Ahead.

The approaching millenium seems to have stimulated a widespread tendency to predict the future. People in the arts, under fire and underfunded, have some particularly rich and risky areas for speculation. Where are we going? You may well ask. The answers are upbeat.

A three-day Dance Critics Association conference in New York City in early June hosted a panel discussion that was moderated by Dance Magazine senior editor Doris Hering. It included four company directors whose outlook and accomplishments outside the traditional urban centers are playing a vital role in the future of dance in terms of training, employment, community awareness, and the development of new talent. As part of what Hering calls the "middle register companies," these organizations represent a thriving trend in the arts--the "regional" arts organization which has done immeasurable good for theater, music, opera, and dance. A comparison of the companies represented on the panel would show that each has between twenty and forty dancers on contracts offering as many as thirty-two weeks of work. Each has a budget somewhere between $1.5 and $3 million. And each evolved out of the regional ballet movement--the oldest being forty-four years old, the youngest, twenty-five.

Representing these companies on the panel were their artistic directors (two of them also CEOs of their boards): Dermot Burke, Dayton Ballet; Martin Fredmann, Colorado Ballet (see pages 68-71 for a review of Colorado's spring program); Alun Jones, Louisville Ballet; and Kirk Peterson, Hartford Ballet. Although the work of each of these directors--and their companies--is very different, there are shared interests, concerns, and accomplishments. Most important of all, perhaps, is the openly positive forecast they had for the future of dance in America.

Here are a few of the subjects they talked about:

Regional theater, Hering said, has become a term of respect, a movement that has flourished, whereas when we say regional dance, the connotations "are still, after all these years, distinctly provincial." Not nice. But the artistic directors disagreed, in theory at least. For many generations "regional" companies in Russia, France, and other European countries have been a source of talent, and this concept has taken hold in the States with some spectacular results. The panelists insisted that the charge of provincialism is archaic, unfair.

Each of these companies has produced an impressive number of the evening-length classics, always a great challenge; each offers a range of repertoire that Peterson said dancers are hungry to perform. Each has developed a forum for new works and has offered opportunities for aspiring, sometimes untried choreographers. (See page 25 for a story on the demise of the Carlisle Project.) Each has a school connected with the company. (Our Great Starts series--see pages 44-46--regularly explores regional teachers and the dancers they cultivate.) Each of the directors came into his current directorship after retiring as a professional dancer; three of the four provide their companies with a substantial core of choreography.

They read their mission statements (used primarily for fund-raising, to describe a dance company's aims). These showed many similar concerns--providing strong classical training in their schools, developing a broad repertoire, reaching ethnically diverse audiences, establishing community out-reach, and building financial stability.

The Balanchine repertory as disbursed through the Balanchine Trust--a model for such organizations--is considered by these directors to be one of the great assets of modern times, although it was pointed out that Balanchine ballets are still new to audiences served by these "middle register companies." But the same audiences, Fredmann said, are becoming more sophisticated with continuing exposure. The four companies derive major financial support from their local communities. Surprisingly, NEA money never played a significant role in their budgets; they've found funding for many years outside that context. Fredmann also observed that developing young audiences also draws in parents and teachers, whose level of interest and support increases measurably.

When asked about the quality of the dancers available for work in regional companies today, there was a strong, positive response: "I think what most people don't realize is that there are more very, very good ballet dancers in America than ever before. And they need jobs," Burke insisted. Peterson concurred, "There are more good dancers outside New York now than ever before."

In his keynote address to the entire association, Alan Kriegsman, recently retired dance critic of the Washington Post, warned the dance critics--and anybody else who thinks seriously about the future of dance--that the field is sound but the road may be bumpy. "Simply getting by will be hard enough [in the years to come] given the opposing forces, but in the world that is almost upon us, those without the moral vision to embrace the oneness of humanity and to treasure the cornucopia of its cultural diversity as a blessing will be headed toward the tunnel of oblivion."

None of us wants oblivion, of course, and the dangers of a "mean-spirited clannishness" have to be considered beside the alternative, what Kriegsman calls the "onrushing current of globalization."

Predictions? "We can hide from, perhaps, but we cannot escape, the future," Kriegsman concluded. "I say, let's embrace it with open hearts, minds, and arms."

And the new spirit of regional dance that holds so much promise and opportunity seems to be doing just that.