Thanks to ongoing conversation with Tulsa Ballet’s Marcello Angelini over the past few months, it has become even more clear to me how the significance of Artistic Directors of dance companies is often outshined by the brilliance of the stars they produce.
Sure they get to relish in pride and satisfaction when the curtain closes to the roar of applause from the theatre house. But to arrive at this point they must also suffer the headaches and sleepless nights that accompany unbalanced spreadsheets and the pressure of being the capstone of the ballet company structure.
So what does go on in the minds of Artistic Directors especially when confronting the extra challenge of a global pandemic?
Having just celebrated a quarter of a century at the helm of Tulsa Ballet, Marcello seemed the perfect candidate to ask.
Not only does he have extensive experience in his current position, but he carries with him decades of being a dancer who ultimately rose to principal status with renowned companies across North and South America and Europe.
It is this merger of strategic leadership and empathetic connection with which Marcello is able to guide a ballet company through the current unknown territory.
Like a captain from a ship’s bridge, he must observe, analyze, react, initiate, and adjust to the ever-changing waters, all the while maintaining open communication and continuous conversation with his entire crew.
WARNING: Marcello’s transparent responses to my questions may trigger dropped jaws, widened eyes, sympathetic headaches, and – hopefully – a greater appreciation for leaders of arts organizations around the world.
Interview with Marcello Angelini
This year, the costs are exponentially higher, the income from thirty tickets per show dramatically lower.
‣ What kind of adjustments has Tulsa Ballet made in order for your facilities to be adherent to safety protocols and a place where dancers and staff feel safe to work?
First, we had to create the safety protocols.
To do that we decided to hire our own Infectious Disease Physician, and not “just” an infectious disease physician… Dr. Jaggers has advised two White Houses on infectious diseases matters. She created the safety protocols for us and is our go-to person every time we have a question or problem. Thank God I knew Dr. Jaggers since she was a teenager so her fee is a case of wine every month or so.
After that, we installed a $66,000 air sanitizing system in our facility, one that removes pathogens from the air, in order to protect our dancers, administrators and audiences.
And then we have a day porter constantly cleaning everything we touch, all day, all the time. The night crew has doubled in size (and costs), all the disinfectants we use to keep ourselves safe are very expensive.
We even offer masks, at the rate of 1,000 a week, to our dancers and staff. This year, the costs are exponentially higher, the income from thirty tickets per show dramatically lower.
‣ Ouch. Even those lacking strong mathematical skills can see that those numbers are not… well, friendly.
There is no way that balancing the cost (of new equipment) and benefit (of keeping the Tulsa Ballet organization employed and passionate) is an easy task. How have you managed this?!
When trying to solve any kind of problem, I believe in putting together a list of priorities, one that itemizes the goals we are trying to achieve while solving the problem. Our list of priorities was actually quite easy to compile:
- Keep everybody under our roof safe;
- Keep dancers dancing (I live in fear of “presiding” over what I call the lost generation of dancers);
- Keep choreographers creating dance. If they stop making dance, dance stops existing;
- Keep the interest for dance – and for our organization – alive, and;
- Keep everybody that comes to see our shows safe.
Everybody in the organization, from the dancers to the staff to the Board, believes in those essential principals.
And then the hard work starts: how do you minimize risk to an acceptable level, and how do you pay for all this?
This year we depend almost exclusively from contributed revenues, as in order to keep our audience and dancers safe we are performing at 10% capacity in our theaters. We are very lucky that our Board and our donors are extremely generous and want to save the company.
We are also lucky for receiving the PPP funds.
The school is also losing money, as (believe it or not) our safety protocols seem to be too stringent for some families. Sometimes it’s hard to understand: we go out of our way to hire an infectious disease physician, reduce the capacity of the studios (loss of $), quadruple the cleaning protocols (even the floors are washed after each class), and of course wear masks. And people feel it’s too much.
I think audiences are now divided in a number of different segments.
‣ There are a couple of points you brought up in this article that I would like to dive deeper into as I imagine that they are concerns many performance-centric organizations are facing.
One is the nature of your audience’s demographic which tends to be of a mature age. You posed the question: “How will they feel about the risk/reward equation of going to a live performance?”
Have you surveyed your loyal subscribers to gauge if this may affect future planning on your part?
We constantly talk with our subscribers, but I think the jury is still out on this one.
One thing is how you feel when the question is asked. How you feel when you need to buy a subscription, or get in the car to go to the theater, is a different story.
I think audiences are now divided in a number of different segments:
- There are the ones that can’t wait to get back to the theater to see a live show.
- There are the ones that are waiting for the vaccine, and then based on achieving herd immunity will consider going back to the theater.
- There are the ones that, in spite of the rational thinking that if you and everybody around you is vaccinated there are virtually no risks, see fear taking over and won’t go back to a crowded place for years to come.
- There are the ones that just feel the risk is not worth the reward, those might be older people who don’t enjoy driving anymore, that don’t feel comfortable sitting in a cab and that prefer to stay home and stay safe.
- And then there are the ones that, while on hiatus from live performances, found something else that keeps them entertained, whether it is watching a baseball game sitting in an outside environment or playing a game of basketball in their backyards. They might never go back to a ballet performance.
It will take a couple of years to assess how large each section of this pie is and the long term consequences of the last twelve months.
‣ And what about younger audience members?
Sadly, they are somewhat uninterested in our art form.
I say that with many regrets, as we invested time, repertory and resources in attracting them to the theater. We have two programs a year especially targeted to younger generations, programs made up of creations, contemporary works, fun and interesting dances and so on.
In an effort to create programming that is young, edgy and hip, we even built a $6.5 million theater, Studio K, where we present almost exclusively World Premieres by the top dance makers of the world. The space was especially designed to create intimacy between audience members and dancers, as the theater is divided in half, with the audience (300 seats) occupying half of it and the dancers taking the 43’x40′ stage.
The efforts to bring them to see dance are massive and yield somewhat diminished results.
‣ This truly is a shame…
So all this being said, what is the strategy moving forward?
If more mature audiences tend to be tentative and the younger generations have proven to be a challenge to bring into the theatre, how do you reconcile what essentially amounts to a very small potential public especially in a post-pandemic environment?
If I had the answer to this question…
This is best described as a protracted war; the best way to tackle is to concentrate on one battle at the time.
As we learn more about the post-pandemic habits of audiences countrywide, we’ll come up with strategies to attract them back to the theater. One thing we know for sure: once they are there, they won’t regret it!
With this knowledge, our challenge will be “luring” them to the theater. The first step will be programming, achieved by alternating shows that attract large audiences like Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella and The Nutcracker (revolving door shows) with triple bills (sticky shows) that eventually cement the relationship with the company.
Of course reaching out and serving the community through educational programs, outreach programs, audience development programs and so on is key to the future of any ballet company.
As I always say to our staff, right now it’s a bit like building an airplane as you fly it and with a limited set of tools. I am surprised we are still aloft… and then it will be like building a house one brick at the time.
It will take time and patience, but we’ll get there.
Are we going to be more relevant in the future or less relevant?
‣ On a more positive note, you have also mentioned to me how you are glad to be a part of the reshaping of the future of ballet. What does this “reshaping” entail?
There is no turning back at this point – just hoping, praying and wishing things will be back “the way they were” is not realistic.
This pandemic will reshape the arts, as it will reshape the taste of the audience, the habits of the audience and the lifestyles of the world’s population.
For example, if we are restaging an existing work by a foreign choreographer, is it necessary for that person to fly from London to Tulsa to see the dancers for a week’s rehearsal? Maybe staying in London and holding rehearsals via Zoom is a more economical and equally efficient way to get things done.
Where does the new balance between entertaining and culturally stimulating a community lay going forward? Is this the time to prove that we are here for more than just entertaining? That our role in a community is to open the conversations on difficult topics?
Are we going to be more relevant in the future or less relevant?
And how do we balance that with the need to sell enough tickets to pay the bills?
Also, this crisis will force some of us to cut down the roster of our companies, and many ballet schools are on the verge of closing, or have already closed. How will that affect the future of our art form? As you can see, I have lots of questions but very few answers…
‣ Perhaps, but you give us food for thought.
So what about the immediate future? Uncertainty is still a protagonist despite us entering a new year.
For the remainder of the 2020-2021 season – and I suppose in planning for the next – will Tulsa Ballet return to digital performances as you did for Creations Reimagined, or are you going to focus on small-capacity live performances?
Actually, even shows like Creations Reimagined were performed in front of live audiences… of thirty people!
Going forward, I think the virtual component will become part of every organization’s offerings, but it’s definitely not the silver bullet. When we first started offering digital shows – in the spring of 2020 – we saw thousands of people flocking the screen to see the company. As other companies joined the band wagon, we saw hundreds of people tuning in.
By June the audience kept diminishing with every offering. What we hear from people is that they are tired to watch dance on a TV screen.
We are now preparing another smaller program, with a new work by Andrew McNicol (he will create it from his living room in London) and Parhelia by Jennifer Archibald.
We hope to finish the season with a larger show, and then take the summer off and get everybody vaccinated.
As for next year, we plan to have a sort-of normal season starting in September. We know we’ll be performing in front of reduced audiences, but according to Dr. Fauci, by the fall we should see some sort of normalcy creep back in our lives.
We will create a new work in October remembering the Tulsa Race Massacres of 1921, a work that will make us think of the past and consider the implications of our choices for the future. That’s the kind of programming that matters.
We will premiere a brand-new Nutcracker in December to mark the beginning of the post-pandemic era. That’s the programming that uplifts the community.
And we will perform the U.S. Premiere of Vendetta, A Mafia Story, by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa! Ain’t sending the sets and costumes back to Montreal till we do it here in Tulsa!
As for the rest… stay tuned!
All images in this Interview with Marcello Angelini courtesy of Tulsa Ballet.
Great dancer, great manager, great husband, great daddy… then a great man! Congratulations from Italy!