Your inaugural season, “Roots and
Wings,” is nearing completion. What
were you hoping to achieve during your
first season, and did you achieve it?
Coming in after 30 years of [co-artistic
directors] Ron Cunningham and Carinne
Binda, it is very important for me to honor
that lineage. … We did [Cunningham’s]
“Incident at Blackbriar,” in our first series
at The Sofia theater, “Telling Stories.” To
have him back in the studio and with the
dancers and to watch him coach, that was
all fantastic. Honor the lineage — that’s
the roots aspect. But ... where else can we
go? How can I subvert people’s expecta-
tions of what they’re going to see when
they come to a Sacramento Ballet perfor-
mance? Also in “Telling Stories,” we did
the ballet “Instructions,” which is based
on a Neil Gaiman poem. He’s more asso-
ciated with contemporary mythology and
graphic novels than ballet. In that piece, I
have a dancer who is live miked. He starts
as the narrator of the poem and ends up
locked inside the poem and becomes the
protagonist of the story. It’s also got live
music — there’s a cellist onstage.
I think we are accomplishing the goals
of the season, artistically, also as an orga-
nization. We’ve had a bit of turmoil in our
history, so it’s also about rebuilding the
community that likes us and wants to in-
vest in us and support these fantastic art-
ists. That’s just going to take time. I think
a lot of people are waiting to see what the
ballet means now under my leadership,
and I’m just hoping they’ll fall in love.
How much does the ballet’s annual
budget of $2.9 million figure into your
artistic decisions?
If you look into my office, you’re going to
see a wall full of different [Post-it] notes
that are my dream ballets [and] the peo-
ple I want to commission to ... work with
our dancers. It’s me looking at the time-
line for when is this company going to be
ready to do “Swan Lake” again? When is
the right time for these things? If we can’t
afford to do a ballet it doesn’t matter how
great it is, we have to wait until we can.
The same thing goes artistically. When
we have the right dancers to do the right
ballet, that matters. We’re not only plan-
ning next season. We’re looking at, OK, in
three years this artist is going to be ready
to do that ballet; can I get us that ballet
in three years?
I think for some people
ballet feels like you need a
secret handshake to understand
it. … So if you can offer the access
points, sometimes you see the
lightbulb go off.”
Is $2.9 million a decent budget for a
ballet?
We’re a little on the smaller side, but we
are hoping to grow in a sustainable way.
… Historically, this company has not been
great in terms of a solid living wage for their
artists and pay equity, and these are two
things that are very important to me. The
financial reality is we can’t fix that over-
night, but that is a long-term goal to really
address both of those issues, and we are
working on it.
[In terms of equity], back in 2012, I
was being interviewed by the San Fran-
cisco Chronicle because a project I was
doing in San Francisco had all women
choreographers. I said there was a lack of
women in leadership positions in ballet.
This reviewer challenged me. I said to him
in 19 years as a professional dancer on a
mainstage, I danced one piece by a wom-
an. … Since then, the field is changing, the
conversation is changing. I do believe it
has reached a tipping point, and I think
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