From the Artistic Director Welcome to Ballet West’s Fall 2020 program. Since March of this year, Ballet West has not performed live, so it is with great joy that we return to the stage, albeit in a unique performance that both addresses the challenges of our current world but also affirms the power of the human spirit. In March, our artists stopped dancing. Our studios closed down and as the year progressed and we were forced to cancel one program after another, we began to wonder if we would ever get back onto the stage. However, we were determined as an organization to push forward and find the safest ways to create art in the face of this global pandemic, despite the enormous financial hardship and uncertainty of the future. In late June, bucking national trends, our Academy held the only large scale in-person Ballet Summer Intensive in America. Our faculty and staff worked tirelessly in coordination with the Salt Lake County Health Department and created rigorous protocols and safety measures, which we continue to follow to this day. It was complicated, difficult, and required intense focus and attention to details from the entire organization. But we were able to host over 300 students, and guest faculty from around the United States and not one single illness! Our work over the summer gave us courage and while our academy continues in-person classes for our hundreds of students dancing in masks, while maintaining proper social distancing and hygiene, our next step was to bring our professionals back to work. By August we began the slow and careful process of “rehabilitation” classes. Dancers are such hard workers and while they did everything they could to stay in shape, there is no substitute for proper full-scale ballet training in a dance studio. Slowly we worked all together to build back their strength, flexibility, and articulation. Little by little increasing their speed and agility as they began to streamline again and regain their confidence we now turned our eyes to performing. Clearly our planned October blockbuster Dracula would simply not be possible with its huge cast and orchestra in the pit, its complicated production values and its promise of a packed audience. This was not the time for such an undertaking. Nevertheless, our newly planned “additional” fall program Nine Sinatra Songs presented a possible way back to the stage.
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