six Ohio Theatre performances. The company had never danced or looked better. Nixon's choreography, Carla Risch Chaffin's sets and Linda Pisano's costumes were inventive, filled with magical touches such as flying fairies and objects that come to life. One could certainly question the originality of this concept and the calculation of this marketing approach; in this era of declining audiences, however, it may be difficult to argue with popular success.

Nixon is also building up BalletMet's repertory by commissioning works while giving company premieres of such notable artists as Peter Pucci and Kathryn Posin. Susan Hadley, a former Mark Morris dancer who until recently had her own local company, and San Francisco Ballet's Julia Adam have recently had pieces premiered under Nixon.

Acknowledging the difficulty of bridging the gap between audiences that want to see only new dance and those that want popular traditional entertainments, Nixon has divided to conquer. New and experimental work is now performed at the Riffe Center's Capitol Theatre, a small downtown hall with a contemporary interior that makes it appropriate for things modem. The larger Ohio Theatre, a restored 1920s movie theater of neo-Baroque design with Asian touches, is reserved for the troupe's full-scale productions -- a perfect setting for Nixon's efforts to bring fantasy back to the ballet.

"We are delighted with the Riffe Center series," says Ray Hanley, executive director of the Greater Columbus Arts Council, which gives the company about $150,000 a year. "The use of the smaller venue for the development of new work is better for the choreographers, the artists, and the audiences."

BalletMet enters its twentieth-anniversary season with plans to commemorate its past while taking direct aim at its future. The board of trustees is talking advantage of the renewed momentum to inaugurate a five-year, $2.6-million fund drive to seed an endowment, commission new works, underwrite the development of touring repertory, and update technology at its home, the 33,000-square-foot Dance Centre. Board chairman Roteba says touring is the key ingredient in building a national reputation for BalletMet: "We are never going to be recognized in the same manner as New York City Ballet or San Francisco Ballet. But if we follow our strategic plan, we will gain national recognition because we will have established a unique repertory and developed the right kind of dancers."