[title subtitle=”words: Dwain Hebda
images: courtesy Melissa Dooley Photography, and J. Smithwick Photography “][/title]
It’s mid-afternoon in downtown Little Rock’s creative corridor. Pedestrians traipse the sidewalk as traffic shuffles and honks past. No one in those cars glances at the sparkling marquee at the corner or into the gloriously restored building festooned with massive windows at street level. It could be any other office cluster in this vibrantly resurrected part of the city—like the trendy spaces to its right and left—but it’s not.
Just inside the front door, music billows and bodies move in time, as three pairs of Ballet Arkansas dancers dutifully rehearse under the watchful eye of their creative director. The company is fine tuning slices of The Nutcracker, arguably Tchaikovsky’s most famous work and, by local audience standards, the signature performance of the troupe’s fortieth season.
Though going at half-speed, the dancers’ power and artistry is nonetheless mesmerizing; even their clutter of street clothes and duffel bags litter the entranceway in ways graceful and articulate. It’s not quite Christmas, but as the door closes one can’t help but feel the bracing blush of the holidays on one’s face.
For the cast, however, the clock is always ticking.
“It’s a fast cycle of seeing a reward,” says Catherine Fothergill, associate artistic director. “You have the learning process, you have going through developing your characters or working together and then by the end, you’re getting a product. It doesn’t give you a lot of time to sit idle. Typically, you’re at the end of one process and the start of another.”
The same could be said for the organization itself, so far has it matured in a mere four decades. Ballet first came to Little Rock as a civic activity in 1966, but it would be a dozen years before it would organize as the nonprofit Ballet Arkansas in 1978.
The professional dance company didn’t come along until 2009, which shuffled through a variety of temporary homes until last year when it finally landed in this permanent space. Catherine and her husband, Ballet Arkansas’ Creative Director Michael Fothergill, arrived from Alabama last summer as well, and all pieces were finally in place.
For all that, the company’s performance schedule is still nomadic, Catherine says, by design.
“We don’t necessarily have one [performance] home,” she says. “Nutcracker is at Robinson Center. Last year we performed at The Rep and at UA Pulaski Tech’s new CHARTS Theater. We toured to the Walton Art Center last year. This year, our opening performance for Dracula was at UCA Reynolds Performance Hall.
“Touring is a part of the company, something that we didn’t do our first year here because we wanted to show our commitment to Little Rock. We wanted Little Rock to have the opportunity to see all of our performances and productions. This year we are starting to branch out a little bit more.”
The purpose of this schedule is to sow and nurture the seeds of appreciation for an art form not generally associated with the South, let alone a smaller city like Little Rock. Ballet Arkansas doesn’t particularly care if it’s appreciation or curiosity that brings in a given audience, but they know to solidify that following, they must educate and inspire new generations of patrons. They do this through a variety of programming and, particularly, by bringing the art form wherever they can in the state.
“Here in Arkansas, it’s not like we’re in New York City where [ballet] is everywhere you go,” Catherine says. “I think Ballet Arkansas is at a very exciting time because we’re growing and we’re reaching out to our community. We’re at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. We’re starting to go into our schools. And yes, we’re a professional company and we put on these big productions, but also our purpose is to make an impact on our community or else the art form doesn’t grow.”
Seeing the dancers up close quickly dispels the dainty connotations inherent to ballet terminology; their visible power and strength doesn’t bring “ballerina” (or for men, “ballerino”) to the mind’s eye. “Athlete” is more like it, and like all elite athletes, possessing an integral competitiveness to rise above the crowd. Even in a small marketplace like Arkansas, there are far more hopefuls than company members and slots must be defended via audition each season.
Once on the roster, dancers follow a grueling schedule of rehearsals, classes and cross-training to strengthen and ward off injuries. During performance runs, this can eat up seven days a week and no one here is getting rich doing it.
“I think of ballet sometimes as being in a relationship,” says Texas-born dancer Zeek Wright. “It’s like, ‘I love you so, so much, Ballet. I love you. But are you going to love me back? Do you love me, Ballet? Oh, you don’t? So why am I still giving myself to you when you’re not going to reciprocate?’”
Zeek shifts his head as if just coming to realize all that his art form has demanded of him. He’s coiled into a chair with the same effortless grace with which he moves; the only thing that feels awkward is explaining the compulsion, the addiction, he feels for his craft.
“I started when I was fourteen,” he says. “I was a freshman and started at Lone Star Ballet [in Amarillo, Texas], but it was more of a ‘Let’s do this for fun.’ I liked it; it wasn’t so much of a ‘I love it’ yet. I think I was a junior in high school when I was like, ‘I’ll audition for colleges to pursue dance.’
“If I’d started at a younger age, I probably wouldn’t be dancing right now. It’s a lot of time and dedication. If I would have started early I would have been like, ‘You know what? I’ve had my time.’”
Zeek studied at the University of Oklahoma at the same time as fellow company member, Meredith Loy. She too started dancing, in her words, “a little bit older” at the ripe old age of nine. A native of Maumelle, she had no idea at the time she would one day be dancing in a hometown professional troupe.
“When I was younger, there wasn’t really a professional company,” she says. “When I went off to college, Ballet Arkansas started developing and growing. I just thought it was really neat, so I wanted to come audition because this is my home state. I want this art form to thrive, especially here in Arkansas, because it hasn’t really been here. We’ve had ballet schools but never really a strong, growing ballet company. I think that’s really exciting.”
Like any profession that runs on passion over practicality, the allure of the sometimes-grinding life of a dancer is enigmatic to others. Why spend weeks for five minutes of applause, we wonder; why live on the edge of injury, exhaustion and rejection as all performers must? Why sacrifice again and again what the rest of us take for granted in each season of our lives – proms, relationships, children, stability? What can they see so brightly illuminated in the floodlights that we in the onyx gallery of darkness can only see as fleeting shadow?
“For me personally, I have something to work on. I get excited to go work on this and then the next day there’s something else to work on,” Meredith says. “You’re always growing and building. You’re making your technique stronger. It’s not like an office job where you just have to go sit there and do the same thing.”
“There really isn’t ever an end product,” Zeek adds. “Like, a double pirouette can be a triple pirouette or accentuating your line, it can always be so much more. There’s always more, more, more. Like today in class, I was getting frustrated. We all get frustrated at ourselves, we’re our worst critics, for sure. But, I love it! It’s not like I’m thinking, ‘It’s time to go to work.’ I don’t think about it as work. It’s definitely like, ‘It’s time to go dance, here we go!’”
Ballet Arkansas
520 Main St., Little Rock, AR
501.223.5150
balletarkansas.org
40th Anniversary Nutcracker Spectacular
Robinson Performance Hall
426 W Markham St, Little Rock, AR
December 7, 7 p.m.
December 8, 2 p.m.
December 8, 7 p.m.
December 9, 2 p.m.
robinsoncentersecondact.com
