TALES OF TWO CITIES JOINT BALLET VENTURES INCREASE

While the Joffrey Ballet’s bicoastal arrangement is the most visible example of two cities sharing sponsorship of a dance troupe, a growing number of companies have now found a second home.

Four years ago, at about the same time as the Joffrey became the resident dance company of the Los Angeles Music Center, Cincinnati Ballet also initiated a second-city arrangement with New Orleans. Soon afterward, the Cleveland Ballet set its sights on San Jose.

By adding on a second city in which they maintain a regular presence--and often adapting their names accordingly--such companies hope to gain added performance opportunities for their dancers as well as new sources of contributed and earned income.

Don Moore, executive director of Dance U.S.A., a service organization for managers of dance companies, calls this concept of company-sharing “one of, if not the , most important institutional innovations in the nonprofit arts in the last 20 years.” It has “simply never been tried to this extent,” he adds.

A variation on the pattern was announced at the end of January, when the 24-year-old Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Ballet and 18-year-old Milwaukee Ballet established a joint venture that will get under way this summer.

Under this new plan, one company of 42 dancers will be shared, as will all artistic aspects of the operation. However, the two parent companies will remain legally and financially separate, maintaining separate orchestras, administrative staffs and schools.

Robert Weiss, former New York City Ballet principal dancer and artistic director of Pennsylvania Ballet since 1982, will assume artistic direction of the shared company and will select dancers from the two existing troupes.

Because it involved two successful resident companies, the Pennsylvania-Milwaukee venture is very different from previously established two-city arrangements, but it grew out of a similar need.

Both companies had been seeking a way to afford much-needed additional weeks of employment for their dancers. “We were in a situation where we could only offer 29 or 30 work weeks, which just isn’t enough,” says Mary Ladish, Milwaukee Ballet executive director.

“It became increasingly clear that with a 30-week contract, we were never going to attract and keep the best dancers,” observes Weiss, who last year saw two prize dancers leave for American Ballet Theatre and another go to Pacific Northwest Ballet.

“Within the last couple of years, the company undertook a long-range plan, and concluded that if we were to continue growing in quality, it would be necessary to establish some kind of relationship with another city,” states Don McPhail, Pennsylvania Ballet vice president and general manager, who spent time investigating possible locations for the more familiar type of second-city plan before the final joint venture was proposed.

Under the new arrangement, the dancers will be employed for a minimum of 45 weeks, including 20 performing weeks: nine in Philadelphia, eight in Milwaukee, and three during which separate “Nutcracker” productions will be performed simultaneously in each city by a divided company augmented by school personnel.

The Cincinnati-New Orleans co-venture, now in its fourth season, came about when the Cincinnati Ballet’s administrators began seeking a second home base after the company’s previously extensive touring schedule had shrunk due to prohibitive costs.

“A group in New Orleans wanted a professional ballet company for their city, and preferred to acquire an already-established troupe with a solid reputation rather than spend years building from scratch,” explains company manager Patricia Caporale.

She recalls early New Orleans newspaper articles that labeled what was perceived as the invading force from Cincinnati as “the carpetbagger ballet company,” but finds that the troupe--known as the New Orleans City Ballet when it performs there--is now warmly accepted by locals as their own.

Indeed, it could be seen as a sign of the supposedly “second” city’s strong voice that a recent power struggle over the choice of a new artistic director resulted in the selection of the New Orleans’ board’s candidate: former Ballet Theatre principal Ivan Nagy.

The 10-year-old Cleveland Ballet (now known as the San Jose Cleveland Ballet when it performs in its second home) sought a two-city arrangement as a way of implementing long-range development plans. “We realized that (otherwise) we were not going to be able to continue to grow at the pace we had been growing in our community,” says Andrew Bales, company president.

“Unfortunately, the cost of major ballet companies is too great to pay the bills with earned revenue. So you need to go into a community and generate both earned and contributed income.”

Touring cannot solve such problems, Bales points out, because it generates only earned, not contributed income. Only by establishing solid ties with a location, as his company is now doing in San Jose can a real base of support come to exist.

A staff of six runs the San Jose end of the joint operation, with a budget of $2 million for the 1987-88 season, while the Cleveland budget is about $5.5 million. A board in each city makes decisions concerning the performances in that city.

Bales’ cultivation of his second base of support paid off handsomely this year, when a San Jose donor--Apple Computer founder Steve Wozniak--covered half the cost of the company’s new $540,000 “Swan Lake” production, which completes a San Jose run today following two highly successful weeks in Cleveland.

“We would not have done this ballet this year had we not had the co-venture,” Bales notes. “We did not have the resources left in Cleveland, because we had produced a full-length ballet the year before.”

Currently, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, State Ballet of Missouri, Washington Ballet, Dan Wagoner and Dancers, Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Pilobolus Dance Theatre also have second-home situations. These ventures are still in their formative stages--the concept only dates back to 1983--but those involved in making them work speak approvingly of the results thus far, and feel confident that they are pioneers in what will become the way of the future.