In a news release, chair and board president Graeme Barrit said the notice of intention would allow the company much-needed breathing room to restructure: “There simply is no rationale to continue operations in the current setup.”
Meanwhile, sales of tickets to Ballet British Columbia’s presentation of the Moscow Classical Ballet’s Nutcracker (December 28 through 31 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre) are back on track, Barrit said in an earlier interview with the Straight.
“We’re at about 5,000 sold right now,” he said. “We’re starting to talk about hitting our original target of 12,000 tickets, which is where we really need to get this thing to. Seven thousand [tickets sold] is break-even, but in order to get this thing really turned around we need to get it to 12,000.…Since we’ve cracked 5,000, we’re starting to get a little bit cautiously optimistic.”
Last week, Ballet B.C. terminated 38 dancers and administrative staff because of budget shortfalls due to flagging subscriptions and ticket sales. According to Barrit, the company now has a deficit that “is pushing $1 million”. The company has cancelled its January presentation of the Universal Ballet of Korea’s Swan Lake, offering ticket holders the option of a tax receipt or an exchange for Nutcracker, but is not in a position to give refunds. According to a November 13 Vancouver city council report, which recommended a one-time emergency grant of $63,400 to the struggling company to offset theatre costs of presenting Nutcracker, Ballet B.C. was projecting a $229,850 loss in ticket revenues.
While Barrit praised the ticket-buying citizens of Vancouver for coming through in the company’s hour of need, the company’s dancers have been inundated with offers of support from the local performance community. “It’s really been overwhelming just how much they care and how much they want to help,” dancer James Gnam told the Straight. According to Gnam, the Dance Centre is giving studio space to allow the group to keep up daily practice-something the performers say they need to continue for both physical and emotional health. In addition, he said, the Dancer Transition Resource Centre is organizing counselling and legal advice for the dancers; the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists has offered to act as a mediator in negotiations with Ballet B.C.; former Ballet B.C. dancer Edmond Kilpatrick has offered to lead classes free of charge; and rehearsal pianists are providing free accompaniment. Dianne Miller Pilates is providing free classes; wellness clinic Integrative Healing Arts has said it will continue treating them at the same rate they paid when under extended medical coverage; and the Norman Rothstein Theatre has offered up rent-free dates in December and January for a possible fundraiser to benefit the out-of-work dancers.
Even so, Gnam and his colleagues have clearly been rattled by the situation, which they say caught them off guard. “This happened without warning,” lead dancer Simone Orlando said. “As dancers, our careers are very short. Any day that we are not working or training is lost time. If this layoff continues into January, the financial ramifications for us will be devastating.”
Gnam echoed Orlando, noting that there were no payroll issues before the termination of their contracts, and that “nobody even saw it coming.” With his 18-month-old son, Finn, suffering from an ear infection, Gnam said the loss of his extended family health-care benefits was a primary concern: “We wanted to get, obviously, some antibiotics and we wanted to know if that was going to be covered.…It is until the end of the month [November]. And then afterwards it’s not.”
Employment insurance has kicked in, said Gnam, but there are some dancers in the company who do not qualify for it. “We have a few situations in that some of the dancers have been injured and they’ve been on workers’ compensation, and they don’t have enough insurable hours to open up a [EI] claim,” he said.
Company dancers who are here on work visas face even more challenges. “We’re trying to get them immigration lawyers to help them out.…Not only can they not collect any of the benefits that Canadians can in situations like this, but they also can’t work because their visas obviously reflect that.”
Barrit refused to speculate on any internal factors that may have contributed to the company’s economic woes, blaming the global economy. “It wasn’t just Nutcracker,” Barrit said. “If it was just Nutcracker, we’d say, ‘Hey, we picked a bad company.’ It was amazing works like [The] Faerie Queen and Nine Sinatra Songs [that did not sell well].”
Barrit confirmed that, for the first time, the company employed its own on-line ticket system this season, rather than go through Ticketmaster, which collects a percentage. By November 25, Ballet B.C. had reverted to using Ticketmaster. When asked whether the in-house system could have affected sales, Barrit responded, “I can’t speculate on that.” He did, however, confirm that Ballet B.C. is in talks with the B.C. Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts to assist in bringing in a consultant to help with a reorganization plan.
Jeremy Long, executive director of the B.C. Arts Council, said he and the Canada Council “are going to be assisting them [Ballet B.C.] to get some expertise in to build a stabilization plan”.
For now, the company’s board and dancers hope Nutcracker contains enough magic to bring Ballet B.C. back to life. If it does, Barrit said, “We want our dancers back as quick as we can get them back.” They will all be rehired, he said, along with artistic director John Alleyne. Barrit would not say, however, whether they would take a cut in pay when their contracts are renegotiated, or whether there will be staff reductions on the administrative side.
Either way, one thing is clear: come the new year at Ballet B.C., nothing will be the same.
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