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October 11, 2004
TT: Department of amplification
I write about Carolina Ballet with some regularity, but it occurred to me on the way back to New York that many of you might not be aware of how the company got started. To that end, here's part of a longer piece I wrote about Robert Weiss and his dancers five years ago for the New York Times. More than a few things have changed for the better since then (though not, alas, the constant struggle to make financial ends meet), but it's still quite a tale.* * *
RALEIGH, N.C. -- How long does it take to start a professional ballet company from scratch? Don't try this at home, but Robert Weiss, the founding artistic director of Carolina Ballet, did it in just under two years. He answered an ad published in Dance Magazine in November of 1996; 23 months later, his new company, 21 dancers strong, made its debut here, accompanied by the 67-piece North Carolina Symphony. The company opened its doors with a demanding all-Balanchine program, and since then it has presented works by such noted choreographers as William Forsythe, Lynne Taylor-Corbett and Christopher Wheeldon, as well as two new full-evening ballets by Mr. Weiss himself.
It takes a driven man to carry off a high-wire act like that, and Mr. Weiss, a New York City Ballet alumnus known to all as "Ricky," is nothing if not driven. A quarter-century ago, one dance writer compared him to Jimmy Porter, the seething young working-class anti-hero of John Osborne's play "Look Back in Anger"; at 50, he is still an in-your-face lapel-grabber, more polished but just as tough. He has had to be tough. After running Pennsylvania Ballet for eight years, Mr. Weiss ran afoul of the board and was fired in 1990. He then spent the next six years looking for a job. "I got a raw deal, and I had a very hard time," he says. "I sent out resumes and auditioned for every post that opened up--there were 13 of them. Sometimes I'd come in second, but never first."
You'd think a ballet company situated well below the Mason-Dixon line would have preferred someone a bit more genteel. But the Old South has changed, and though board chairman J. Ward Purrington, a Raleigh native, has a magnolia-sweet accent that any Hollywood casting director would covet, he is also a no-nonsense lawyer who speaks of Carolina Ballet as if it were a new Internet company: "What this is, is a venture start-up. You have to be lean and agile, and very, very good, and you have to grow as fast as you can."...
After an abortive attempt to use a local dance school as the basis for a professional troupe, Mr. Purrington realized that he would have to build from the ground up, so he advertised for an artistic director; he received 98 applications, all but one consisting of fulsome cover letters and inch-thick resumes. The exception was Mr. Weiss, who sent a four-sentence letter and a one-page vita. "I'd had it up to there with looking for a job," he says. "What did I know about North Carolina? And who was Ward Purrington, anyway?" But his bluntness impressed Mr. Purrington, and the two men started talking. Four months later, Mr. Weiss finally came in first.
"Ward said he wanted to start a ballet company on the highest level," Mr. Weiss recalls. "I told him that every little city in America has a little company with a million-dollar budget, and they're all trying to pander to what they think the public wants. You can't do that if you want to do something real. You have to go for quality and seriousness, right from the start--good dancers, good ballets, good décor--and that takes money. A million and a half is the least you can start with. So I said we'd have to spend a year and a half raising money, and community awareness, before I could even think of hiring dancers or giving a performance."
According to ballet mistress Debra Austin, who danced with Mr. Weiss at City Ballet and for him at Pennsylvania Ballet, that was exactly what happened: "Ricky insisted that they raise enough money up front to pay the dancers for a full year, so that it wouldn't be a fly-by-night thing. We actually had subscribers before anyone had seen a single dancer on stage!"
Ms. Austin is not exaggerating: Carolina Ballet sold 2,600 subscriptions and raised $1.2 million in advance of its inaugural season. While Mr. Purrington and the board were busy shaking down local contributors, Mr. Weiss was off looking for talented dancers willing to take a chance and move to Raleigh. One is part of the family--Melissa Podcasy, Mr. Weiss' wife, who is the company's striking prima ballerina. Some, including Ms. Austin and her husband, ballet master Marin Boieru, had previously worked with him in Philadelphia; others were drawn by the opportunity to be present at the creation of a new company....
Mr. Weiss clearly knows how to get the best out of his dancers: Carolina Ballet is already a characterful, well-disciplined and uncommonly exciting company. All these traits are displayed in his taut, compact staging of Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet," whose speed and dramatic clarity are reminiscent of George Balanchine's version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Nobody stands around and strikes poses in this fast-moving "Romeo," which is performed on a simple but handsome set designed by Thomas Mauney and built for the laughably low cost of $22,000. Like Balanchine, Mr. Weiss has chosen to tell Shakespeare's story through lively dancing; the fight scenes, choreographed by Jeff A.R. Jones, a specialist in stage combat, are full of loud and believable swordplay; and the pas de deux swell with intense emotion. The result is a "Romeo" that can easily stand up to comparison with any of the better-known ballet versions.
Midway through Carolina Ballet's second season, Mr. Weiss appears to have found the seasonal cash cow without which no regional ballet company can hope to pay its bills--his staged version of Handel's "Messiah" drew enthusiastic crowds this December--and his "Romeo" was recently taped for broadcast by UNC-TV, North Carolina's public television network. The company has hired five additional dancers and will be working 36 weeks this year (up four from last season) on a $2.5 million budget. Even at this early stage, comparisons with Edward Villella's launch of Miami City Ballet in 1986, though still premature, are starting to sound increasingly plausible. "Ricky has made me realize," says Mr. Purrington, "that we really can have a company of national significance, right here in Raleigh."
For that to happen, of course, the citizens of North Carolina must first be persuaded that Carolina Ballet is worth supporting. "Ward tells people that whether you like it or not, ballet is important for the community--but if you give it a try, you just might like it," says Mr. Weiss. You don't have to do much eavesdropping at intermission to learn that a great many people in and around Raleigh are finding that they like it a lot. One man who came to "Romeo" announced with lip-smacking gusto, "This sure beats all that wherefore-art-thou stuff!" Told of the remark, Mr. Weiss laughed loudly and said, "A few more like that guy and we're home free."
Posted October 11, 2004 12:04 PM
