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Dalia Rawson (foreground), who grew up in Saratoga, recently played Maria in 'The Nutcracker.' Here, she dances in Dennis Nahat's 'Moments' last October.
Photograph by John Gerbetz
Hometown Girl
Dancers from the new Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley take root in the West Valley
By Mary Ann Cook
This tale of two cities does have a happy ending. At least for one. It has a new name, but Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley is very much the same ballet company it was when partnered with Cleveland Ballet. It continues under the artistic direction of founder Dennis Nahat--and with a major share of the same dancers.About two-thirds of San Jose-Cleveland Ballet dancers elected to remain with the new company. Ballet San Jose currently employs a total of 33 dancers, including five trainees. The Cleveland section of the company suffered from financial woes and pulled out of the joint venture in September.
Each city had maintained separate administrative offices and San Jose, thanks to its many backers and strong community support, was in the black. Its current budget is $7.2 million. Thus, the San Jose contingent vowed to continue with a full series. Three ballets are still to come in that series.
The company recently closed its holiday production of The Nutcracker and was able to offer nearly twice as many performances as it had previously--26, rather than 14--since it was no longer splitting its efforts and dates between two cities.
The Center for the Performing Arts is its stage, and its offices and ballet school are at 40 N. First St. in San Jose. Both with and without Cleveland, ballet in San Jose has had a steady growth, according to publicist Lee Kopp.
"We took in $1.2 million for Nutcracker, three times what we used to do. We've had a consistent growth, increased by more than 30 percent over last year." There were 1,900 single tickets sold for one matinee for The Nutcracker, and those tickets were in addition to subscriber tickets, he adds.
So the infant company has an optimistic take about the future. Yet, the cold, hard fact is that ticket sales cover only 50 percent of production costs. Receiving grants and major donations from contributors is essential to the financial health of the ballet company.
Dalia Rawson grew up in Saratoga. All those lessons are paying off.
One tribute to the company's quality came from the California Arts Council, which gave the group its highest rating, 4.0 in its annual evaluation. It received $48,777 for the 1999-00 season and a similar amount this year from the council.
Only two of the 67 companies applying for grants were accorded this rating. Another hallmark of the company is its multi-culturalism. Its dancers come from Cuba, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, Great Britain, New Zealand, Canada, the Philippines and France.
The diversity of Silicon Valley is mirrored in the faces of these dancers, as the company itself puts it. Perhaps this art agency will be the one that "mobilizes the elusive community spirit in dot-com land into a legacy for the future," offered a San Francisco Examiner appraisal.
However that may be, at least one dancer in the company feels right at home already. She's Dalia Rawson, who grew up in Saratoga. After graduating from Lynbrook High School in 1991, she segued immediately into the San Jose-Cleveland Ballet company. The company had then been in existence for five years.
"When I first saw Karen Gabay and Raymond Rodriguez dance, I knew that was the company I wanted to belong to," she says. Rawson danced Maria, the lead, in the recent production of The Nutcracker. She was one of two Marias, since ballets are, at the least, double cast.
Los Gatan Todd Fox
This is done as an insurance policy against sickness and accidents to accommodate two performances daily, and to spare the dancers.
Nahat himself was dubbed the 'sub with the mostest,' the all-purpose understudy, in the early days of San Jose Cleveland.
He sometimes played five different roles in any given production. And he knew what he was dancing in each performance only by the costumes set out for him. One time the wardrobe staff slyly put out one of each costume--including tutus--for a gag.
Rawson, fortunately, didn't have to do that much multiple duty. When she wasn't playing Maria, she was one of the ribbon dancers in the Pagoda scene in Act II. Other recently transplanted locals in the company are Todd Fox, who danced The Nutcracker/Prince; Daniel Gwatkin, who held forth as the Mouse King; Zuri Goldman and Jenni Chiarelli.
These four live in Los Gatos when they're not pliéing. When the housing plight became known, several ballet supporters called in to the company to offer housing, a godsend for the fledgling company.
Los Gatan Daniel Gwatkin
For example, Gwatkin, his wife and Fox are quartered with Linda Sarles, who is president of the BSJSV board. And Chiarelli lives with Anita and Kevan Del Grande. Anita is vice chair of the ballet board. One third of the ballet board is made up of area residents from Saratoga, Los Gatos and Monte Sereno.
The next production for Ballet San Jose is Gaite Parisian, to be performed Feb. 22 through 25. Two other ballets, yet to be announced, will also be on the program. Rawson will be dancing the role of the lead can-can dancer.
Gaite Parisian rehearsals started in December and will continue until opening night. Rehearsals are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., six days a week--more than two months of solid rehearsals. Yet, Rawson doesn't count this as enough. "If I had a year, I'd feel ready," she says. "In Russia they do rehearse their roles for a year.
"But we can't afford to do it that way here. We don't have the money." Once a performance is under way, the hours demanded of the dancers are noon until midnight. Rawson always dreamed of being a ballerina, except for a brief period at age 5 when she fancied herself a farmer.
However, dancing won out and she studied with Gloria Mohr in Campbell and with the San Francisco Ballet School, commuting daily for 10 years. She sides with the San Francisco youngster who filed suit against the school for denying her admittance because of her body type.
"I'm on her side," she says. "I saw so many students getting sick, even dying, during my ballet school days, because of eating disorders. It's rampant. It would be healthier to send a new message. I'm lucky because my metabolism is steady."
Los Gatan Jenni Chiarelli
She doesn't do any strenuous dieting, though she is careful about what she eats. "I have to make sure I eat enough to maintain the energy needed." She doesn't consider ballet necessarily the most demanding of the arts. "All of the arts are demanding."
As for the company she keeps, "I was happy to join the company, to work here when the offer was made, and to continue working with Dennis." She calls Nahat extremely musical: "The way he uses music is so complex." (Nahat was a Juilliard graduate, so music ranks right up there with dance in his lexicon.)
And the director is very theatrical: "You get to act a lot," as opposed to miming, Rawson says. Indeed, the acting part is one of the things she enjoys most about her work. "I love to do the psycho people, the comic acts," she says, and as Maria, "I love the battle scene, playing with the kids."
The kids are the 85 children from the Ballet Academy who play mice in the production--with much skittering movement. The children are double or triple cast: 25 appear in each production. Advanced students appear as snowflakes.
The ballet school director is Donna Delseni, who says she sees her role as twofold. Besides producing professional dancers, the school is also "building a community of people that appreciate and have a commitment to this art form because of how it has enriched their lives. I'm thrilled that the company is now based [solely in San Jose]. It makes all the difference," Delseni says.
Saratoga native Dalia Rawson
Some 346 students are currently enrolled in the ballet school and of those, 86 are adults. Members of the company help teach, besides providing living examples to inspire these students.
Envisioning life as a ballet dancer is immediately driven home when the little girls' hair is swept back in the traditional ballet knot, pinned by those helping with the instruction and demonstrations, Delseni says. "The transformation is amazing. How their eyes sparkle!"
The ballet school offers classes in all kinds of dance and movement, besides the basics in ballet--character, ethnic dances, modern, jazz, technique, some partnering, some choreography. Flamenco is offered in the summer and a class in Indian dancing is in the offing, as well.
Ballet San Jose prides itself on promoting a highly accessible ballet program. To this end Director Delseni introduced a program last spring called Next Step, wherein free ballet classes are offered for a semester to students who have taken a two-hour introductory class at the school, also free, and who want to continue.
Georgina Coleman is the main instructor for Next Step. Schools are alerted to the two-hour introductory class and can treat it as a field trip. After the initial lesson and demonstrations, parents need to call in for their children who are interested in continuing.
Los Gatan Zuri Goldman
After the free semester of training, which also includes costuming, students can then enter mainstream classes, receiving scholarships, if needed. Six students from the pilot class of 21 youngsters are now enrolled in the mainstream program, some with tuition assistance.
Another indication of how Ballet San Jose reaches out to the community are the two free student matinees offered for each production. Thanks to this invitation, some 2,500 school children--many of whom may never have seen a live production before--attend each show.
A free slide show lecture is also offered to correspond with each presentation during its run. These dance dialogues are held in various libraries and include tips on what to watch for, a history of the ballet and backstage anecdotes.
In 1999, the ballet acquired its own fully unionized 56-member orchestra, conducted by Dwight Oltman. Three pianists play accompaniment for the ballet school students.
Head honcho Dennis Nahat is a prolific choreographer and has created some 75 ballets for his company and others, both domestically and internationally--each bearing his unique stamp. Nahat performed with the Joffrey and the American Ballet Theatre.
Photograph Courtesy of Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley
Members of the new Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley will present 'Gaite Parisian' Feb. 22-25. This performance took place in 1992.
On Broadway he was choreographer for Jumpers, Good Time Charlie and Two Gentlemen of Verona. In movies, the ballet work for Anne Bancroft in The Turning Point was his. He also appeared in a vignette role in that movie. He has designed the movement for operas and Shakespearean plays.
Nahat calls his company a dancer's company, as compared to a star-centered one. He stresses technical skill, musicality and theatricality. Because he chooses dancers with personality, he has to be far more innovative in his choreography, says Donna Delseni.
There's nothing cookie-cutter about the BSJSV lineup. Nahat doesn't worry about his dancers being the same height: He looks for artistry, Delseni adds. The next audition in San Jose for the ballet company is Jan. 21. The number is 408.288.2820.
This founder/director is incredibly musical. "He can sing the entire score during a rehearsal when the pianist isn't around," says Delseni. "He always likes to push his dancers to a level they didn't think they could reach."
And he ends up teaching everyone. 'There is room for everyone at my barre,'" she has heard him say.
Nahat himself says, "I create ballets for my dancers to bring out the best in them and to expand in them what they do not know they possess. [Ours is] a company that is uniquely unified in its diversity, communicating in the language they all know best--dance."
A special three-ballet subscriber series includes "Gaite Parisian" in February; "Celebration and Ode," a West Coast premiere April 26-29; and "Made in America" May 3-5, featuring Piano Man and Rainbow Round My Shoulder. The box office number is 408.288.2800.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
