Art Chowder January | February, Issue 19 | Page 41

A
ponte’s tendency to lose his
temper never went away. His own
explanation appeared in a 1988
interview: artistic temperament.
“People don’t understand … If I yell
or scream, or get angry, it’s all for the
cause … when things around me are
not professional, that I cannot take …
Whoever is responsible has got to be
put in place.” 4 He was not altogether
unaware of his effect on people. “I’m
very intense and I always expect
people to have the same intensity I do.
Sometimes they’re not ready to, and
I don’t always recognize that.” He
did have a fragile side. “I believe in
myself. I can’t let anyone break me
down. I’m very vulnerable.” Still, the hopefulness of Aponte’s first
season did not pan out financially.
Ticket sales and attendance sank
before ever-rising costs. The 1988-
89 season’s ambitious $400,000
budget had to be cut by 25 percent.
The season was cut from 28 to 22
weeks. Salaries were cut. Touring
was cut. Sadly, Aponte’s personal
foibles made him a cheap target for a
shortsighted press. An op-ed cartoon
in November 1988 caricatured
Aponte soaring above a worshiping
audience, with a sign on the stage:
“Chris Aponte in The Ballet Swan
Song of Spokane.” The point was
hard to miss: Aponte alone was to
blame. Or was he?
Spokane’s newspapers faithfully
followed the ups and downs of its
only ballet company. Aponte was
an experimental and unseasoned
choreographer finding his way between
influences from classical ballet and
modern dance. Unsurprisingly, critics
of varying qualifications (or even
lack thereof) offered mixed reviews.
“Aponte substitutes sex for dance
in ballet version of ‘Rocky Horror’”
said one review of his 1988 world
premiere of Lady Macbeth. One
audience member I spoke with called
it “terrible.” A member of the company
agreed but said they all thought it
was funny. Both concurred, though,
that Aponte’s Eau de Köln, set to the
music of Keith Jarrett, was majestic
and beautiful. His Suite Sixties – Nam,
built upon music from the Vietnam
War period, from Simon and Garfunkel
and the Beatles to Marvin Gay and
Patsy Cline, sought to evoke the lives
of twelve Americans from different
parts of the country. A Seattle reviewer
thought it more “tableau vivant” than
dance and said it needed more work,
but the audience gave it a standing
ovation. By the summer of 1989 Spokane
Ballet was so far behind fiscally
that the advertised 1989-90 season
was canceled. Dancers with signed
contracts were suddenly out of a job,
including the new ones who had just
moved here. The board later held
a public forum, attended by forty-
five dance supporters. Editorials
and letters to the editor followed.
Blame was diverse: turf wars among
the dance schools, pricey tickets,
and a shortsighted board. Aponte’s
personality and choreographic style
were thought to have contributed
to the failure but were by no means
prime causes. The largest was lack
of money and, as former board
president Robert Herold put it, “The
real question is whether the town
will support professional dance, and I
think that’s an open question.”
Another question comes to mind.
How did the board come to put
dancers under contract, with no clear
idea of how they were going to be
paid, and wait till the last possible
minute to inform them that the ship
had sunk?
Aponte Arrives Photos from the flier announcing
Spokane Ballet’s 1986-87 season
All photos: Don Hamilton
After his two-year contract expired
Aponte decided not to apply for renewal
and formed a new group. Its October 8,
1989 performance at the newly restored
Metropolitan Performing Arts Center
(now the Bing Crosby Theater) received
the glowing review, “Aponte & Company
evokes ecstasy, tears.” According to
one report the new company made three
performances before Aponte left for Los
Angeles to successfully perform the
central role in The Phantom of the Opera.
Apart from small roles in a few movies
in the ‘90s, he seemed to have faded
from view —until I looked him up on
Facebook. There I found a different man
than I had imagined.
January | February 2019
41