By Ken Shimamoto
When I was a snotnose, I used to roll my eyes white upward every time my sister wanted to watch the ballet on TV. The stuff just didn’t move me. Then when my middle daughter was in her early teens, as part of my duty as a good parent to expose my kids to culcha, I took her to see The Nutcracker one Christmas and was muy impressed by the strength and grace of the dancers. The sheer athleticism of the spectacle, seen up close and personal, won me over.
Wouldn’t ya know it, besides having world-class museums and a great symphony, the Fort is also home to the Texas Ballet Theater – a professional company with dancers from Brazil, Chile, Italy, Ukraine, and all over the United States. Founded by Margot Dean in 1961, professional since 1984, the company has been led by artistic director Ben Stevenson, O.B.E., since 2003. Besides performing at the Bass Hall, Dallas’ Majestic Theatre and the Music Hall at Fair Park, the group also operates the Texas Ballet Theater School, offering instruction in ballet, jazz, and modern dance at campuses in Dallas and Fort Worth. The troupe’s special matinee performances give thousands of schoolchildren the opportunity to experience live ballet. Through its City Dance program, 250 students receive weekly ballet classes for an entire school year and attend performances of The Nutcracker and Cinderella.
Artistic director Stevenson is the only non-Chinese to serve as an honorary faculty member of the Beijing Dance Academy and the Shenyang Conservatory of Music, and it’s through this connection that Texas Ballet Theater will perform at the China Shanghai International Arts Festival this fall. In Shanghai, the Texans -- including Andre Silva and Lonnie Weeks, who brought home silver and bronze medals from last year’s Shanghai International Ballet Competition -- will dance the full-length ballet Cleopatra for a TV audience of over 500 million. Sponsorship of the trip by American Airlines and DFW International Airport is designed to promote leisure travel to the Metromess from China, which is now permitted under a memorandum of agreement signed by the U.S. and Chinese governments in December 2007.
Stevenson, a former principal dancer with the London Festival Ballet, choreographed his first ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, for Dame Margot Fonteyn. His Dracula, set to the music of Franz Liszt, runs this weekend (April 18-20) at the Bass Hall. Performances are at 8pm Friday, 2pm and 8pm Saturday, and 2pm Sunday. Tickets start at $18 (for upper gallery) for Saturday’s matinee and $24 for all other performances.