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Paul Ben-Itzak
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Think Globally, Act Regionally

by Paul Ben-Itzak
July 21, 2009
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue (at the corner of 19th Street)
New York, NY 10011
212-242-0800

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Tulsa Ballet
Tulsa Ballet (office)
1212 E. 45th Place South
Tulsa, OK 74105
(918) 749-6030
www.tulsaballet.org

Angelini Builds a New Home for New Dance in Tulsa; Lustig Smashes the Ceiling in New Jersey
(Originally published April 18, 2008 on The Dance Insider.. Tulsa Ballet returns to New York for the first time in 25 years to perform at the Joyce Theater August 5 - 10, with a repertory including Nacho Duato's "Por Vos Muero," Kenneth MacMillan's "Elite Syncopation," and Young Soon Hue's "This Is Your Life.")

Recently I received the Royal Ballet's programming announcement for next season. I had trouble keeping my eyelids open. The same old dinosaurs being trotted out, whether in tired versions of classics or tired names of supposedly original modern ballet choreographers. Fortunately, where many of the large ballet companies have failed to imagine, the companies we big-city types used to condescendingly refer to as "regional" (as in, 'not bad for a regional company') have come through, commissioning new work with traction from choreographers not named Wheeldon, encouraging untested voices to work in the ballet idiom without sacrificing classic values or, like many European ballet companies (Lyon comes to mind) resorting to extra-dance elements like text and 'technology.' At the top of this list are Marcello Angelini's Tulsa Ballet and Graham Lustig's American Repertory Ballet.

Angelini and Lustig have one other trait in common which is showing in the level of talent and support they've been able to build. Neither see their companies as simple necessary stepping stones in ambitious trajectories whose ultimate goal is to get them to a bigger stage. As a result, rather than the flashy programming which garners short-term attention but leaves no legacy (or, worse, the legacy of a deficit) that we often see from directors whose ambitions are confined to their own careers, they are actually building structures which will be around and from which their companies and audiences will reap benefits long after they've departed.

In Angelini's case, the most visible evidence is a capital campaign which, over the past five years, has raised $17 million, $8.9 million of which has been directed towards a building expansion and renovation which sees its first fruits Thursday with the opening of Studio K - Kivisto Hall, a 300-seat theater designed expressly for the performance of new work in an additional fifth series for the Tulsa home season. (For this inaugural edition, three tango-themed works by Fernanda Ghi and Guillermo Merlo, Young Soon Hue, and Tulsa Ballet principal dancer Ma Cong, on a program running through May 4.) The facility, named after Tulsa supporter Tom Kivisto, will serve for performances and education, and be available for community rental.

A new theater for new works is part of Tulsa Ballet's multi-million dollar building expansion, captured above in an architect's rendering.

"This is a theater built to suit a new program, a new series that we are starting this year, rather then the other way around," Angelini explained to me earlier this week. "This series has been in the making since I first came to Tulsa 13 years ago. In fact, it was one of the first projects I presented to the board of directors. It was all part of a plan, a three-fold plan with this series dedicated to creation being the last part of the plan. First I wanted to build a company that was able to dance everything, from the classics to the most contemporary work. Then I wanted to build a repertory that was truly international, allowing the people living in our community to experience here, in their homes, the same works they could see in New York, Paris, London, Milan or Moscow. Then, once the international repertory was built, I wanted to take the company internationally and give us a true test of our value, as assessed by reviewers and audiences that had never seen us before and would never see us again. Lastly, I wanted to add a series dedicated to creations.

"I always felt that creations need a special surrounding to be appreciated to the fullest. So, rather then creating a work and trying to fit it into a theater, I did the opposite. And that's when being Italian helped in the thought process…. In Italy, we don't just buy a suit and then fit it on our body. We go to the tailor, we get the fabric we like and we ask him to build it on our body…. I believe we are the only company in the U.S. that has spent $5 million to build a theater entirely dedicated to the creation of new works and, thus, to the progression and growth of the art form. This is the statement I wanted to make with Kivisto Hall."

Angelini broadens the scope of his intentions with a credo that should serve as a guidepost for all custodians and cultivators of this art: "We enjoy an introspective look at the sociology and emotions of our ancestors from the 19th century through the art they created," he says. "Better yet, with dance, this art comes alive in front of our eyes. We artistic directors need to commit to create a body of works that will withstand the test of time and will represent, a century or two from now, who we were at this time in the development of the human being.

"Another reason for creating art is that we, the arts organization, differ from the entertainment industry insofar as we have a responsibility toward the cultural growth of the community that supports us. Yes, we have to entertain, but we also have a responsibility to push the cultural boundaries of our people, challenge them to think, to accept progress, to expand their vision beyond the boundaries of the community they call home. Our job is to both please and make people think. Kivisto Hall will allow us to continue this commitment by creating works that are leading edge, while still entertaining and never infringing on the artistic integrity of the art form."

Speaking of boundaries, for an art form that owes most of its historical stages of physical invention and development to women — from Taglioni's enabling the articulation of Romanticism, to Farrell's articulating and even inspiring Balanchine — ballet has a lousy record when it comes to allowing women creators *equal* access. It was in part to correct this that, several years ago, artistic director Graham Lustig started the Dancing through the Ceiling commissioning program at American Repertory Ballet, based in the working-class and university central New Jersey town of New Brunswick. But he didn't stop there. The problem with sex or race-centric programs is they risk ghettoizing the very group they seek to promote. An all-women, all-Black, all-gay program carries the unfortunate subtext, "pretty good for (women, Blacks, Gays)." It can even imply that the works will be of little interest to anyone outside that group; that they'll speak only to an identity constituency. What Lustig does, however, is to integrate these works into his general programming. So even though three of the four works making up ARB's program at New York's Symphony Space May 8 and 9 are by women, the program is not being marketed as "Three Girls and Graham" but under the more universal rubric "Sinatra, Shadows, and Stars," the ballets in question being inspired by the crooner from Hoboken, Balanchine, three Van Goghs paintings including "The Starry Night," and the diary of Anne Frank.

The program starts with a work from that giant of male and female choreographers of the late 20th century, Twyla Tharp, the Balanchine homage "Octet," only the second time in 17 years the work has been programmed in New York. (Seeing the piece earlier this year in New Jersey, the Star-Ledger's Robert Johnson called it "the most thrilling Tharp revival anywhere this season." Tharp also contributes "Sinatra Suite," in a staging by Elaine Kudo, who created the duet with Mikhail Baryshnikov. The Dancing through the Ceiling commission is "Starry Nights," one of more than 80 ballets created by Lisa de Ribere, and which takes its inspiration from Van Gogh's "Starry Nights Over the Rhone," "The Cafe Terrasse, Arles, at Night" and "The Starry Night."

Even the one work on the program created by a male, Lustig's "Shadows in the Attic," owes its source to a young woman, reflecting the last night diarist Anne Frank, her family, the van Daans and Mr. Dussel spent in the Secret Annex before being discovered and before most of them were hauled off to the their deaths by the Gestapo. Bringing it back home to Angelini's point about the potential of art to reflect a time and of dance to do it in real time, reviewing this ballet, Johnson wrote, "Such unusual works do more than underscore the empathic function of art; they place art within the realm of civic duty."
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