Ballet to hold new type of fundraising event

Company's spring show is inspiration for sock-hop event

By Kate Carter

The ballet is cutting loose this year.

And it's looking for about 400 people to join it in celebrating and supporting its past and continued success at its Shake, Rattle and Roll fundraiser April 6 from 5:30 to 11 p.m. at Santa Clara University's Leavey Center.

The event is Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley's primary annual fundraiser and is hosted by the Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley Council and Board of Trustees to benefit the company and its school. For, as any local nonprofit knows, it's getting difficult to attract contributions and donations that will keep it afloat during these tough times.

"The ballet is a business, too," says ballet Executive Director Andrew Bales, also a Willow Glen resident. "It happens to be one of those wonderful businesses in that the upside of what we do is so much fun."

It was fun for the San Jose Symphony, too, before it took a financially motivated break last year. And the ballet itself struck out on its own in September 2000, when it ended its partnership with Cleveland as the San Jose Cleveland Ballet, also for financial reasons. The ballet doesn't want to become another of those casualties of the economic downturn, and so is reminding its current and potential patrons of the value it has, as all arts do, for the cultural health of the valley.

"We think of ourselves as one of the crown jewels of the cultural crown," Bales says of the ballet. "We're the largest employer of professional artists in the South Bay region. Our mission is to serve the audience and the public."

What makes the San Jose ballet so special is its relatively unique focus on a different form of ballet. Most U.S. ballet companies, such as the San Francisco Ballet, perform in the Balanchine dance style. But San Jose performs in the tradition of the American Ballet Theatre.

"It's more theatrical, dramatic, mime and pantomime," Bales says. "We are, outside of New York City, probably the premier company of that kind. We are known as a leader in this particular style of dance. That's a great thing."

Several examples of its theatrical style are coming up for ballet fans. The ballet will perform Blue Suede Shoes, choreographed by company choreographer Dennis Nahat to 36 Elvis Presley recordings, April 11 through 14.

"We're the only company in the world to have the rights to Presley's music," Bales says. "This treats Elvis as a grand artist in a major way."

It will also perform Roland Petit's Carmen May 2 through 5.

The ballet's council, inspired by Blue Suede Shoes, decided to turn its traditional dinner-dance fundraising event into a sock hop this year.

"This is really very different," says Director of Development Jennifer Watkins, who also lives in Willow Glen. "This is much more playful. It's all built around Blue Suede Shoes, and there's going to be lots to do--it's not just a sit-down dinner. It's almost like a theater production. It's just like high school in the '50s."

Guests are encouraged to come dressed in attire of the '50s and will be offered hair salon services at the event to complete their images. People can get their dates corsages at a flower stand, visit "drive-in" and "pizza parlor" food stations and participate in a jitterbug contest led by about half of the company's dancers.

A silent and live auction will offer a trip to Italy, a sculpture by Ken Matsumoto and a black 2002 Harley Road King that "I'm told is a top-of-the-line Harley," Watkins says. "You never know who is interested in this sort of thing."

She says the council has about 400 tickets and has sold more than half already. Tickets are $250 per person and are available up to several days before the April 6 event.

"The sooner, the better, of course, because we need to have some time to do seating," Watkins says.

Last year's event netted $120,000 for the company. This year "we would be delighted with $150,000," she says.

That money would help the ballet overcome not only a recent shortage in corporate donations, Bales says, but also the extra expense of becoming its own company.

"Sustaining the level isn't the problem," he says. "The problem is that, in bringing the company here, we had to take on $2 million in expenses. Now we have to grow on a sustaining basis. Growing in the current economic climate is what's difficult."

The company has a budget of about $6.5 million to pay 40 dancers, 50 musicians and a host of other employees and costs, Bales says, with about half the money coming from box office sales and half from contributors. It has covered its expenses for about eight years, he says, but, "we still have quite a challenge this year to end in the black."

And the ballet has no interest in raising ticket prices.

"That hits the marketplace where it's most vulnerable," Bales says.

It would also make it more difficult for people to appreciate all the ballet has to offer. Willow Glen resident Marianna Hampton and her mother, Willow Glen resident Colleen Marelia, have served on the ballet's fundraising council for more than a decade, trying to help bring the ballet to as many as possible.

"We love the ballet," Hampton says. "I really think that a variety of art is really very important to the community in general."

Hampton has served as the council's president and is vice president of the council's boutique, which sells items at all the ballet's performances. She also does outreach about ballet to local community organizations.

"[Ballet is] probably the least known of the major arts," she says. "People understand the symphony, but they don't necessarily get the ballet."

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For more information or to RSVP to the fundraiser by March 26, call 408.997.7370 or 831.685.3148.

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