Artistic directors discuss dance. (News).

As part of the National Ballet of Canada's fiftieth-anniversary season, Artistic Director James Kudelka hosted the first-ever international conference of artistic directors from major classical ballet companies, May 16-20. The open forum took place on the afternoon of May 18, when the public faced off with Kudelka, Frank Andersen (Royal Danish Ballet), Reid Anderson (Stuttgart Ballet), Monica Mason (assistant artistic director, The Royal Ballet), Peter Martins (New York City Ballet), Kevin McKenzie (American Ballet Theatre), Mikko Nissinen (Boston Ballet), Francia Russell (Pacific Northwest Ballet), Matz Skoog (English National Ballet) and Helgi Tomasson (San Francisco Ballet).

The Toronto press corps had grumbled about the lack of a private session where dance writers could ask hard-edged questions, and was proven to be right. Except for Grant Strate's brilliant keynote address, the interfacing was, in a word, lame, and the questions from the audience feeble. Strate, a former NBC dancer and choreographer and the founder of two important Canadian university dance programs, touched on very important topics, tracing the history of artistic directors from autocrat to corporate CEO, and raising significant points about the bottom line versus artistic integrity. Alone among the participants, Skoog attempted to introduce provocative issues. For example, he declared outright that artistic directors have to back winners at the expense of exciting creativity. The others preferred to duck, deflect, or soften the issues. In fact, lack of interest led some of the audience to decamp during the break.

This frustrated writer raised two issues which, again, were not directly answered--the growing gap between European and North American aesthetics and the fact that ballet audiences do not reflect the cultural mosaic of urban society at large. These two concerns were, however, among the eight key issues highlighted in the joint communique that was distributed to the press and the public at the summit's end. In fact, the communique was everything that the public portion of the forum was not, clearly stating significant topics for ongoing discussion (which, it was announced, will occur on an annual basis), including broadening the scope of professional dance training, combating the myth of ballet's elitism, balancing artistic heritage with creation of new works, providing choreographic opportunities for new voices, identifying the best practices in arts administration, and intensifying community outreach. The group also avowed that they were allies and not competitors, and thus, future discussions about mutual concerns could only benefit them all.