Happy 50th Birthday,
Cecilia Violetta Lopez, soprano and artistic advisor to Opera Idaho / Photo by paulinagwaltney.com
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BY KAREN DAY
hat is art, anyway? The question has stalked humans for millennia. Enigmatic, personal, enthralling, and often incomprehensible, art is as much experiential as cerebral - a gut punch with a feather that whispers without words to our unconscious: there is more here than what you see. If only for a few delirious moments, art transports us beyond our mortality with a vision of the invisible and enduring. In other words, art is the making of the unknown known. Hence, great art is timeless. That’s a heady explanation for what most viewers describe as, “You know when you see it.” Or hear it. Or feel it. That’s the simplest explanation for what might be the hardest, most overlooked job on the planet. Being an artist is like living with a pain you can’t live without. It’s the act of creating something from nothing and demands placing public bets wagered with only imagination and sweat. It is not a job for the timid. BALLET IDAHO No one embodies and physically suffers more for art more than a dancer, especially a ballet dancer. Garrett Anderson, the current Artistic Director of Ballet Idaho, knows this from his previous performing career. Now, his job is to ensure that Ballet Idaho’s precarious and ethereal moments of flight and beauty continue to fascinate audiences as the company approaches its 50th season. “I was hired to take the company in a new direction, and I think anytime there’s a shift, it’s challenging. People were excited about the possibilities, but none of us knew what to expect, including me.” That was five years ago. Before moving from Santa Fe to Boise with his wife and children, Anderson
had danced here with the Trey McIntyre Project and LED at Treefort. “My wife and I both loved it here…and when we heard there was an opening for an artistic director, it planted a seed…what if ? What if I could do that?” Navigating an entire corps of dancers through ever-changing classical and original choreography and music scores in front of live audiences, as well as managing the logistics of leadership, staff, budget, and fundraising is far more complicated than performing. Ballet Idaho’s growing success proves that Anderson has thrived as much as the company. Dancers have bloomed and audiences have expanded. “As much as ballet is constantly evolving,” he said, “I think it’s our job as artists to investigate what it is becoming
while still understanding our legacy. We’re uniquely positioned because of our geographic isolation. There are other dance companies in Idaho, but we’re the only professional ballet company. This community is not over-saturated with too much going on. People pay attention. They care.” Isolation does not equate to a lack of creative collaboration for Ballet Idaho. Anderson’s performance career allowed him to call on a network of talented guest artists from around the world to advance programming. “The response has been wonderful. They may have worked with huge companies like San Francisco or New York the week before, and they get here, without pretense, and have found the community so kind and the dancers so willing and talented. I hope we can retain that.”
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