With a complete overhaul of the Colorado Ballet’s artistic staff and the hiring of his first two dancers, Gil Boggs is beginning to put his mark on the company and shape its future.
Boggs, a former principal dancer with New York City’s respected American Ballet Theatre, took over as artistic director at the end of March following a tumultuous string of financial setbacks and staff departures.
Then as now, he is under no illusions about the enormity of the challenges facing him. Indeed, it does not seem to overstate matters to say that the company’s very survival rests in his hands.
How much pressure does he feel?
“You have no idea,” he said.
It is hardly unexpected that Boggs is reshaping the company’s artistic staff to fit his temperament and vision. What is surprising is that he was able to do it without any forced exits.
Meelis Pakri, the company’s ballet master, has accepted a teaching position with the Royal Ballet in London, and the husband-and-wife team of Jocelyn Labsan, associate artistic director, and Andrew Thompson, a repetiteur, recently resigned.
To replace them, Boggs has chosen two new ballet mistresses – Lorita Travaglia, who formerly oversaw the company’s apprentices for six years, and Boggs’ wife, Sandra Brown.
The latter choice is bound to raise some eyebrows, but Brown’s qualifications are unquestionable. Besides an array of leading roles with ABT, she freelanced from 1998 to 2005 with Complexions, a first-rate contemporary company based in New York.
In addition, Boggs chose Kristina Hart, former company manager for the Houston Ballet, for the same position with the Colorado Ballet. This fills a position left vacant when the well-liked Arthur Espinoza was promoted to the ballet’s general manager.
Michelle Dolighan-Rodenback, a former principal dancer with the Colorado Ballet, will take over the company’s school, which has endured its share of leadership turmoil and controversy.
Expected with Boggs’ arrival was the departure of some of the company’s dancers. That has occurred but on a surprisingly modest level: He chose not to renew the contracts of five dancers, including a soloist. A sixth declined to return.
Because the artistic director’s arrival was so recent, he was unable to take part in the company’s annual national auditions of company candidates, but he has a stack of résumés and videos from that process and other applications have arrived since.
To fill two of the vacancies (the company might leave one open as a budget move), he has promoted Alyssa Velasquez, one of the company’s apprentices, to a full company member and hired Emily Bromberg, a former principal dancer with Festival Ballet Providence in Rhode Island.
The company’s 2006-07 season was mostly set before Boggs’ arrival. Its main anchors are “Giselle” (Sept. 29-Oct. 15), “Dracula” (Oct. 19-22), “The Nutcracker” (Nov. 25-Dec. 24) and “Where the Wild Things Are” (Feb. 23-March 10).
To precede Septime Webre’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s well-known children’s book, Boggs has chosen Clark Tippet’s “Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1,” first performed in 1988 by the American Ballet Theatre. New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff hailed it as “downright terrific.”
“Dance Creations” (March 17-25), a program formerly known as “Choreographer’s Showcase,” will include two commissions by Darrell Moultrie and Jessica Lang, whose premiere earlier this year of “From Foreign Lands and People” was a big hit. In addition, the company will perform “Celts,” a ballet based on Irish step dancing.
It should help Boggs as he embarks on his first season that the company seems to be moving onto slightly firmer financial footing. It has raised a little more than $400,000 toward matching a February $450,000 challenge grant from two local couples and an anonymous donor.
The company’s fiscal year ends Friday, and executive director Lisa Snider believes the ballet will finish in the black.
“If you’ve ever been an auditor, you are so reticent to say before you see it, but it’s looking very good,” she said.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
