Hello, Columbus - JazzMet dance group that performs under the sponsorship of BalletMet, Columbus, Ohio

Dance Magazine, Feb, 1994 by Joseph M. Mazo

As a card-carrying snobbish New Yorker, I've never given much thought to Columbus, Ohio. Unless you live nearby, have you") Until a few years ago, Troy Jansen, who grew up in Queens, probably hadn't, either.

Now, he's the driver of JazzMet, a five-member troupe that began as a civic company and now operates professionally under the umbrella of Columbus's ballet company, BalletMet. During its 1992-93 season, BalletMet included Tazzmania, a work mixing jazz dance and tap, on one of its programs. Even more impressive, it presented a full evening of jazz dance: three works including the premiere of They Call Me Jaz, choreographed by Graciela Daniele (Broadway's Once On This Island, among other credits) to a score by Sir Roland Hanna. Audience response, says BalletMet's artistic director John McFall, was "awesome." A grant from Meet the Composer facilitated Hanna's participation, and another one will allow Benny Golson to write music for a work by Daniel Ezralow that is scheduled for a premiere next year. The big guns are being called to Columbus.

There's a system to the BalletMet-JazzMet program: it's called "Use What You've Got." McFall says that his mission is "building an institution," which includes "building an audience, creating a unique profile, and engendering an atmosphere where the choreographic process can flourish." What BalletMet has, McFall explains, is an academy that teaches 1,300 students ranging from tots to senior citizens. Some are part of a preprofessional program; some are there for the fun of it. In addition to teaching classical technique, the school offers classes in flamenco, tap (taught by Jansen), Dunham technique (taught by a former Ailey company dancer), and Broadway jazz (taught by Stella Kane).

BalletMet also has a home city with a jazz heritage. and it has McFall's back-ground and intentions. He performed with the San Francisco Ballet during Michael Smuin's tenure as artistic director, began to choreograph there, and, working as a free-lancer, made dances for companies including American Ballet Theatre and Dance Theater of Harlem. One of his works for ABT, Follow the Feet (1983), had a Broadway jazz flavor. When he came to BalletMet eight years ago, McFall made it his business to recruit guest choreographers, and that, he says, "means that you need versatile dancers. They have to be able to adapt to a visiting choreographer's style as well as to his movement techniques."

IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR

McFall started looking for ways to increase the experience of the academy's advanced jazz students - "You've got to get beyond class," he points out - so he and Kane organized JazzMet. Jansen, who had trained in the New York area and done some theater dancing in New Jersey, as well as some Disney dancing, was informed by a friend in Columbus that the group was starting. He went out, sensing an opportunity "to get in on the ground floor of something," and began working with JazzMet. Then McFall, needing additional dancers for a narrative ballet, suggested that he could pick up a little money by dancing in BalletMet's corps for that production.

All smart jazz and tap dancers stay in ballet class," Jansen says. "When you go for an audition, they want to know if you have your classical technique." Noticing that McFall did take on extra dancers for big productions, Jansen suggested bringing in the jazz performers as additional corps people - and JazzMet was folded into BalletMet. Since fair is fair, some BalletMet dancers work with JazzMet when the smaller troupe needs augmenting. (McFall, remember, likes versatile dancers.)

TAKE IT INTO THE STREET

JazzMet presented three programs last year, Jansen says, "in addition to outreach." That part is important. "We try to take it out into the street," he explains, "and see what people want." The troupe has participated in parades and it dances in schools. Jansen and a colleague have given tap performances at prisons.

There's still another aspect to McFall's program: building audiences by getting people to the theater who might not have felt welcome before. African-americans make up the largest minority group in Columbus, the artistic director says, "but the first time I walked into the Ohio Theater, I didn't see a single one-and it's a 2,900-seat house." The next year (1986), McFall brought Dance Theater of Harlem to Columbus. Now, he says, "we have African-american kids dancing in our Nutcracker."

That may have nothing at all to do with JazzMet. Still, we know that the roots of jazz are embedded in African soil, and we also know - whether we like to admit it or not - that one reason jazz never made it into the arts establishment is that its great innovators were black. The BalletMet-JazzMet experiment seems to me a way of continuing to build a complete American culture, using a bit of everything we've got.

It also seems like a way to give jazz dancers, musicians, and choreographers a chance to reach wider audiences - and even to work steadily. Finally, it's a way to get jazz dancing onto concert stages and to give it full institutional status. It's no longer a big surprise when a ballet company does a jazz work (or at least, a jazz-influenced work), but it's still a novelty. Although a few companies have institutionalized jazz dancing, the number is small. Mostly, jazz is a wayfaring stranger with no place it really can call home. With Jazzmet offering its own programs and sharing bills with BalletMet, audiences can come to regard jazz as one more regular tenant of the dance house.