In the mid-1800’s Victor Hugo said, “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.” He could have been referring to the origins of Regional Dance in America.
By the end of World War II, ballet in the United States was a sparse meal compared to the feast it is today. In the mid 1950’s ballet teachers, both former performers and those who had never graced a stage, struggled to restart programs and to keep existing schools and companies alive. At that time 70% of ballet’s audience resided in New York City. These insightful teachers of the 1950’s wanted to move beyond transplanted European ballet, available only to a limited number of aficionados in major city centers. They wanted to establish teaching standards, performing venues, and a significantly larger audience for the art form they loved. In order to do so they reached out to one another, and the regional ballet movement was born. Thus, what became RDA began in Atlanta with a woman named Dorothy Alexander.
In 1956 Dorothy Alexander of the Atlanta Ballet proposed that ballet companies in and around the South get together and have a Festival to establish standards and showcase local talent. Anatole Chujoy, editor of Dance News and great supporter of the arts, and Doris Hering, a writer and critic on the staff of Dance Magazine, helped Alexander plan her festival and reported favorably on its impact. This first Regional Festival was also attended by Alexi Ramov, the artistic director of the Scranton Ballet. He liked what he saw in Atlanta. He liked it very much. He carried the seed of Ms. Alexander’s idea home to Pennsylvania, where he and Barbara Weisberger, artistic director of the Wilkes-Barre Ballet Theater, planted it, nurtured it, and watched it flower with the first Northeast Festival.
In May of 1959 the Scranton Ballet and Wilkes-Barre Ballet Theater co-hosted the first Regional Ballet Festival in the Northeast. P.W. Manchester served as festival adjudicator. 18 to 20 companies from across the northeast attended. Honored guest artists were the Prima Ballerina Alexandra Danilova and Ted Shawn, one of the founders of Modern Dance. Even “Mr. Capezio” himself, Ben Sommers, attended, eager to capitalize on a potential business opportunity.
In 1960 Balanchine himself attended the second NE Regional Ballet Festival in Erie, PA. He was moved by the enthusiasm of the twenty companies in attendance and by the interest in ballet generated by the Festival itself. In every venue throughout the festival, from cocktail parties and teaching seminars to a gala closing banquet, he rallied the artistic directors, young dancers and their families, and community supporters, saying, “Look at us! We are powerful. We must bring ballet to every town in this country. If Hoffa can do it, so can we!”
In 1961 Lincoln Kirstein, who first brought Balanchine to this country and founded the School of American Ballet, attended the third NE Regional Ballet Festival, this time in Dayton, Ohio. Though Kirstein clearly felt ballet belonged in the rarified atmosphere of New York City, he was curious to see what the regional movement was about. In that same year, Balanchine accompanied Diana Adams, the festival adjudicator, and spent his time viewing the companies in attendance both in class and in performance.
In the Summer of 1961 Josephine Schwarz took the lead in organizing the first Craft of Choreography Conference under the auspices of the Regional Ballet Festival Association NE, at Keystone Junior College (now Keystone College) just outside Scranton, PA. Ms. Schwarz had danced professionally with the Humphrey-Weidman Company, a distinguished modern company. Later in her own school she introduced a curriculum which was a fusion of ballet and modern dance. She brought a major asset of modern dance to the Choreography Conference: that is, an emphasis on the making of dance. Up to this time most dance faculty had primarily been staging and adapting existing works. The Choreography Conference grew out of a need for more original choreography.
Regional ballet is comprised of non-professional companies of young dancers centered around strong teachers. The goals of the regional movement were to lift teaching standards, increase the number of performing opportunities available to young dancers, and build interest in, and an audience for, ballet across the United States. As the regional movement grew, the number of dancers who were capable of transitioning to professional status also increased. So, as a natural progression, some directors turned their regional companies into professional companies; others moved to geographic areas better equipped to support the needs of a professional company. One such director was Barbara Weisberger.
In 1962, Weisberger, recognizing that the Wilkes-Barre community was not large enough to support a professional company, moved to Philadelphia and incorporated the School of the Pennsylvania Ballet. At approximately the same time Virginia Williams turned her New England Civic Ballet into the Boston Ballet.
As Schwarz, Weisberger, Ramov, Williams, and their colleagues worked to create a supportive network through which they advanced the cause of regional ballet, they had the blessings of such eminents as Kirstein and Balanchine and the guidance of Chujoy and Hering. Luckily, too, W. McNeil Lowry, Vice President of the Ford Foundation was waiting in the wings. All these pioneers hoped that the audience they built in the regional movement would transfer to the professional world.
In a recent article entitled “Remembrances of Lincoln Kirstein,” written to commemorate the centennial celebration of his birthday, Barbara Weisberger writes about the explosion of dance in the 1960’s: “…Dance activity, in all its forms and audiences for dance were on the ascendance. The path was open, and for those interested in teaching and building companies, the moment was there to be grabbed: if one was crazy enough, and passionate enough, and willing (at least for a long while) to give up an orderly personal life and receive little, if any, remuneration.”
The seeds of indigenous American ballet were planted in the 1930’s by the Littlefield Sisters in Philadelphia, the Christensen Brothers in Utah and California, and Balanchine himself in New York City. The regional movement begun in the 1950’s promoted the growth of these seeds. The convergence of these two factors not only enriched the world of regional ballet but also decentralized and expanded the world of professional ballet. Today 70% of ballet’s audience, which is estimated to exceed 20 million people, is located outside New York City.
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