… and Ashley Bouder is helping.
Back in 1972, Ian Horvath and Dennis Nahat began putting together what turned out to be a pretty formidable Cleveland Ballet that had its inaugural performance four years later. At that time there was a lot of dance activity in Ohio. The Cincinnati Ballet wore the state crown but Cleveland, Dayton, Akron, and Canton were all percolating professional plies. Columbus with its dominant Ohio State University was trying to go the modern dance route with college programs that led students nowhere. But Ohio was definitely in the national dance game from all corners of the field.
In the 1980s, the Cleveland Ballet followed the path of the Cincinnati/New Orleans Ballet and joined forces with San Jose to create a time-share company. When performing in Cleveland, the group was known as the Cleveland San Jose Ballet. When performing in San Jose, the company was known as the San Jose Cleveland Ballet. Ultimately in the year 2000, the company decamped from Cleveland altogether.
Cleveland has come a long way since the 1960s and '70s when the Cuyahoga River famously burned and humiliated the city and country into cleaning up its air and waterways.
Cleveland then (click photo to enlarge – viewer discretion advised):
Cleveland now:
The city is the seat of the most populous county in Ohio and as of 2012 could boast about having 10 out of the top 25 richest school districts in the state. The city's Cleveland Orchestra is known as one of the Big Five national orchestras along with those of New York, Philadephia, Boston, and Chicago. And of course, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum sits on the banks of Lake Erie. There is money and culture in Cleveland, and at some point down the pike, it should have its own professional ballet company again.
The community has banded together its resources to form Ballet in Cleveland, a non-profit organization that has decided that the most reasonable goal is not to push forward with building another ballet company, but rather, to revitalize the presence of ballet in the city by being a presenter of great ballet and fostering ballet education with master classes. The organization's view is that this is a sustainable endeavor that will provide Cleveland residents and beyond with the best that ballet has to offer. Citing a history of mismanagement by area professional ballet companies in the past, Ballet in Cleveland is committed to "transparent and accurate financial accounting that may be reviewed at anytime."
In February Ballet in Cleveland will have its first fund-raising gala to raise money for education and performances. Ballet Le Reve will perform as will artists from Ballet West: Allison DeBona, Rex Tilton and Christopher Ruud.
In October of 2014 Ballet in Cleveland will present New York City Ballet's Ashley Bouder's program of an evening of Balanchine works with dancers from NYCB. The performance at PlayhouseSquare, which is expected to be a red-carpet event, will include a new ballet by Joshua Beamish, a recent participant in the New York Choreographic Institute's program and the director of MOVE: the company, a contemporary dance company based in Vancouver BC.
This is all great news and sounds somewhat like what is going on in Indianapolis these days where the Indianapolis City Ballet is successfully proceeding much the same way but with an eye on building enough community interest in classical ballet that eventually Indianapolis will demand its own company. Allegra Kent will be teaching master classes for ICB on February 23rd, and Patrick Armand, Tiler Peck, Valentina Kozlova, Irina Dvorovenko, Maxim Beloserkovsy, and Susan Jaffe will follow in weeks to come.