Boston Ballet looks to a brighter future

Mikko Nissinen expands on the accordion theory

There's been a lot of bad news recently about Boston Ballet. In early March, the Globe announced that after six years Executive Director Valerie Wilder would be stepping down at the end of the season, a precipitous move that took the local dance community by surprise. Then on March 14, The New York Times scooped local papers by reporting that the company was cutting almost 20 percent of its dancers, a big blow to its prestige as well as its repertory. The next day, the Globe caught up in an article that made things sound even worse:

"Unable to dig itself out of debt, Boston Ballet has eliminated nine jobs, cut back performances, and finally taken the dreaded step of laying off dancers. The cash-strapped organization confirmed this week it will reduce its stable of dancers from 50 to 41, which one ballerina . . . said would be too few to make it a top-tier company."

Two weeks later came news that the company would leave the Wang Center, its home for the past 30 years, after its 2008-2009 season.

I met last week with Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen on Clarendon Street to discuss these recent events.

Q: Taken altogether, Mikko, this sounds like a train wreck. How are you dealing?
A: I'm glad that is your opinion and not mine. It's true that we've received some negative press lately, largely because of the drastic step of laying off dancers, a step I only took reluctantly and as a last resort as a way to deal with our current situation. But I had no other choice if the company was to stay alive and look toward a better future. Moreover, what you're seeing are the first results of a two-year plan that will reorganize the entire organization and put our finances on a much sounder footing. One thing that's gotten lost is the fact that we've been paying down our debt, and our financial situation is greatly improved over what it was just two years ago. In the past two months alone, we've raised $5.35 million dollars."

Q: That's incredible, really amazing! Congratulations. But on the down side, won't your reduced size make it difficult to present large ballets like the Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty you've announced for next year's program?
A: I'll be hiring additional dancers for both productions, and also drawing on Boston Ballet II to fill out the corps, which has been standard practice for many years now. Moreover, this reduction in the size of the company is only temporary. We fully expect that in two years the company will be back up to 50 full-time dancers, so this current situation is like the way an accordion player has to squeeze his instrument before expanding it. The instrument may feel some pain, but it's making music the whole while.

Q: My readers will be glad to learn that the reduction in the size of the company isn't permanent.
A: There's still more good news. You're the first member of the press I've been able to tell about our upcoming trip to Asia. On the heels of our very successful tour of Spain this past summer, we'll be going to Korea for over two weeks this coming September. And that's in addition to our appearances at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston in May and the Kennedy Center in June.

Q: But isn't touring a money-losing proposition and thus a risky thing for you to be doing right now?
A: It's true that companies almost always lose money while touring, roughly a quarter of a million dollars a week and sometimes more. But we were very fortunate in our Spanish tour in that we broke even, and we expect to manage the Korean tour with the same happy result.

Q: Since touring is so expensive and almost always loses money, my readers may wonder why companies bother to do it. Am I right that it's rather like the haute couture a great designer does - the high fashion that doesn't make money but secures and enhances the reputation?
A: Exactly. Touring is the only way for a company to achieve external validation, and our Spanish tour was the first time Boston Ballet has toured in fifteen years. So there are the three upcoming tours, and our financial situation is finally turning around, and right now we have tremendous momentum behind us. So despite all the bad things you've been reading in the past couple months, this is the first time in many years I feel really optimistic about the future.