For a time, American Ballet Theatre faced the unthinkable: extinction.
At the beginning of the 1990s, bereft of superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov and saddled with a large debt, this prestigious company appeared to be mired in quicksand made up of its own peculiar woes and the multiple whammies hitting arts organizations everywhere: rising costs and dwindling income.
While it may be too soon to talk of miracle makeovers, things are looking up, and ABT officials are breathing deep sighs of relief for the first time in years. Last season netted the company a $1.5 million surplus, enabling it to chip away at its debt, now down to $3 million from a high of $5 million.
ABT’s spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House set new records in box office and attendance, boasting a 10 percent increase over the previous year. Bookings are up, and so is fundraising–chairman Peter T. Joseph recently pledged $5 million over the next four years if ABT can raise twice as much on its own. (The company already has raised $4 million of the required $10.)
A great deal of the credit is going to a 42-year-old spitfire named Michael Kaiser, who took over as executive director a year ago and who is earning the nickname “turnaround king” in New York dance circles. Before ABT, he worked with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in a period that saw that troupe reclaim its financial footing; his impressive resume includes work with the State Ballet of Missouri, the Pierpont Morgan Library and even a stint helping Nelson Mandela set up a South African arts council. While running his own consulting firm, he advised everyone from the Jewish Museum in New York City to General Motors.
In conversation, he’s an infectious ballet booster and a fountain of fresh ideas. He is helping the company break with tradition. For years ABT toured in full, 125-member force or not at all. When there were no bookings the dancers stayed home, often on payroll and a drag on the company’s budget. As costs rose, touring offers declined.
Kaiser and artistic director Kevin McKenzie helped initiate a new program this year enabling smaller, 40-member contingents of the troupe to play repertory programs in smaller venues throughout the country. One such subset plays Friday through Aug. 18 at the Arts Center at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, the troupe’s only scheduled 1996 appearances in our area.
To many fans of the troupe, this might seem like a comedown. We’re used to the full company, playing one or two weeks, mixing lavish full-length ballets in with the repertory–even though costs have diminished the frequency and length of such visits in recent years. But Kaiser quickly emphasizes that while the number of dancers may be smaller, the quality remains topnotch.
“As a full company, we’re very expensive,” he says. “But there are a lot of works in repertory that don’t require the full contingent or as much scenery.” The troupe’s repertoire at the College of DuPage will include three 20th Century works: the late Clark Tippet’s “S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A.,” James Kudelka’s “Cruel World” (both Chicago area premieres”) and Antony Tudor’s modern classic, “The Leaves Are Fading.”
The principal dancers scheduled include many of ABT’s top stars, including Paloma Herrera, Angel Corella, Gil Boggs, Julie Kent, Christine Dunham, Robert Hill, Guillaume Graffin and Keith Roberts.
Full company engagements in 1996 include Orange County, Washington, D.C., Vienna, Japan, Mexico City, Brazil and Korea, as well as last spring’s acclaimed stay at the Met, where the new production of “Cinderella” and other full-length classics earned ABT some of its best New York notices in years.
Smaller bookings have included dates in Boston, Minneapolis, Lincoln, Neb., and even nearby Benton Harbor, Mich.
There’s more than fees involved. Psychologically, the activity and exposure build artistic momentum. “Dancers are better when they’re performing,” Kaiser says. “And we’re trying to build a national and international presence.”
Kaiser credits his predecessor, Gary Dunning, who left a year ago, for beginning the turnaround that led to budgetary surpluses in 1993 and 1994. Everyone credits artistic director McKenzie for boosting and honing the troupe’s artistic ranks, adding important new men–including Corella, Jose Manuel Carreno and Vladimir Malakhov–and continuing to boost the careers of women he inherited from the days of Baryshnikov–Kent, Amanda McKerrow and Susan Jaffe among them.
In his year as administrative head, meanwhile, Kaiser brought ’90s reality to ABT. He took TV advertising dollars and spent them elsewhere (“TV is the wrong marketing medium for dance”) and spent some of it on posters plastering phone kiosks and buses around town. Instead of the usual ballerina en pointe for the main engagement poster, he chose a sexy shot of Malakhov leaping in mid-air. “Women buy the majority of ballet tickets,” he says.
But he talks up ABT as much as he talks budget cuts and savings. “What happens to arts organizations in trouble is that they focus exclusively on the bad things. That becomes the only topic of conversation with the press, donors and within the organization. You soon lose the interest of the public, your board and even your staff and dancers that way.”
Good art, in Kaiser’s philosophy, always comes first. “You don’t turn around an organization with bad art,” he says. Risk and new work have not been abandoned. Next season the company will unveil a new full-length, “Othello,” to be choreographed by onetime Chicagoan Lar Lubovitch to music by Elliot Goldenthal, who scored the movie “A Time to Kill.”
“One of the mistakes troupes in trouble make is cutting back on marketing and new works,” he says. “They’re easy to cut because they’re discretionary. But they are the two most important things that allow an organization to thrive.”
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THE FACTS
American Ballet Theatre
What: Performing “S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A.,” “Cruel World” and ” The Leaves Are Fading”
When: Friday through Aug. 18
Where: College of Dupage Arts Center, 22nd Street and Lambert Road, Glen Ellyn
Tickets: $55
Call: 630-942-4000
