California Ballet is presenting our full-length Swan Lake on May 18 and 19, 2013 at the San Diego Civic Theatre. Swan Lake is one of the world’s most loved ballets, filled with romance, sorcery, betrayal and deceit. It’s the art form at its finest, and has only improved over time as ballet icon after ballet icon has put their own signature touches on the choreography.

California Ballet’s version of this quintessential ballet was choreographed by Thor Sutowski and the late Sonia Arova. Yet, like all geniuses, Thor and Sonia knew when to stand on the shoulders of giants, and the entire Act II of our Swan Lake uses the original choreography by Lev Ivanov.

Now, you may be asking, who are these people that put their touches on the ballet? Who’s this Lev guy that was so influential that California Ballet had to use his choreography? Well, let’s take a look at the choreographers who made this ballet legendary.

Swan Lake first made it’s appearance on the ballet stage at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, 1877. The original choreography was by a man named Julius Reisinger. Reisinger was the ballet master for the Russian Imperial Ballet at the time, and an uninspiring one at that. The only thing he was ever noted for was his failure with Swan Lake, which brought an end to his time as ballet master.

Yup. Ballet’s most beloved production was a flop the first time out. Peter Tchaikovsky’s score (Swan Lake was his first) was considered too complex and Reisinger’s choreography was called “lackluster.” The ballet was a critical failure in 1877, and ended up being shelved for twenty years.

It wasn’t until the Tchaikovsky’s death that Swan Lake would get a second chance. In tribute to the great composer, a man by the name of Lev Ivanov re-choreographed the second act (that’s the one with the lake and swans) for Tchaikovsky’s memorial concert. His re-imagination of the second act was so popular, that Ivanov and his master, Marius Petipa, were commissioned to breath new life into the old ballet. With a rewritten libretto, and a rearranged Tchaikovsky score, Swan Lake became the ballet that the world over associated with the art form at its finest.

Who are are these choreographic masterminds?

Marius Petipa is considered one of the greatest ballet choreographers to ever grace the stage. He dominated the Russian Imperial Ballet as Ballet Master for 30 years, producing over 50 ballets. Talk about prolific! The three ballets he is most keenly remembered for, however, are his collaborations with Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty,  and Swan Lake. Petipa is often credited with creating the framework of the classical story-book ballet with dancing that furthers the storyline, a section of divertissement pieces that are simply dances for entertainment (think the variations in Act II of The Nutcracker), and everything culminating in a grande pas de deux. The technique required to execute a Petipa ballet was often very demanding, pushing the dancers to higher levels. Many of the solos Petipa choreographed were created with specific dancers in mind, leading to each solo being specifically tailored and stylized. Many dancers today still consider the work of the 19th century genius to be the ultimate challenge to the perfection of their technique.

But to think that Petipa did it all alone would be foolish. Always trapped in his shadow was another choreographic giant of the time, Lev Ivanov. Petipa viewed his assistant as a threat to his career, so always kept the man firmly under his thumb. The truth of the matter is, Ivanov create many works during his career, and all of them ended up with Marius Petipa’s name on them because that was the ruling of the Imperial Theater’s director. Petipa was ballet master, and he was the one who would see the glory.

But, Ivanov was able to bring something to the Imperial stage that Petipa could not: an amazing sense of musicality. This would become especially apparent when working withthe complex music provided by Peter Tchaikovsky. In fact, the two ballets that are arguable the most famous and beloved of all should be credited to Ivanov: The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. Petipa may have gotten the credit for The Nutcracker, but he was bedridden with illness when it came time to stage the ballet. Instead, Lev Ivanov did all of the work under Petipa’s name, and the ballet we see today , as well as the popularity it has gained, is truly due to Ivanov’s brilliance.

And remember how we mentioned that the re-staging of Swan Lake led to it being given a second chance? That’s right, it was Ivanov who re-choreographed that second act. When the ballet was given a green light to be restaged in its entirety, Petipa was given acts one and three, and Lev Ivanov was given acts two and four to choreograph. Just in case you’re wondering, acts two and four take place on the lake with the enchanted swans. When you think of the ballet Swan Lake, what image pops into your head first? 

Yeah, we thought so.

Ivanov never truly saw the spotlight or the glory that he deserved in his time, but his musicality, paired with the technical demands learned from Petipa, made a mark on the ballet world. The two choreographic giants together reassured that their story ballets would become a part of every ballet company’s repertoire across the globe. That’s why California Ballet’s version by Thor Sutowski and Sonia Arova made the decision to include Lev Ivanov’s Act II choreography in their version. The way the choreography becomes a part of the music instead of just being informed by it will impress and stun you!

But, what about Thor Sutowski and Sonia Arova? Who are they? Why is California Ballet using their version?

Both Thor and Sonia – a husband and wife team, but the way – are well known and much loved by the San Diego dance community. They are also internationally renowned dancers of some stature.

Sonia Arova is internationally recognized as one of the great 20th century  ballerinas. She danced with the original Ballet Russes, the Royal Ballet, the National Ballet of Washington D.C., and ABT. In fact, she was even Rudolph Nureyev’s partner for the ballet legend’s American debut! For her outstanding achievements in ballet, she was knighted by King Olav V of Norway, making her a Dame. But, as amazing as she was as a dancer, some of her greatest work happened while directing, choreographing, and teaching. She served as the director of the National Ballet of Norway, co-directed the San Diego Ballet with Thor Sutowski, became the Artistic Director for Alabama Ballet and a faculty member at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and an Artistic Advisor for California Ballet. In all of these capacities, her greatest contribution to the world of dance was teaching and shaping some of the greatest dancers of the recent generations. Her sense of musicality, photographic memory for choreography, and understanding of a dancer’s needs made her unarguably one of the greatest ballet instructors and directors of the late 20th century.

Working side by side with Dame Sonia Arova was her husband, and fellow famed ballet dancer, Thor Sutowski. Like Dame Arova, Mr. Sutowski is a principal dancer of international fame. He danced with many famous ballet dancers, including Margot Fonteyn, Natalia Makarova, and George Balanchine. But, just like his late wife, Mr. Sutowski’s greatest achievements would be seen once he hung up his ballet slippers. His work as a teacher, coach, choreographer, and mentor have shaped many up-and-coming dancers into the finest of their time. His choreography has been seen around the world, and has even received three Emmy Awards! He co-directed the San Diego Ballet with his wife, served as a resident choreographer for the Atlantic Ballet and Dance Chairperson for the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and was the Associate Director of California Ballet. His sense of style, love of the art form, and natural empathy with those under his tutelage make him a much loved and well respected figure in the dance community.

Together, this husband and wife team are responsible for the full-length version of Swan Lake that has been a part of the California Ballet Repertoire since 1997. The ballet was originally set on our company by Thor and Sonia themselves in 1997, and each successive time Mr. Sutowski has been present to ensure that style and choreographic integrity not only remains consistent, but is improved upon with each iteration. Dame Arova’s musicality paired with Mr. Sutowski’s vision blend to create something that is unique, dynamic, and believably gorgeous! Amazingly, but not surprisingly, Thor’s and Sonia’s choreography blends seamlessly with the 120 year-old choreography by Lev Ivanov. The resulting production is monumental in stature, emotionally cathartic, and thoroughly enchanting. California Ballet’s Swan Lake shows the workmanship of not one choreographic genius, but three.

If you haven’t seen Swan Lake, you owe it to yourself to experience what is easily the greatest and best known ballet in history. Join California Ballet Company at the San Diego Civic Theatre on May 18th and 19th, 2013 for the full-length Swan Lake, starring Dutch National Ballet Principals Maia Makhateli and Artur Shesterikov.

For tickets and information call (858) 560-6741 or go online to www.californiaballet.org/season/swan-lake.

On January 24, 2013 Mayor Bob Filner joined representatives from around San Diego at the San Diego Regional Arts and Culture Coalition general meeting. The Coalitionmeets regularly to join heads about what the arts are doing in San Diego, how the arts can influence city and county policy, and create an air of collaboration and camaraderie between the city’s Arts and Culture organizations. Yesterday, representatives from groups large and small were in attendance. From the Old Globe to Mo’Olelo, from the Commission for Arts and Culture to Arts Pulse, the room was packed with a veritable cornucopia of culture. California Ballet Company was just one of many in attendance to hear the Mayor speak.

It’s no secret that former Mayor Jerry Sanders was a friend of the arts. His support of the work being done in San Diego allowed the Arts and Culture scene to boom under his administration – even in the face of an economic recession. With his term ending, arts across San Diego were invariably concerned with who would replace him, and whether support for the arts would continue. The first thing on Mayor Filner‘s agenda for his appearance yesterday was to reassure the San Diego arts community that he not only supports the arts, but also understands their importance to San Diego’s prosperity. Mayor Filner told the gathered crowd that he sees an important part of his job as supporting what the arts are doing.

The Mayor spoke in length about the importance of the arts in education. Mayor Filner is, in actuality, Dr. Filner. The Mayor has a Ph.D in History, was a professor at San Diego State University for 20 years, and served on his school board for many years. In short, the man understands education. Many of you are familiar with S.T.E.M.: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. The current trend in school is to focus on these areas in order to provide children with the proper skill sets for success in the real world. Mayor Filner proposes to take this a step forward in San Diego and change S.T.E.M. to S.T.E.A.M. – where the “A” stands for Art. He appears to be well versed in studies showing that a good arts education leads to improved learning and performance in the maths and sciences.

But education was not the only focus of Mayor Filner’s Q and A. He informed those gathered that the political climate is changing.No longer will Arts and Culture organizations have to fight for what they need. Mayor Filner assured  those present that should they need something, all the arts and culture organizations have to do is ask and he would do everything in his power to address their issues. That’s not to say that he has a magic wand. He’ll still be constrained by bureaucratic and budgetary concerns, but he’s in the arts’ court from the start. With increased ability to achieve results comes increased responsibility from the Arts and Culture community. The Mayor asked those present to come together, prioritize, integrate, and synthesize their needs. Only as a united front will the Arts and Culture community achieve great results under Mayor Filner’s administration.

One of the Mayor’s biggest priorities appears to be collaboration with our neighbors across the border. Mayor Filner made clear that he sees our city as the biggest bi-national center in the country. He wants to take advantage of that. The width and breadth of culture in Tijuana is as engaging as that found in San Diego, and the Mayor would like to see more collaboration between Mexico and San Diego. In that spirit, California Ballet Company has invited the dance company Pendulo Cero to join us onstage at our upcoming production of Beyond the Barre on February 23, 2013. This will only be the first of many planned international collaborations. CLICK HERE for more information.

The energy in the room following the Mayor’s Q and A session was electric. There was difficulty in regaining focus to attend to Coalition business and the crowd buzzed amongst themselves with apparent anticipation. The message taken away from the Mayor’s meeting with the Arts and Culture community was that we have an ally in the Mayor’s Office, and it’s up to us to achieve our goals over the next four to eight years. Mayor Filner has big expectations for San Diego’s arts and culture, and he wants to see even bigger results.

“A great city has to have great arts and culture. . . we are not yet a great city.”

 – Mayor Bob Filner on San Diego’s support for Arts and Culture

Decembers come and Decembers go, and for most ballet companies it is a hectic time of ticket sales, rehearsals, and performances. Most ballet companies produce an annual production of The Nutcracker, which brings in more revenue than any other ballet production they may perform throughout the year. People flock to theaters every December to renew the tradition of seeing The Nutcracker during the holiday season. This has been going on so long, that sometimes we may forget where this magical spectacle of dance came from in the first place.

So, where did The Nutcracker come from? Who created it? Why do we all go to see it every year?

To answer these questions, let’s start from the beginning!

What comes first, the music or the dance? In the case of professional ballet, it’s neither! What comes first is a someone with money, in this case the director of the Russian Imperial Theatres, Ivan Vsevolozhsky. In 1890 Mr. Vsevolozhsky commissioned the now well-known Peter Tchaikovsky to compose new music for a double-billed opera and ballet program. The ballet turned out to be The Nutcraker. Looking for a partner in his balletic endeavor, Tchaikovsky turned to Marius Petipa, with whom he had already worked.

Peter Tchaikovsky

In case you didn’t know, Tchaikovsky had previously worked, to great success, with Petipa on the ballet rendition of Sleeping Beauty. It was no surprise that he would once again turn to this master of the balletic form. It wasn’t Tchaikovsky, however, that chose the source material for this new ballet. Marius Petipa settled on E.T.A. Hoffman’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King as the perfect story to base this new ballet on. The ballet master adapted the story into a ballet libretto, and began working with Tchaikovsky right away on the score.

Marius Petipa

Petipa was notoriously, meticulously demanding when it came to the music for his ballets. He gave Tchaikovsky detailed notes on the tempo and even the number of required measures for each choreographic piece in the ballet! Well, you can imagine, the legendary composer didn’t take too well to such treatment. As a result, he took his sweet time completing the work. He even took a holiday to conduct an orchestra at Carnegie Hall! Yet, frustrations aside, the music was completed and the ballet choreographed. Two years after it was commissioned, The Nutcracker finally had its debut at the Mariinsky Theatre!

There is some debate about whether or not Petipa can truly be credited as having choreographed the original Nutcracker. He was frequently ill, and his protege Lev Ivanov would step in and complete choreography for him. Most scholars today credit Lev Ivanov as the original choreographer of The Nutcracker even though Petipa was originally commissioned for the project.

Two years after Ivan Vsevolozhsky hired Tchaikovsky to compose the ballet, The Nutcracker finally made it onstage in 1892 at the Mariinsky Theatre on a double bill with the opera Iolanta. It was not a resounding success, just like the other Tchaikovsky ballets. Mixed reviews plagued the ballet. Some balletomanes were put off by the Imperial Ballet’s use of children (students of the Imperial Ballet) in the children’s roles – deeming it unprofessional. Some declared parts of Tchaikovsky’s score to be insipid, or lacking inspiration! One of the biggest criticisms was that the Principal Ballerina didn’t dance her solo until the very end of the ballet in the Sugar Plum’s Grande Pas De Deux. Since the original program placed The Nutcracker after the performance of Iolanta, that meant the Principal Ballerina didn’t make her appearance until around midnight!

Amazing, isn’t it? Today The Nutcracker is considered one of Classical Ballet’s most accessible, most beloved ballet’s. By today’s standards Tchaikovsky’s score is considered luscious, complex, and full of surprises. Several musicians from the San Diego Symphony that have played for California Ballet over the past 40 years have declared that The Nutcracker is one of their favorite scores to play.

Following the 1892 production, The Nutcracker would disappear from the limelight until the 20th century. Soon it would begin to resurface with many different interpretations on many different stages in many different companies. In some versions, Clara would be called Marie. In others, the Grande Pas de Deux would be danced by Clara and her prince instead of the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Cavalier. 

Yet, whatever changed, the heart of the ballet remained the same.

The United States wouldn’t get its own Nutcracker until the 1940′s when San Francisco Ballet would take it upon themselves to create a new holiday tradition. In the 1950′s New York City Ballet would follow suit, and by the late 1960′s ballet companies across the United States would begin performing annual holiday productions of The Nutcracker.

It only took seventy years for the ballet to achieve the fame and renown that it deserves!

California Ballet Company’s full length Nutcracker debuted in 1971. The company’s founding Director, Maxine Mahon, discerned a need in San Diego for the holiday ballet, and felt it was her duty to provide one. For the first three years of the company’s existence (1968-1970), California Ballet presented the second act of The Nutcracker. In December of 1971, Director Mahon was ready to unveil her full-length production with choreography inspired by the original Ivanov, a libretto that followed the original production, and the intact Tchaikovsky score. The production opened at the Russ Auditorium (which no longer exists) and performed to sold out audiences. The very next year, California Ballet’s Nutcracker moved to the San Diego Civic Theatre, where it has appeared every single year since 1971!

This year is no different. If you haven’t already, make California Ballet’s holiday tradition a part of your own! Join us December 15 and 16 with Orchestra Nova, an December 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23 with the San Diego Symphony as we keep the classics alive and celebrate the holidays with the ever timeless The Nutcracker!

The mythos of the vampire has been around for countless centuries, in countless cultures, in countless forms. From creatures who drink blood, to demons from hell, the vampire has held a place in human superstitions and mythology across the world. Most people associate the vampire with Romania – specifically Transylvania – and this is largely due to Bram Stoker’s famous Gothic novel, Dracula.

Bram Stoker (1847-1912) may have reached great fame as the author of the quintessential vampire novel, but he was a prolific writer who made most of his living as the business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, England. Stoker was on the writing staff for the London Daily Telegraph, and his literary works range from horror, to fiction, to non-fiction. Stoker lived and worked during the Victorian Era. During this time you have other such writers as H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He was in rarified air, indeed! His particular work, however, would brand him as a horror writer, and land him in the same category as Mary Shelley (of Frankenstein fame.)

Bram Stoker c. 1906

Stoker’s lasting legacy is the horror masterpiece Dracula. Stoker spent seven years researching European folklore and existing vampire stories before beginning work on his masterpiece. Yes, that’s right, Stoker was not the first to write horror fiction about vampires. He is, however, the most memorable and influential. Dracula would not be published until 1897 – a mere fifteen years before his death – but once published, it would never again leave publication. There has been some form of the vampire masterpiece on bookstore shelves since its original publication in 1897! It has informed and influenced Western interpretation of the vampire mythos for 115 years, until the name Dracula and the concept of vampires are inextricably intertwined.

But, what about the story?

Most people know the story of the young Englishman, Jonathan Harker, who travels to Transylvania to attend an eccentric Slavic man and assist in his moving to England. Most people know about the crazy Renfield, Count Dracula’s loyal hound. Most people have heard of Professor Abraham Van Helsing, who hunts down and kills the evil vampire. But, how many of you have actually read the original novel? Each adaptation has taken elements from the original story, and changed them around. While the heart of the story remains the same from iteration to iteration, very few have ever retold the story as Stoker envisioned it.

If you haven’t read it, do so now! You can download it for free for Kindle at Amazon.com by CLICKING HERE.

The story follows a group of English men and women as Count Dracula wreaks havoc on their lives. The story begins in Transylvania – a region in Romania – where Jonathan Harker, essentially a real estate agent, is meeting with an eccentric old man in a dilapidated castle to finalize the old man’s purchase and transit to Carfax – the Count’s new property  in Purfleet, England. While in Translvania, Jonathan begins to experience wildly strange occurrences, including a trio of vampiric women who seem to want to suck his blood. He discovers that he is a prisoner in Dracula’s castle, and becomes overcome with the need to escape – which he eventually does.

Engraving of Purfleet, England – 10 miles outside of London

As a side note, the original name for Count Dracula was going to be Count Wampire. After researching Romanian history, Stoker discovered the tales of Vlad II and Vlad III, both rulers of Wallachia – a region near Transylvania. Vlad II was inducted into a society – the Order of the Dragon – for deeds of bravery. As part of his induction, he assumed the name of Dracul (meaning “dragon”). But, it isn’t Vlad II that became a basis for the Count. It was his son, Vlad III – also known as Vlad the Impaler. The younger Vlad was said to have defended his home of Wallachia against invading Turks – having killed over 100,000 people himself. His favorite means of torturing and killing his enemies was to impale them on huge wooden spikes – thus his oh, so lovely name. Vlad III’s history is said to serve as a basis for Count Dracula. In fact, Dracula means, “The Son of Dracul.” Of course, modern translation of Dracul  can also be “the devil” so there’s a double meaning involved.

Vlad the Impaler (Vlad III)

But, back to the story. Dracula makes his way to England where he begins to make himself at home by feeding upon a local aristocrat’s blood, Lucy Westerna. Now, anyone that’s seen California Ballet’s Dracula will notice right away a big difference here. In our version, Lucy’s last name is Van Helsing. She’s the daughter of the famed vampire hunter! This is just one of many artistic licenses that have been taken with the novel over the century since its publication. Many versions have simplified characters and their relationships to make the story easier to portray and follow on both the stage and the big screen. Changing Lucy’s lineage is just one example.

In time, Lucy dies of blood loss (hmmm, wonder where her blood went) and becomes a vampire herself – the first of many planned for the Count. Professor Abraham Van Helsing is called upon to hunt down Lucy and put her to rest. He is joined by three of Lucy’s suitors: John Seward, Quincy Morris, and Arthur Holmwood. Arthur, who wins Lucy’s hand before she is turned into a vampire, is the one to put a stake through her heart.

With Lucy out of the picture, Dracula starts to feed on Mina Harker – Lucy’s best friend and newly married to Dracula’s real estate agent, Jonathan. The bond created between the Count and Mina is used by Van Helsing to track down the vampire to his English lair. Accompanied by Jonathan and the three suitors, Van Helsing sanctifies the land – forcing Dracula to return to his home in Transylvania. Van Helsing and the three suitors follow the vampire to Eastern Europe for a final confrontation, which ends in the slaying of the Count and saving Mina from becoming a vampire herself.

Now, this is just a basic synopsis of the story, but it covers all the details that you are likely to see in any film or stage rendition of the novel. But, as with any classic, nothing will ever match the novel. Seriously, read the book.

Over the years, Dracula has seen countless interpretations. The first stage version was penned by Stoker himself, and performed at the Lyceum Theatre in London. It was only performed once, just before the publication of his book. The next major rendition would be the German silent film Nosferatu in 1922. This movie was created without the proper rights, so many of the details were changed -such as the title and the name of the Count. Nonetheless, it is Dracula.

The most famous iteration is the 1933 film of Dracula starring the unforgettable Bela Lugosi. When most of you picture a vampire or Dracula in your minds, it is probably Lugosi’s interpretation you see with slender pointed teeth, a widow’s peak, and a horrendous Slavic accent saying, “I vant to suck you blood!” Still, this Universal Studios classic has defined our vision of Stoker’s vampires for almost 80 years! It was this movie that propelled the story into worldwide fame – something for which Hollywood is famous.

The most recent film version of Dracula was the 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula starring Keanu Reeves, Winona Rider, and Sir Anthony Hopkins. While the acting ability of some of the stars may be called into question, there is no doubt that this is the closest rendition to the original text available in film version. Journal entries are recited in voice-overs, you see all three of Lucy’s suitors, the original character names are intact, and you even get a bit of the muddied history that flavored Stoker’s novel. If you can’t read the book (we cannot iterate enough how much you should), then this is the movie to see.

So, by now you may be thinking, “How can you make a ballet out of this story?” Let’s be honest, as we said at the very beginning of this post, Charles Bennett’s Dracula is not a ballet. It is a dance drama that happens to have some balletic pointe work and acting set to music. If you aren’t a ballet fan, this is the place to start. While there are now several different versions of the Dracula ballet, the first was created in San Diego for the California Ballet Company in 1987. Many other companies have their own versions of the ballet – each with their own scores and interpretations. Ours was the vision of Charles Bennett, who also created California Ballet’s Alice in Wonderland, Romeo and Juliet, and Snow White.

When turning Dracula into a dance-narrative, Mr. Bennet was faced with the challenge of representing a very rich story, known and loved the world over, in just two hours of dance and pantomime. Not an easy task! Mr. Bennett decided to stand on the shoulders of giants and pull inspiration from the silent movie era – using vignettes, dissolving smoothly from one scene into another without interruption, and tailoring music to move the story forward. The result is a dance-drama that feels like cinema come to life. Some characters were cut from the story, while others were changed to make for easier story-telling. For example, Lucy has no suitors at all in the CBC version, and Mr. Bennett pulled inspiration from the Universal Studios version by making Mina Dr. Seward’s daughter. Yet, even with the changes made and the lack of spoken word, Charles Bennett’s Dracula masterfully propels Bram Stoker’s story through to its conclusion of good triumphing over evil.

The story and the history of Bram Stoker’s Dracula are both rich and vibrant. It would be impossible to regale you with every fact and facet without creating a blog post that is impossibly long. But, if you’re looking for a great horror story for the Halloween season that has filled our hearts, minds, and imaginations for over 100 years, this is the story to do it!

Be sure to join California Ballet Company at the Civic Theatre on October 27 and 28, 2012 for an evening of blood, fangs, and death . . . but no tutus!

For tickets and information CLICK HERE!

Cities across the United States provide funding for their resident arts and culture organizations. The shape of the programs vary from city to city, but one thing they all recognize, from New York to San Francisco, is that what sets a great city apart from the rest is a thriving arts and culture scene.

We live and work in San Diego, and there can be no doubt about it: San Diego loves their arts and culture! 60 Broadway shows, 2 Tony Award-winning theaters, three major ballet companies, a multi-million dollar Symphony and Opera, a world-renowned Zoo, one of the greatest municipal parks to come out of the WPA . . . the list goes on and on!

Every year the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture releases an Economic Impact Report for the arts in San Diego. They do an excellent job of keeping it from being dry, but we like to break it down further into tasty little morsels. The theme of this year’s report on 2011 was the idea of more.

More what, you ask? Simple:

• More revenue
• More jobs
• More tourists
• More education
• More businesses
• More everything!

Sounds kinda dry, right? And you’re probably wondering, “What does this have to do with me?” (Unless you happen to be an artist, that is.) Well, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.

Every year the City of San Diego provides funding to local arts and culture organizations through a program called the Organizational Support Program. We’ll call it OSP for short. Now you’re saying, “What?! Their using my hard-earned tax dollars to support private industry?”

Well, not exactly. First off, the money comes from taxes placed on tourists to the city. Whenever someone from out of town stays at a hotel, they pay an extra tax. That means this money doesn’t come from the pockets of local residents, but it does benefit locals.

Secondly, let’s think about the arts for a moment. . .  yes, many arts companies are privately owned businesses, but not all. Those supported by the OSP are nonprofit organizations that are dedicated to serving their community. That means they are corporations with oversight by a Board of Trustees – a group of private citizens like you.These companies don’t make a huge profit that they then turn around into kickbacks for investors and bonuses for execs.

Instead, every ‘extra’ cent earned is turned around and pumped back into the programs that serve your community. So, really, these arts and culture businesses belong to everyone.They enrich our lives through entertainment and education that neither private citizens nor the government can provide alone.

Isn’t that worth a little support?

But, back to the report. Did you know that in 2011 San Diego arts & culture organizations provided over $170 million in direct expenditures? That’s over $170 million that went right into our local economy. Think of money as coal for a locomotive engine. The more coal in the engine, the faster the train goes. The more money in the city’s economy, the faster our quality of life increases.

A strong arts and culture scene means more coal in our engine.

Oh, and the amount of money provided by the OSP in 2011? $5.8 million. Let’s do the math: if those organizations pumped $170 million back into the city’s economic engine, that means the return on investment is approximately 29 to 1. That seems worthwhile, doesn’t it?

We mentioned that the report shows more jobs and more tourism. Let’s talk about those together – more tourism means more jobs, and the jobs created by the arts and culture community draw in more tourism. It’s a nasty, vicious circle that we love! These organizations employ artist, designers, engineers, construction companies, architects, florists, photographers, and more. Those companies and individuals employed help to produce events and products that draw people to theater, festivals, fairs, museums, and more. And guess what? A lot of the people who attend these things come from out of town. They stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, rent cars, take the bus . . . the list goes on, but most of the money spent in this city stays in this city.

And it’s a fact that’s been proven by study after study that arts and culture tourists stay about twice as long and spend twice as much as any other tourists! In San Diego in 2011, arts tourists stayed an average of 3.8 days vs. 1.8 for all others, and they spent an average of $561 per trip as opposed to $235 for all others!

These tourists who stay in our hotels, eat at our restaurants, rent our cars, and use our transit systems are generating jobs by bringing an extra customer base to our local businesses. See how tourism and jobs are linked?

Oh yeah, and remember where the money for the OSP comes from? That’s right, taxes on those very tourists that the arts and culture organizations are attracting.

But money aside, perhaps the most important more in the list is more education. Each and every organization that receives funding from the OSP provides education and outreach to not only the city of San Diego, but the entire county! California Ballet Company alone serves countless schools and community organizations each year! We bring children and families to the theater for free or very low-cost to see dress rehearsals of our productions, we bring dancers into schools and libraries to provide lecture-demonstrations, we offer complimentary tickets to organizations and schools who are trying to raise funds. And that’s just our company! When you look at all of the organizations that receive funding from the OSP, and you consider how different they all are, just think about the kind of arts and culture education our city is receiving for actually very little money.

These education and outreach programs are funded in part by the money San Diego’s Commission for Arts and Culture makes available to the organizations. So, sure, that money could be used to pay for firemen and police, it could be used to renovate civic centers, it could be used to fill in potholes. But consider that an arts-rich education has been proven to improve children’s performance in mathematics and sciences. It has been proven to improve scores on standardized tests. It has been proven to increase follow-through and completion of a higher education. Without the arts-rich education that organizations like our own provide, we might not have the educated people to man the fire and police stations, where would the civil engineers be to rebuild our civic centers, and who would be running the construction companies that maintain our roads?

It’s all connected.

Remember how important the arts are to a thriving community. However, don’t leave it to the government to support them. Buy tickets. Visit museums. Become association members by donating to these organizations. As little as $50 adds up when everyone starts doing their parts. And really, what can $50 buy you? A nice meal or a few frilly coffees?

Wouldn’t you rather educate your children and take in a ballet or Broadway show?

It all comes down to more involvement in the arts.

To become a pARTner in the arts, or find out how you can support California Ballet Company, CLICK HERE!

Keep supporting the arts and culture of your city, and we’ll see you at the ballet!

We’ve talked about the wear and tear of ballet on sets, scenery and costumes, but what about the heart and soul of the art form? What about the dancer? From twisted ankles to torn hamstrings, ballet is tough on the body. Dancers are asked to do things that are inhuman: overextend their legs, balance on their toes, press people over their heads, get thrown through the air. And what’s the toll it takes? We’ll take a look at that in just a moment!

First, a quick update on our 45 in 45 fundraiser! With just two and one half weeks left, it appears as if we may not reach our goal. We’ve had lots of interest, many people spreading the word, but very little in the way of donations. We are heartened and humbled by the amount of people who have expressed interest and/or concern over helping us to raise funds, and we understand that sometimes there just isn’t any money to spare for donations. So, take a look at your wallet, ask your friends and family to do the same. If you can skip just one or two Starbucks trips next week, even a $10 donation will make a difference in our upcoming season. While we may not have raised enough money yet to fix our sets, we do have enough to repair and replace a few costumes, and that’s a start! So, for those of you who have given California Ballet a helping hand, we cannot thank you enough!

Now, onto the wear and tear of ballet on the dancer!

To understand the type of strain dancing places on the body, we really should start at the beginning with a dancer’s training. Most professional dancers begin their instruction at a very young age. The skills and technique required to dance ballet are so precise and demanding that most ballet dancers begin their training in early childhood. Of course, the age at which a child begins training differs depending upon whether they are a boy or a girl. Ballerinas usually begin their training incredibly early – between ages three and eight. Boys, on the other hand, can begin their ballet training as late at 14 – in some rare cases as late as college – and still become professional ballet dancers. Most men, however, still begin training by age eight.

Yes, we know it’s unfair. But let’s face it, men and women are completely different animals! Boys and girls develop at different rates, and most men achieve the physical maturity that ballet requires later in their youth than girls.

What does ballet training include? A lot. But here’s an abridged look at a dancer’s training:

When a child begins their dance training, they typically start by taking one or two classes per week. Classes may range from 1 to 1 1/2 hours in length, but they always follow the same format: warmup at barre followed by a series of exercises in the center of the studio. We could go into detail about what a typical ballet class looks like, but we’ll save that for another post. If you run a Google search for “ballet class” you will likely come up with a good description.

During these early years of ballet training, a young dancer is learning basic steps, the French terms for each step, fine-tuning their control of their body, building muscles and flexibility, and learning the respect and discipline that are necessary for being a good dancer. Most importantly, they are discovering just how much they love the art form, and perhaps how much of their lives they are willing to dedicate to ballet.

This last is important, because as a dancer enters their teenage years, their training is going to suddenly accelerate. They will go from one to two classes per week up to 10 to 15 classes per week! If their school is connected with a professional company, those hours spent in the studio will be augmented with hours of rehearsals for productions, time spent in the theater, summer intensive workshops, the list goes on. Needless to say, a teenager with his or her eye set on a professional career will need to make sacrifices in their personal lives: missing school dances, football games, dating, family functions . . . you get the idea.

Of all the dancers in the world, only the top 2% will find a place with a professional ballet company. Dancers with companies like ABT and New York City Ballet are akin to Olympic athletes when you compare their skills and strength to others. But, more specifically, these top 2% will also have a “natural ballet body“.

What’s that, you ask? It’s a body with specific proportions and a high level of natural flexibility, turnout, and strength that are all conducive to dancing. Not everyone has this natural facility, and those that don’t have to work hard to make up for the lack. This is not to say that only those with a natural ballet body will become professional dancers, but they will need to work much harder.

Okay, but what does a dancer have to do physically?

A dancer must be able to:

• Balance on their toes
• Jump extremely high in the air (men must jump higher than women – some as high as 5-6 feet in the air!)
• Extend their legs up to their head
• Turn out their legs from their hips to as close to 180 degrees as possible
• Turn multiple times at high speed without becoming dizzy or disoriented
• Ballerinas must have ankles strong enough to support their entire body on the very tips of their toes
• Men must have upper bodies strong enough to hold a girl over their heads with one hand

And all the training for this begins at the ripe old age of seven or eight! Dancer kinesiology – or the study of human movement in dancers – is still a relatively new field. We haven’t had the opportunity to do deep studies of how training from an early age affects child development but we do know some things:

• The constant use of turnout - or rotating one’s legs from the hips:  This leads to lengthened tendons and ligaments. It has been hypothesized that the development of turnout during a child’s growth may lead to a shallower hip joint. 
• Extreme stretching and flexibility: Same thing as use of turnout. Lengthened tendons and ligaments and elongated muscles may result from this hyper-flexibility.
• High impact from jumping: It has been directly observed by sports medicine that the high impact of landing out of the spectacular jumps you see in ballet wears away at the natural shock absorption in a person’s knees. As a dancer ages, this becomes a major problem, often leading to knee surgery, arthritis, and ultimately retirement.
• Pointe work: There’s no way around it – dancing on the very tips of your toes is unnatural. A ballerina must suspend her entire bodyweight on the tips of her toes – often times on one foot! The end result afteryears of training and dancing like this? Severe arthritis in the ankles, toes, and the little bones in the feet. There is also a wearing down of the body’s natural shock absorbers.
• Lifting: A male dancer will be required to lift other dancers over their heads, as well as catch ballerinas who are flying through the air at phenomenal speeds! The shock and impact of doing this repeatedly has the same effect as doing all those high jumps: a slow wearing down of the body’s natural shock absorbers, as well a slow weakening of shoulder, wrist, and elbow joints as tendons and ligaments get stretched and joints are worn down.
• Injuries: This is a big one! Almost every single dancer will find themselves injured at one point or another in their careers, Whether it’s a twisted ankle, torn muscle, or dislocated joint, these injuries are often severe due to the extreme nature of professional ballet. The trouble is, as a dancer stays away from ballet class while they heal, they lose their technique and strength incredibly quickly. As a result, many dancers hurry back to the ballet studio prematurely, and end up dancing with their injury unhealed. In the end, a dancer will only shorten their career by doing this, but if you haven’t met a professional ballet dancer, you don’t know stubborn!

All of these things are just the physical wearing down of a dancer. Professional ballet can be incredibly emotional as well. Professional classical ballet is every bit as competitive as any Olympic sport. Add to that the aesthetics of art, and you have a recipe for emotional strain. The professional dancer does most of his or her training during the troubled years of adolescence. The body is going through extreme changes, and it’s all happening in skin-tight clothing. Ballet requires a slim, athletic body. This means that for safety as well as artistic reasons, a dancer must control their bodyweight. Have you ever tried to tell an adolescent to watch their weight? Not a good time.

Then you have many dancers vying for select spots with a professional company. They aren’t selling housewares, and it isn’t a cerebral exercise. Dancers are putting themselves out onstage at an audition and asking people to judge their skill and, most brutally, their bodies. A rejection can be devastating, and the fact that the competition for positions in a company or roles in a ballet is between friends and colleagues makes it all the more stressful!

So, the wear and tear of ballet on the dancer is both physical and emotional. Because of the amount of strain it places on a person, a dancer’s career is very short. Most dancers retire between the ages of 30 and 40! Can you believe it? Most people are only starting their careers at that age!

By now you may be saying to yourself, “Injuries, arthritis, emotional trauma, a sacrificed childhood, and a ridiculously short career on top of it all! Is it really worth it?”

Last time we talked about the wear and tear of ballet on sets and scenery, but what about those lovely tutus the ballerinas are wearing? How do those costumes hold up against such rigorous man-handling? How do we get them in the first place? Who makes them? Well we’re going to talk about that today, but first a quick update about our fundraiser.

Our 45 in 45 fundraiser is chugging along, and we are slowly approaching $2,000. It doesn’t look like we’re going to make our goal, but time’s not up yet! We still have just short of one month, so let’s pound the pavement and spread the word. People love art, people love dance, and asking a couple more people to help us keep the art alive isn’t going to hurt anyone, right?

So go to www.stayclassy.org/45in45and make your own fundraising page. Post it on your Facebook page, and tell people why supporting the arts is so darned important to you. And remember, if you can get the most people to donate to your fundraiser page, you will win a tablet computer! It’s the least we can do to thank the person who worked the hardest for us.

Now, on to costumes!

When people think of ballet, they usually think of graceful dances, big sets, and lavish costumes. Images of stick-thin girls in stiff tutus and pointe shoes comes to mind, right? After all, what is ballet without a bevy of beauties in tutus?

But, where do those tutus come from? How does any theater show go about getting their costumes? It’s as involved a process as creating the sets, and often involves a lot more people.

The first thing that happens is the director and producer of the show meet to discuss what will be needed in the way of costuming. Once they have a basic idea, they hire a costume designer – someone who has been trained to look at a script, listen to the director’s vision for the show, and create a wardrobe that brings that vision to life. This is a very involved process, and isn’t as simple as slapping two pieces of cloth together.

Here’s what the costume designer’s process looks like:

1. Read the script
2. Read the script again.
3. Read the script one more time – This is important because the designer has to know the story of the ballet or play as well as they do their own life. They  need to live and breath the script because their costumes will be a large part of what brings characters to life and differentiates them from each other.
4. Research – Once familiar with – you guessed it – the script, the designer has to do some research. You see, every play or ballet takes place in a specific era, or period, and the designer will need to familiarize themselves with what clothing looked like during that period.
5. Sketch it out – Next they begin to sketch costumes designs that give each character in the ballet or play a unique personality. These sketches are often fleshed out withwater color in order to give an idea of a color scheme.
6. Find fabric – The designer has to attach a type of fabric to each single piece of costume. This starts with little samples, or swatches, that are attached to the water-color renderings.
7. Create patterns – The renderings are turned into patterns. This is not a simple process, and requires special training to understand how pieces of cloth are cut into specific shapes that fit together to become garments of clothing. Yeah, it sounds convoluted. . . that’s because it is!
8. Take measurements – The designer has to get measurements from the actors and dancers so that they can begin building the costumes to the right proportions.
9. Build the costume – this one’s pretty straight-forward.
10. Fit it on the actor or dancer – the person who is going to wear the costume tries it on for the first time. There will invariably be adjustments that need to be made, hem lines that must be stitched up, waist lines that are too big and need to be tucked. In addition to that, if it’s a dancer wearing the costume, they may tell the designer that they need to be able to do the splits, press a girl over their head, do a summersault – this might mean more adjustments to improve the costume’s range of movement.
11. Make changes to the costume.
12. Fit again.
13. Make more changes.
14. Fit again – this can go on and on, until the costume is just right. Then, finally . . .
15. You have a costume.

Fifteen steps?! Yeah, and that’s abridged. Now, the costume designer may or may not have an entire wardrobe staff to help them – that depends on the size of the theater or dance company. In many cases, designers and seamstresses end up being mothers of cast members, or even the cast members themselves! But in a professional theater, there is always a staff on hand to do this work. And those in the costume department aren’t the only ones involved:

• Lighting Designer - the costume designer has to work with the lighting designer. You see, colored lights will change what colored costumes look like onstage, so these two need to be in sync.
• Sound Designer – in shows that have spoken lines or singing, the costume designer needs to work with the sound designer to figure out how to keep microphones open and clear when dealing with wigs and hats!
• Stage Crew – have you ever watched a theater show, saw a character dash offstage, and then return 30 seconds later in a totally different outfit? This is called a quick change. The stage crew is on hand backstage to help strip the performer and then redress them. The costume designer needs to know when this happens because he or she will have to build costumes that are easy to get on and off in a flash!
• Stage Manager - this is the person who runs the shows and calls the shots. Once the performance is underway, they are the boss. The stage manager needs to be familiar with the costumes so that they know when something has gone wrong – when there’s a wardrobe malfunction.

You can see there’s a lot involved in creating a costume but what about once it’s made and being used? What happens to it then?

Well, if the show or production is a one-time event, or even just a several month run, the costume may need to be cleaned a handful of times but it usually won’t require any sort of maintenance. This is the easiest scenario for a costume department. Get the costume built, use it, get rid of it.

This picture is Merlitons from The Nutcracker in the early 1980′s.

This picture is Merlitons from The Nutcracker in 2005.

Note: The costumes are the same! How many times have they been reused?

Most companies, however, repeat productions or reuse costume pieces for other shows. In this case, the costumes go through a much longer process. You have the original design process, followed by:

1. Cleaning – dry cleaning and washing machine where possible
2. Storage – Costumes must be put away in plastic garment bags to protect them from weather and pests. They are then shipped to a warehouse where they will be (hopefully) hung from costume racks to await future use. Tutus are a different story. After cleaning, they are put into specially designed tutu bags and then very carefully stacked on a shelf so that the tutu won’t become bent or distorted.
3. Cleaning – when they are ready to be used again for a repeat production or a new show, the costumes are usually cleaned once more to assure that they are fresh for the new actor or dancer.
4. Fitting – yup, we go through the whole fitting – fixing – fitting – fixing process again!
5. Performance
6. Cleaning
7. Storage
8. Repeat!

In this fashion, costumes may be used over and over again down through the years. In California Ballet’s case, many of our Nutcracker costumes have undergone this process 40 times! Think about how hard that is on the costumes. If you have a favorite T-shirt, you know that after a few years of use, holes begin to appear. Little holes at first, and then eventually the very fibers of T-shirtness let go and you’re left with a pile of rags. Now imaging that your clothes are going through 30-second changes in the wings, being sewn
 and re-sewn, and re-sewn again to fit different people, getting sweated in, having hands grip them to toss you in the air, going through an athletic workout, getting bright lights shone on them, being washed and rewashed thoroughly to get rid of all sweat and any makeup stains (yup, we wear makeup onstage), shoved into a plastic bag, hung on a rack or stacked on a shelf in a warehouse where there will be dust, pests (no matter how hard to try to keep them away), weather, sunlight, and more!

Oh, and we haven’t even discussed pointe shoes! Some dancers will wear out a pair of pointe shoes in one performance! And there’s no way to repair them for reuse – you can only replace them!

Sounds pretty rough, doesn’t it? These costumes require a lot of TLC to keep them looking gorgeous onstage, and that requires a lot of time and money. Is it worth it? Well, the next time you’re at the ballet, take a look at the lead ballerina. See how gorgeous she is in her tutu and tiara, and then you tell us: Is it worth it?

Ballet is hard stuff. Hard on the sets and scenery, hard on the costumes, and hard on the body and the mind. Next time we’ll talk about the wear and tear of ballet on the dancer. In the meantime, get out there and make yourself a fundraising page on StayClassy. Ask your friends and family to help us keep our dancers in gorgeous costumes because, as you can tell, it’s hard work!

CLICK HERE to start your fundraising page!

So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and win that tablet!

Now, we know you may be wondering what California Ballet will be using these newly raised funds for. Sure, we’ve mentioned that we’ll be repairing wear and tear on old sets and costumes, but what does that mean?

Let’s take a look at our Nutcracker set and what it goes through in just one season. Ballet isn’t just tough on the body, it’s tough on everything!

The image on the top is from 1974, the image on the bottom is from 2005. Note that the backdrop is the same one!

Now, our sets have been in use for a long, long, long, long, long . . . . well, you get the point. They’re old. Some pieces have been with us since the first Nutcracker way back in 1971! Sets are expensive to build, and repairs can be incredibly pricey, too. You see, each piece of scenery and every backdrop has a lot of people who work on them when they’re being created.

Here’s the (abbreviated) process of building a set, all the people involved are highlighted in green:

1. A set designer sits down with the director, producer, and often times the choreographer of a ballet to find out what exactly is wanted and needed. They then go about designing the sets. They will begin by creating little thumbnail sketches of all the set pieces. Then they will have to look at the schematics for the stage where the set will be used to make sure everything will fit. Next, they will create color renderings, or drawings of each set piece with measurements and instructions for construction.
2. The above process will likely be revisited as the designer has to submit their work to the director for approval. Tweaks will be made, heads will butt, and eventually a finished set design will appear.
3. Once the renderings are approved, the set designer goes on to build a three-dimensional model of the set. This will aid the production crew in further understanding the design.
4. The next person to step in is a Technical Director. He or she will look the specs given to him by the set designer, and begin to turn them into the real thing. They will order lumber, schedule labor, and oversee construction. 
5. Next, the production crew gets to turn the renderings into real set pieces and backdrops. These people are carpenters, painters, electricians, and welders, but more importantly they are engineers and artists. 
1. Each set piece has to be modular – easy to put together and easy to take apart. They must also be strong enough to be rolled onto stage, flown into the rafters, crammed onto trucks, walked and danced all over . . . the list goes on. 
2. Not only must they be durable and practical, but they must be beautiful! The next time you go to the ballet, take a look at the backdrop. REALLY take a look. You’ll see gorgeous renderings of scenery, forced perspective to rival the renaissance masters, chiaroscuro that plays miracles with good stage lighting, and more! It takes a true artist to do all of this on a 40 foot by 80 foot canvas!

With so many people involved, is it really so surprising that building and repairing sets can be so expensive. If California Ballet were to rebuild the Nutcracker set from the ground up, it could run the company a cool $1million to do it properly!

So what happens to the set once it’s built? What about the wear and tear?

To begin, any set that is reused by a company spends months, perhaps even years in storage. Even the best maintained warehouse has to contend with these problems:

• Dust
• Leaks
• Weather
• Mice, rats, insects
• Earthquakes
• Sunlight – it can fade sets

And that’s while just being stored! When a set is used, it has to be drudged out of the warehouse, loaded onto trucks, transported on the freeway with all those crazy drivers (none of our readers, of course!), and then loaded into the theater to be set up for the production.

What happens when a set it put together in the theater?

1. Each piece of hard set (that is, everything that is not made of soft fabric like backdrops) needs to be reassembled. Screws are driven into holes, hinges applied to doors, lighting and wiring attached to frames. These are things that may have been done and undone, as in the case of The Nutcracker over 40 times! Have you ever had to move and needed to pull apart and then reassemble a desk or cabinet? Remember cussing as you stripped a screw or its hole and the darn thing just spun about uselessly? Yeah, 40 years of that for our Nutcracker set.
2. Every backdrop, leg, and border must be hung from a batten (a piece of pipe that can be flown to the rafters) and a weight of some sort, usually a steel pipe or steel chain must be inserted into the drop’s base so that it doesn’t flop about flaccidly while in the air. The base of the drop is a stitched pocket. Ever put too much change in your purse and the seam ripped out? The same thing happens to backdrops.
3. Paint touchups must be made as necessary, sometimes set pieces need to be taped back together with duck tape. You’d be surprised how much duck tape is onstage for any given show, and you don’t even know it!

Then the show goes on!

• Back drops are raised and lowered from the rafters over and over again. Think about how much a 40′ x 80′ backdrop weighs! Now try raising it 60 feet in the air!
• Set pieces are rolled on and offstage over and over. Hey, we have to replace the tires on our cars every few years – same thing for 40 year old sets.
• Platforms that provide different levels of height on the stage get danced on for several performances. Next time you watch The Nutcracker, listen to how hard those Russian dancers hit the floor. Did you know that the floor they are dancing on is raised? It has to be built on top of the stage every year for The Nutcracker!
• Props are used and handled by dancers. Props are things like cups, flags, books, candles – anything that a dancer or actor can pick up and/or use. Have you seen Beauty and the Beast the musical? Remember the mug dance? How many times do you think they’ve had to replace those mugs? Dancers are hard on their props!

And when the show is over, everything that happened to the set while it was being built happens again – in reverse! Screws are taken out, hinges removed, wiring detached, backdrops folded up. Then everything goes back onto trucks, raced down the freeway, and stuffed (with care) into the warehouse where it has to endure dust, weather, and possible pests for at least another year!

So, the life of a set is a hard one. We’ve put pictures throughout this blog of our set pieces in various states of disarray. No matter how careful you are, or how hard you try to take care of them, they get beaten and broken as time goes by. That’s one of the many reasons we’re hosting our 45 in 45 fundraiser. The funds we raise will go towards repairing or replacing our beloved sets so that we can keep bringing you The Nutcracker that we’ve all come to know and love!

CLICK HERE to donate $45 or, better yet, start your own fundraiser page and get others to fork over the cash!

We’ll see you at the ballet!

So far in our 45 in 45 fundraiser, we’ve raised just shy of $1,000. It’s a start, but we’ve still got a long way to go! If you’re wondering what we’re raising money for, take a look at this Abridged history of California Ballet, and you’ll see the legacy and staying power of the 5th oldest ballet company in California!

We’ve done the long history thing for California Ballet, but we’re not fools. We sat in history class in high school, too! We know that there can be nothing worse than a long, drawn out treatise on the history of . . . well . . . anything. We don’t care if it’s the history of the United State, video games, or Santa Claus – no one likes to be lectured on it.

Still, we thought that as long as you are participating in our 45 in 45 fundraiser, you might want to know  a little about the wonderful company you’ve joined Team 45 for. So, here’s an abridged, and hopefully entertaining, history of California Ballet.

And we promise, it won’t take three hours to read.

Picture this: 1968 . . . civil rights was in full swing, Lyndon B. Johnson was president, and Americans were training to land on the moon for the first time! It was an exciting year, and it was also the year California Ballet Company was born. Gathering a small group of disparate dancers, Maxine Mahon sought to fill a void in San Diego, CA: the need for a professional ballet company. Together this small troupe of professional ballet dancers began a legacy that would endure for the next 45 years.

Enter the 1970′s: disco, bell bottoms, and 8-tracks (kids, go ask you parents what those are). The beginning of the 70′s was also the beginning of San Diego’s largest and longest running Nutcracker. 1971 was the first year California Ballet’s holiday extravaganza was performed, and the following year the production moved to it’s permanent home at the San Diego Civic Theatre. Other new ballets found their way onto the California Ballet stage: Coppelia, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Giselle to name a few. Plus, the ballet company moved to its permanent home neighborhood of Kearny Mesa in 1974.

The 1980′s were a decade of punk rock, mohawks, and tulle (and not just on tutus). They were also a decade of expansion for California Ballet. New ballets, new faces, and an ever-increasing budget were just part of these formative years. San Diego’s favorite ballerina stepped forward as California Ballet’s premiere dancer: Denise Dabrowski. In 1986, Denise and Director Maxine Mahon were just about to leave for a cultural exchange with Russia when Chernobyl went boom! Of course, their trip was cancelled. Not to worry, just three years later the Soviet exchange happened anyway, this time with Calvin Kitten (recently retired from the Joffrey Ballet) acting as California Ballet’s cultural ambassador. There were some exciting premieres in the 1980′s including Romeo & Juliet, The Legend of Josefa, and the California Heritage Project (which celebrates California history.)

When the 1990′s came about, people were wearing fanny packs and fluorescent, day-glo colors. The decade began with on a bitter-sweet note as CBC lost Calvin Kitten to the Joffrey Ballet. Yet, the ever-growing ballet company welcomed new dancers from abroad, including Ukrainian Vadim Solomakha (formerly of San Francisco Ballet). CBC also added a new line of ballets to its repertoire: a family series! The first in the series was Alice in Wonderland, followed the very next year by Snow White. Plus, in 1997 the company premiered its full-length . . . wait for it . . . Swan Lake! That’s right, and we’re performing that very same production this season!

Y2K came and went, and the world didn’t end like everyone thought it would. The ballet company continued to dance on into the 21st century. In a big change in 2000, the entire company and school picked up and moved . . . across the parking lot into a brand new, state of the art dance center. For the first time in 28 years, the company would have air conditioning in its rehearsal space! The first decade of the 21st century was also a very sad one as we lost many long-time California Ballet family members including artistic advisor (and world-renowned ballerina) Sonia Arova, dancer and choreographer Ricardo Peralta, board member and friend Karen Saltzman, our dearly beloved Principal Choreographer Charles Bennett (of Dracula, Romeo & Juliet, Alice in Wonderland fame), and San Diego’s first ballerina and mother of director Maxine Mahon, Flora Jennings-Small.

Now we’re into the second decade of the 21st century. We’re all looking around asking ourselves what happened to the flying cars The Jetsons promised us, the hovering skateboards Back to the Future promised us, and the jetpacks Flash Gordon promised us. Yet California Ballet continues to forge a future for classical dance. Every year we debut new works at our annual Choreographer’s Concert, we preserve classics for future generations by mounting and remounting timeless ballets, we strive to educate our youth in a nation that turns it back on arts education more and more with each passing year. 45 years is a long time for a ballet company to pursue its mission of artistic excellence. We’ve only gotten this far because of you, our friends, followers, patrons, supporters, and family.

Become a part of writing California Ballet’s next 45 years of history by increasing support for the ballet. Go to our StayClassy.org fundraising page and donate $45. Better yet, save a few bucks and start your own fundraiser – get your friends and families to become supporters of the ballet. We’ve been around 45 years because of you, and we’ll need you to make it another 45!

45 in 45 – Celebrate 45 years of excellence in dance, become a member of Team 45!

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Your information stays with California Ballet, and we don’t share!

Click the link below to donate $45 or start your own Team 45 fundraising page!

www.stayclassy.org/45in45

and we need your help to do it.

California Ballet Company is turning 45! Can you believe it? We have special needs this year and in order to make our 45th Sapphire Anniversary Season a success we’re putting together a special team to help us meet those needs: Team 45! How do you join? It’s simple. Go to our StayClassy.org page by CLICKING HERE and do one of the following:

The easiest way is to donate $45.

For the cost of a few coffees or one dinner out, you become a part of Team 45. You will help California Ballet refurbish our Nutcracker sets, set money aside to hire an orchestra for Swan Lake in May 2013, buy pointe shoes for our ballerinas, and more! CLICK HERE to donate.

But, you don’t have to donate to become a teammate.

You can also create your own fundraising page and get your friends, family, and online community to join Team 45. Plus, there’s an added perk when you do:

The teammate who gets the most friends to donate on their fundraising page will

win a tablet computer!

If everyone donated $45, it would only take 1,000 people to reach our goal! That’s not very many when you think about it. CLICK HERE to create your own fundraising page! Teammates will receive:

• A special California Ballet Team 45 awareness ribbon (when a mailing address is provided)
• Access to the VIP lounge at select California Ballet performances when you wear your ribbon
• Your name in the California Ballet yearbook and programs
• The opportunity to sign the back of a newly refurbished Nutcraker set piece and have your name onstage for the next 45 years!

The more successful our fundraiser, the more exiting our 45th season will be. So get your friends to become teammates and help us celebrate 45 in style!