In David Parsons` ”Caught,” thanks to the magic of a remote-controlled strobe light, a young Eliot Feld Ballet dancer sailed across the Goodman Theatre stage, appearing, through alternating flashes of illumination and darkness, to be suspended in literal flight.
Dance is all about defying gravity and, to some extent, logic. For the last four years, the Merrill Lynch & Co. dance series lustrously defied both, bringing a dozen or so of the finer, smaller, too-often-ignored dance jewels to add gleam to the arts scene here. Well-showcased in the Goodman`s wide, intimate auditorium, groups led by the likes of Feld, Merce Cunningham, Laura Dean and Lar Lubovitch settled in for longer-than-usual stays and broadened the dance calendar with a regularity and variety normally confined to the likes of dance-crazed Manhattan.
With the April 7-11 engagement of Garth Fagan`s Bucket Dance Theatre, the series–and the Merrill Lynch funding–expires. Dancers will fly across the Goodman stage no more–not, at least, for quite some time.
”We`re sad that we`re not able to continue,” says Roche Schulfer, the Goodman`s producing director who made the dance series something of a personal project. ”We`re going to look for some way to re-create a program like it in the future, probably in the season after this next one.”
The news, which remained unconfirmed until last week, was expected, but remains a bitter blow for many dance fans, all the more disappointing in light of other news. Officials with the Ravinia Festival announced recently that the annual week-long August visit by the San Francisco Ballet, supplemented last year by a week of Twyla Tharp`s company, won`t happen this year, either. Instead, only four dates have been set aside for dance at Ravinia, to be filled by Hubbard Street Dancers.
”It won`t affect ongoing presentation of ballet at Ravinia,” said Edward Gordon, chief operating officer of the Ravinia Festival Association.
”We hope the San Franciscans will return. But this is an economic decision that is the only realistic one at this time.”
None of this means a total void in the visiting dance scene. The Kirov Ballet is planning a May visit at the Civic Opera House. American Ballet Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet, even other groups such as the National Ballet of Canada will continue to come. But they represent the full-scale, large-house, well-established wing of the art form. With Merrill Lynch finished and Ravinia on hold, the medium-sized companies–and their sometimes more innovative and provocative programming–are back where they started in Chicago: nowhere.
Several of the better known companies, such as Pilobolus and the popular Hubbard Streeters, are assured alternate bookings here anyway. But most of the Goodman troupes otherwise don`t play the area, and that represents a setback, not just for audiences, but for local choreographers and performers, who benefit immeasurably from exposure to different styles, innovative approaches and artistic influences from outside the city. Until Merrill Lynch, even the nearby Ohio Ballet hadn`t been able to venture here.
The reasons for these new changes mainly stem not so much from a soft attendance market–a frequent charge about dance here–as from hard fiscal reality. Though single ticket sales sagged for some of the visiting Merrill Lynch troupes, the all-important subscription sales grew from 2,719 in the
`84-`85 season to 2,820 this season, better from the start than Goodman officials expected.
But visiting dance companies, whether well-attended or not, are tremendously expensive. Without revealing the figures, Schulfer describes the four-year Merrill Lynch total as ”one of the most generous corporate grants for a regional theater,” the second largest in Goodman history, outranked only by the Beatrice Foods Co. four-year grant of $400,000 presented in 1981. Michael Wall, vice president and manager of the special events department at Merrill Lynch, says that the four-year grant was similar to other
funding with a time limit, one of a number of short-range projects in the organization`s overall philanthropic scheme.
”We permanently fund the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Symphony,” he says.
”In addition, this year we funded the original mounting of the John Singer Sargent exhibit, making possible its visit to the Art Institute of Chicago. So we`re not decreasing our overall funding to your city, and we`d like to do what we can.
”But we also have constituencies in many cities, and sometimes to bring about a balance, money has to be moved from one place to another. If this were the best of all possible worlds, we could say yes to everybody. But we have to be equitable.”
Ravinia`s problem is slightly different. As a not-for-profit operation, the festival has no built-in prejudice against events that don`t completely pay for themselves. But the festival`s overall revenues from last summer were affected by an unusual amount of bad weather. And dance events will never attract the huge numbers of the purely musical events.
Lawn patrons are scarce at ballet, and, because of a scrupulous policy toward limited-view seating, the Ravinia pavilion capacity is, for all practical purposes, reduced from 3,500 to 2,300 for dance events.
”When you take into account the company`s fee, the orchestral fees and the stage labor costs, you have a pretty sizeable nut,” says Gordon.
”We felt we could live with a one-year pass. Who knows? Maybe next year we can be heavy on dance.”
Goodman officials plan to continue working to replace the Merrill Lynch funding. The high price tag–and Merrill Lynch`s eleventh-hour wait to give the final no–make the search a tough one. (Even though Merrill Lynch could have been counted on to drop the series on schedule, Schulfer hesitated, out of deference to a generous donor, to actively pursue other sources until final word came that the series was dead. Wall said Merrill Lynch is only finalizing its funding because the donor program is on a calendar year.)
Robert Falls, the Goodman`s artistic director, envisions the proposed
”Discovery Series” replacement as slightly different, one that will include both dance and small theater troupes, leaning on organizations with a contemporary edge, such as Mabou Mines and Meredith Monk, filling another area void.
But for the time being, established medium-size dance companies, from the classical San Franciscans to the ever-vibrant Merce Cunningham, are simply left out in the cold.
