Catching Up with Adam Sklute, Artistic Director, Ballet West
April 2021
Salt Lake City, Utah
by Marianne Adams
As most ballet companies around the world are slowly getting back to what once was normal, Ballet West has clocked in not one, but two live seasons since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. How they did it and what lies ahead were among the topics I was excited to explore in my conversation with Adam Sklute, the company’s Artistic Director.
From Lockdown, to the Stage
Let’s start with the elephant in the room – the challenging times we are living through, and the company’s body and soul – its dancers. How is their morale and are they excited to be back on stage?
The dancers are thrilled to be back on stage and really in good spirits considering the times, and I must say have been really positive throughout this period in a very wonderful and surprising way. Fortunately, we completely closed down only for certain blocks of time. We were away from the studios from March until August, were able to perform last fall, but then before this spring season could not stage the “Nutcracker” or our February program.
That is still quite a bit of time away from the studio. How did you manage in the interim? Were you doing what a lot of other companies were doing – linoleums in the homes, video classes from the kitchen, and so on?
Yes, indeed. I would give class holding on to a chair and it was exactly that, with the dancers dodging their dogs and cats, so to speak, as they were doing their dégagés in their home spaces. Ultimately, we were fortunate to be able to get the dancers back in the studios in August, and started really early with six weeks of maintenance classes before we brought them back to rehearsals.
I’ve read you commenting that some things actually improved as a result of this at-home work, such as footwork, and so it sounds like the time away was almost a clinic for that type of work.
Indeed. What was interesting is the dancers had so much time to focus on the minutia, that it was a remarkable phenomenon to see how their footwork was so clean and precise, but of course the stamina suffered. To bring them back, for a length of time we wouldn’t even give them one foot to one foot jumps, only two feet to two feet, introducing more complicated jumps slowly, to be on the safe side.
Clearly it worked, you were able to get back and remarkably have a season in November, and you are one of the first troupes around the world to do that in front of a live audience. What were some of your biggest hurdles for that fall season and the biggest lessons you learned from it?
Preparing for the fall season was a tricky time, but before I speak about it I have to take us back to even earlier than that. Over the summer we became the first and the only major company in the U.S., if not the world, to do a large-scale summer intensive program. We had 265 students from around the country -- we obviously did not open it internationally -- and 75 staff and faculty. We usually have 400-450 students, but this was still quite substantial. To achieve that, we had to put in multiple work protocols and manage them very strictly: reduced class sizes and student “pods,” staggered schedules to keep people from being in the hallways, residence in the nearby Holiday Inn Express rather than the usual dormitories, among others. As a result, we did not have one single illness on site. Not one. From that experience we knew we could make it work if we were really smart about the process, which gave us courage to come back to live performances.
The fall program itself was reworked as a contem- porary program. We had our resident choreo- grapher Nicolo Fonte create work for the performance, as well as Jennifer Archibald, and we also performed Twyla Tharp’s “Nine Sinatra Songs.” For the rehearsals, we were able to mostly keep the work to same household couples, as the company has eight opposite sex couples and three same sex couples. But, of course, we were still living with the specter of the county closing down the performance venues, and things were getting quite bad in Utah in terms of illness at that time. Ultimately, we were able to have the season and fill the theater to 20%, and while it cost a lot to put that season on we were fortunate to receive both the government PPP grants and also state and city grants that helped keep us going as we performed in this unique manner.
Originally, the spring season was supposed to be a production of Frederick Ashton’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Nicolo Fonte’s “Bolero.” Did you start rehearsing those programs and what made you pivot to the mixed bill program that ultimately became this year’s spring season?
That program was indeed the original plan and in fact was at first supposed to be presented a year ago - last April. With the pandemic, we had to cancel trips in by Patricia Tierney and Sir Anthony Dowell, and while we were hoping to still stage it this spring, it just ended up being too big and too expensive to put on with proper social distancing and to a 20% house capacity.
Instead, what we ended up doing, and what I wanted to do after the modern fall season, was put together a lot of classical work to rebuild the company’s strength classically, and give the audience classical work which is the backbone of our repertoire. The result was a gala-style program with no intermission, running 90 minutes from start to finish. At first we started the rehearsal process with just household couples, but then we were approached with the ability to do rapid testing, started coordinating with the Utah Health Department and AGMA, and were approved for a process where all of our artists are rapid-tested and subsequently able to perform without masks. As a result, while many in the cast are still household couples because that’s how we started the rehearsal process, we are also able to cast non-household partnerships.
I noticed that in addition to these feats, you were able to bring back live music. Tell me a bit about that.
We haven’t worked with our orchestra since late last February. We did “Giselle” in Utah, took “Jewels” to Minneapolis the first weekend of March, and that was the last time we performed until the fall. For that season we could not put musicians in the orchestra pit because of social distancing, but we are excited to have been able to have two small ensembles and a soprano for two pieces for the spring.
The Blessings and Opportunities of Digital Mediums
I understand that for this program you did quite a bit of work remotely with stagers. How did that work?
We did have stagers appearing via Zoom from all over the world. We had a representative from the George Balanchine Trust appearing from Australia, Maina Gielgud conferencing in for Sir Anton Dolin work from Portugal, other representatives appearing from New York, Miami and California. It was very challenging to say the least: we had a big computer and a screen set up in the studio with the rehearsal directors moving it back and forth to ensure it was following the dancers and the repetitor giving notes online. Then of course it got even more complicated when it came to stage rehearsals.
I would imagine the time difference alone was a big challenge.
Indeed. Australia was almost a fully day away so it somehow wasn’t as bad, but Portugal was the hardest with the time difference.
With digital work and digital offerings becoming more ubiquitous, and with you having had to offer a digital winter season, is this way of staging and presenting material to ballet lovers something you’d want to continue to explore and keep post-pandemic?
Digital offerings are here to stay. That said, we are a live art form and I fully believe that we need to get back to the theater with a full house, and we will -- that’s how we will be presenting our art. But, in addition to that it would be good to continue to maintain a digital presence. For instance, among the grants, the company received a grant for digital work, and we were able to hire a production company that stayed with us and filmed us in the studios even with reduced numbers and other aspects, chronicling our return to the stage. The result is a 9-part digital docu-series, with each episode 10-15 minutes long, which details our return to rehearsals and the stage, and it will be coming out to the public in May. We would want to continue that in some capacity as it was quite wonderful. It really turned into more of a dance and arts-focused version of “Breaking Pointe” [DVT note: The reality TV series about Ballet West which aired on the CW Network in 2012-2013.] This was less a reality show, but still very much a behind the scenes look. We are also discussing other content that would be unique to a digital platform and something we’d be able to add to our subscription series.
You have also offered the “Nutcracker” this past season in a broadcasted medium. How did that come to be and how was it received?
That turned into a unique project. Last year we partnered with Brigham Young University Television to present a high-definition recording of William Christensen’s “Nutcracker” in celebration of the 75thAnniversary of that production. KSL [DVT note: the local NBC channel] donated air time for the company to air the performance three times – on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day, and the ballet was presented without intermission with just a few appeals for donations. It turned out to be a remarkable success. Not only were we able to offer this oldest and longest running of “Nutcracker” productions in the United States to a wide viewership [DVT note: This production predates the famed Balanchine production by a decade] but the airing garnered about 1,000 new donors to Ballet West. As a result of the success, KSL has approached us to create annual family-style content, which we are in the process of working on best ways of putting together.
The Company Aesthetic and Moving Forward
I do have to ask about the company’s aesthetic and style. I must admit, the first time I saw Ballet West dancers I was amazed at the tall, statuesque bodies, beautiful clean lines, and really remarkable feet. Do you seek out these kinds of dancers, and generally how do you select the performers?
We’ve always had a reputation for having a nice line, but I have to say I like dancers that move and move me. We have dancers of all shapes and sizes, women who are 6 feet tall and men who are 6’5, but also smaller females and males who are 5’8. While we do very much welcome tall dancers, and that is perhaps what attracts taller dancers to our troupe – they know they are welcome here – to me what is important is individuality and how they move.
So would you say individuality is more of a key?
Ultimately yes, but not necessarily in personality but also in movement quality and style and approach. I think the company has a unique approach to dancing that comes through. I like a very “limb-oriented” way of dancing, whether you are taller or shorter. We call it a uniquely American syllabus. It’s ultimately Cecchetti based technique that has a lot of aspects of Balanchine work as well as Bournonville and Paris Opera work melded in there.
These steps toward individuality extend to issues of diversity. Please tell me about that.
One of the things last year has done was show how old school classical ballet can be re-thought, including with issues of race. I have worked really hard to build up the diversity of my dancers [DVT note: the company features a diverse roster of dancers and just this season promoted two dancers of color to the rank of Principal -- Katlyn Addison and Hadriel Diniz], and along with that we just unveiled a new policy for tights and shoes. All of the women no longer wear pink tights and shoes, and instead wear flesh colors that match their skin tone. I will admit, it’s been a bit of a battle, and at first I thought it might be strange to see some ballets, like “Paquita,” like this. But testing this with only 20% occupancy and experimenting with skin tone matching we saw that this really could look wonderful and bring out individuality.
I do think you’re one of the pioneering company in the U.S. in those aspects. And it makes sense that the casting and the ballets are representative of the country’s population.
U.S. is a very diverse country, and it’s an aesthetic I celebrate. Just like I celebrate tall dancers and long lines, I celebrate people of different ethnicities, I find it beautiful to bring them together. Of course, in the context of inclusion there are so many odd calls for dismantling classical dance, calling it too elitist. And it is a bit of an elite form – you have to have an ability to do it, like music, and sports and any art form or anything.
Everyone needs to be in the best physical condition they can be in the context of their physique, because that is what makes ballet an athletic and exciting art form. But it also can be for everyone, and what is important to me is to create a platform where everyone has the access to it if they have the talent, drive and hard work.
Assuming things with the pandemic keep normalizing, what would you like to see in the company’s future in the near term?
Right before this season we were scheduled to add an additional repertory program to our season, and that was huge for me because while I like full lengths and they are wonderful, repertory is so fascinating for artists, and myself and the audience, not just in terms of new works but also in terms of existing work from around the world that we could put on a mixed bill. That had to go the way of all things, of course. As we look at next year we felt it wasn’t time yet to embark on that, as finances are even tighter for next year than this year. The wonderful generosity of grants was able to sustain us this year, but there will definitely be difficulties ahead in getting us back to where we were. As we work toward that, next year we will be doing a lot of full-length ballets, we are planning and hoping to be able to work as we normally do, and as we work on new digital projects we are also looking at different ways to expand our presence and keep the art form relevant.
To read the review of the company's spring season, click here: https://www.danceviewtimes.net/back-on-stage-if-cautiously-relentlessly/
