A Big Leap

Two years ago, founders of the Channel Islands Ballet decided that Ventura County was ready for a professional ballet troupe.

This week, the dancers arrive--to a sparkling refurbished studio on the planned Cal State Channel Islands campus, and an expanded dance season.

For the first time since its inception 21 years ago, the company will have its own studio and a corps of full-time professional dancers on site.

“I think the board is energized, because you can see it happening--the direction of the company,” board President Suzanne Drace said. “It’s very catching.”

The nonprofit ballet company, which has produced “The Nutcracker” locally for two decades, enlisted about 50 community volunteers to spend the first half of this year and about $200,000 renovating the nearly 4,000-square-foot studio and office space.

A full-time executive director started earlier this month, and today, four dancers from the Wisconsin Ballet and four local ballerinas-in-training begin practicing their plies and arabesques in the bright and spacious studio.

In the past, the company’s offices were housed in a small Ventura storefront, and space to practice and rehearse was rented from various dance schools around the county.

“Now that we have accomplished finding a space for the company, it’s very easy to see the vision and the dream,” said Kathy Nishimori, a board member and past president.

Ballet company leaders struck a deal with university officials last year. They get to use the space for two years in exchange for fixing up the building, said George Dutra, associate vice president for facilities.

Barbara Thorpe, associate academic vice president, said the university hopes to offer programs in its own performing arts department, but that may not happen for several years.

“We see this as a terrific way to jump-start our commitment to the performing arts, both here at the campus and in the larger community,” she said. “With the Channel Islands Ballet Company, there is a future relationship in mind.”

She said she appreciates the work that already has been done.

“They have just transformed that space,” she said.

From 1934 to 1997, the building was a dining hall and life skills center--where art, music and dance activities took place--for patients at Camarillo State Hospital. The small office where new Executive Director Dana Parker sits housed a large kiln for ceramics.

When volunteers arrived in January, the entire space was stuffed with old office furniture and the high, arched ceilings were hidden by a flat, dropped ceiling. Community organizations donated money and volunteer time to get the room fit for dance rehearsals, which began Sept. 9, Drace said. One of the largest gifts was $5,800, used for flooring, from the Martin V. and Martha K. Smith Foundation.

The move to the campus site sprang from the board of directors’ decision two years ago to change from a mostly youth-oriented dance troupe to one with professional dancers. The company parted ways with the owners of a local ballet school, who then formed their own Ventura County Ballet Company, which also produces “The Nutcracker” each season.

Drace said her company has seen a great benefit to having dancers who are already professionals performing and interacting in the community.

“The response in the community to our first professional season was overwhelming,” she said.

This season, which starts in October with “Alice in Wonderland,” will include two performances of “The Nutcracker” in December and a March production of “Peter and the Wolf”--part of the company’s Arts for Youth program, said Yves de Bouteiller, the ballet’s artistic director. The company will perform at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, Ventura College and the Oxnard Performing Arts Center.

Started in 1990, the Arts for Youth program includes a trainee program for young dancers, special theater performances for low-income and underprivileged kids and in-classroom learning programs to integrate dance into school curriculum.

De Bouteiller said the ultimate goal is for the company to become a traveling troupe based at the university that would perform throughout the region and the nation.

That is probably the best strategy for the company’s success, said Gregory Smith, executive director of the Ventura Chamber Music Festival, who worked with the ballet company last season.

“I happen to think dance is one of the most exciting of the performing arts, but I’m not sure the community can support a year-round endeavor,” he said. “I feel they’d have to go artistically beyond the boundaries of the county, which I think is possible.”