In his second year as the company's artistic director, Michael Bearden has pulled off a big coup for Ballet Arkansas.
He didn't do it all by himself, of course. The company's dozen dancers also played their part.
Bearden convinced the George Balanchine Trust to authorize Ballet Arkansas as the first company in the state to perform one of the legendary choreographer's creations.
Balanchine set "Who Cares?" in 1970 to 16 songs that George Gershwin composed between 1924 and 1931, including "Strike Up the Band," "'S Wonderful," "Lady Be Good," "The Man I Love," "Embraceable You," "Fascinatin' Rhythm," and "I Got Rhythm." (Hershy Kay made the arrangements and orchestrations.)
It will be part of Ballet Arkansas' spring concert of the same title, 7:30 p.m. April 17-18 and 2 p.m. April 19 at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Sixth and Main streets, catty-cornered from Ballet Arkansas' still-under-construction new studio and office space. (Tickets are $30-$35; Balletarkansas.org)
"I played a part" in making the Balanchine piece possible, Bearden adds modestly. "I wrote a letter to the Balanchine Trust requesting that specific ballet; it was one of my favorites that I danced. It's a fun piece, it's accessible."
He explained in the letter "who I was, what I was doing, what Ballet Arkansas was doing. But it's not as simple as writing a letter and, 'OK, you've had a career, so we trust you.' They requested to see video footage of Ballet Arkansas' dancers. They have to trust that we have a certain technical ability. So we sent them a highlight reel of our dancers in action onstage."
Bearden, 34 (he'll turn 35 April 12), is a Searcy native who danced with Ballet Arkansas in his teens and then became a principal dancer with the prestigious Ballet West in Salt Lake City. That's where he makes his home with wife Victoria and two children -- Charlotte, almost 4 and already taking ballet classes at Ballet West Academy, and Jude, 9 months.
"I spend a number of weeks here as well, so my original home has become a second home again," he says.
He has a full-time job. He's a visiting assistant professor in the ballet department at the University of Utah, where he is also a full-time student, carrying 14 credit hours toward a bachelor of fine arts degree in ballet (his classes range from Modern Technique to Kinesiology).
Bearden's artistic director duties primarily involve programming for three shows each season. "I'll identify works and choreographers that would work well with our dancers and that would engage our audiences. My job is not to maybe always be in charge of the studio, but to oversee what's being done there, the preparation, the rehearsal schedules; being in touch with Marla [ballet mistress Marla Edwards] to be sure the dancers are getting the work done they need to prepare for a show."
The job also involves a certain amount of fundraising, at which the ballet has been pretty successful. Its annual Turning Pointe fundraiser (Page 6D) was held March 20.
"The company has each year ended in the black," Bearden says. "We're very fortunate that way, and we're on, I'd say, a steady climb."
Artistically, "This is the biggest and best season Ballet Arkansas has ever had for several reasons, most of which point back to Michael's influence and vision for where the company can go with the right amount of community support," says Ballet Arkansas Executive Director Karen Bassett.
The professional company, which debuted with six dancers in 2009, has been adding a couple of dancers each year. This year, the original number has doubled to 12.
"This is an exciting time for Ballet Arkansas as far as the repertoire we're doing and it's helping us to attract and maintain a high level of dancer," Bearden says.
The Balanchine work, he says, is "a huge step in the right direction. It kind of puts us on a certain plane with other professional companies."
Another spring program highlight is the pas de deux, to music by Frederic Chopin, from Lady of the Camellias by Val Caniparoli. Boston Ballet, one of the biggest companies in the country, recently did the entire piece. "So we're doing work that other companies of that caliber are doing. Not the full length -- we don't have those kind of resources -- but that's a big deal."
Other than adding to the repertoire, one of the things he's proudest of is the Visions Choreographic Competition, which debuted in the fall and will return to start the 2015-16 season.
"People in the dance world are hungry to create new things and to find their voice," and the evidence is that last year -- its first -- the Ballet received entries from 36 choreographers from across the country for the competition. Five were invited to perform, and the winner, Hilary Wolfey, will premiere her piece at the Rep next month (an expanded version of Facade).
"Our Visions program is a way to fuse local and national. My former boss, Adam Sklute, who ran the Joffrey [Ballet] for several years ... was our first Visions guest judge. Our guest judge next August is Glenn Edgerton, the artistic director of Hubbard Street Dance in Chicago.
"That will go a long way to facilitate higher-caliber emerging choreographers applying for our competition, knowing that he is going to be observing their pieces and giving them feedback."
He's also using local judges to demonstrate "what great resources we have." Last year, those were Rhythm McCarthy, on the dance faculty at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and Michael Tidwell, former Ballet Arkansas principal dancer who now heads The Tidwell Project.
"It's a way to educate our audiences -- through inspiration, as opposed to, 'Here's ballet, and you're going to like it.'"
Soccer vs. ballet
Bearden wasn't interested in dance as a kid. He played soccer. One day, when he was 11 years old, he visited his sister's ballet class.
"I had just finished soccer practice," he recalls. "I leaned over to my mom and said, 'This is stupid. This is easy. Why do they do this? It looks so easy. What's the point?' I said this too loud and the teacher heard me -- this young punk, who thinks he knows what ballet is, what dance is -- and she challenged me: 'Let's see you do it.'
"And all the testosterone I was starting to develop -- I couldn't allow her to challenge me without stepping up, so I stood up and tried a few things with the girls. We got in line and she was having us stretch, and I was the only boy in the line, seven girls. And all the girls were putting their palms flat on the floor, legs straight, and I couldn't even get my fingertips to touch the floor.
"And I was drawn to the challenge of it."
He didn't quite give up soccer right away, though. "When I was 13, I started taking more serious ballet classes, longer and more focused on the art form," he says. "That's when I started coming to Ballet Arkansas, in 1993," studying with then-Ballet Arkansas director Kirt Hathaway.
"From about then to the age of 16, I was doing both ballet and soccer all the time, and both my ballet teacher and my soccer coach got tired of me skipping out all the time to go do the other. I was doing well at both and they both wanted me to be the best I could be. So they both came to me, independently, and said, 'If you want to be good at this, you have to invest more time in it. So I had to make a choice. And at 16, I chose ballet.
"It wasn't easy," he says, and he has never regretted it. "But I do miss soccer. I miss playing it. I watch it all the time. I have friends who are on the professional soccer team in Salt Lake City, Real Salt Lake.
"I actually got one of them to do a performance in Nutcracker one time. We do a version at Ballet West we call The Nutty Nutcracker; the whole thing is a spoof. We did a sports theme one year, everything was some kind of sport, and 'Spanish' was 'Spanish soccer,' so he came out and did some ballet stuff, juggled a soccer ball around.
"The audience loved it. But he felt the same thing: 'This is a lot harder than it looks.'"
Back to Arkansas
Bearden started dancing at Ballet West in 1999. His career there lasted 14 years, most of them as a principal dancer, with leading roles in ballets by some of the world's greatest choreographers including Balanchine, Antony Tudor, Frederick Ashton, Twyla Tharp and Jiri Kylian.
In 2013, he retired from full-time professional dancing, just about the time that Ballet Arkansas was looking for a leader.
Former dancer and current choreographer Jana Beard, who runs Shuffles & Ballet II, a west Little Rock dance studio and Ballet Arkansas' current home, had been bringing in Bearden to teach for summer intensives, Bearden explains.
"In 2011, then-board president Drake Mann called me up in Salt Lake and said, 'Are you going to be in town [in February]? I want to come out and talk to you.' He started asking me a bunch of questions about what I thought Ballet Arkansas should do to build a professional dance company. ... Ultimately Drake Mann and Jana Beard, if they had not engaged me into what they were doing, I would not have been involved in Ballet Arkansas. So I have them to thank."
Mann, meanwhile, praises Bearden's "selflessness and devotion of purpose to Arkansas in general and Ballet Arkansas in particular."
Mann, who joined the Ballet Arkansas board in 2009, says he met Bearden at a get-together at Beard's house while Bearden was conducting a master class. At a similar get-together a year later, he was inordinately impressed that Bearden remembered him and details of their first meeting. "It made a tremendous impression on me that this guy, this dancer from out of town, as I thought he was, would remember somebody's name and carry on" a conversation like that, he says.
They kept in touch as Facebook friends and, as the board and the ballet began to get what Mann describes as "a little wobbly," he made that trip to Salt Lake City. "He showed me around, and I watched a rehearsal at Ballet West, and he and I explored his career path and his interest in returning to his roots." Mann says he told Bearden "quite bluntly what the situation of the ballet was." Bearden replied that he and his wife were expecting their first child, that he felt he still had a couple of years of dance left in him, and that he was planning to stay put for the time being.
But he did offer Mann "an elaborate game plan" for Ballet Arkansas, starting with rebuilding the board, and committed himself to helping as best he could in whatever way he could at a distance. He agreed to take on the title of "artistic adviser."
They continued to work together. The board solidified. A new executive director, Lauren Quick Strother, who had danced with Ballet Arkansas and had a background in marketing, was hired. The company added a number of talented dancers. And, in 2013, the board elevated Bearden to artistic director.
"It was just primarily driven by [Michael's] love of Arkansas and dance, dovetailing with our need," says Mann, who left the board that year.
Changes coming
Ballet Arkansas is in the process of moving its headquarters from its longtime home at Shuffles & Ballet II to a combination new-studio-and-office space that includes a rehearsal/black-box performance space, two small dressing rooms and an apartment for visiting dancers.
Part of Main Street's downtown "creative corridor," they're sharing part of the former Dillard's (originally Pfeifer's) building with the Arkansas Symphony's new offices and rehearsal/performance space and rehearsal space and classrooms for the Rep.
Construction is still in progress.
Bearden says there has been a delay while the developer awaits the arrival of a federal preservation grant. However, he says, "The [2015-16] season starts Aug. 11. If we can be in here by then, I'll be happy."
High Profile on 03/29/2015