Ballet West campaigns for new home. (News).

Ballet West hopes to become one of the few dance companies in the country to have all of its operations under one roof. On April 30, the company announced a $16 million capital campaign to fund expansion of its repertoire, enhance audience and education development, and most important, cover construction costs for a long-awaited state-of-the-art dance facility.

Artistic Director Jonas Kage, who took over the directorship five years ago, said at the campaign press conference, "That we have already embarked on the capital campaign for Ballet West is no less than truly amazing. There's a lot of anticipation and nervousness in the air, like before a big performance. But I feel we all share a belief that we will be successful. May the Force be with us." By late May the company had already raised more than $10 million.

Since 1978 Ballet West has occupied meager studio space at Salt Lake City's Capitol Theatre, where the company will continue to perform even after the new building goes up. When Kage took over in 1997, the company took a hard look at its goals (see "Ballet West Rediscovered," Dance Magazine, February, page 44). A permanent home for the company "became the crux of the entire long-range plan," Executive Director Johann Jacobs said.

The new 110,000-square-foot Jessie Eccles Quinney Center for Dance (named in honor of a generous lead donation from the S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney Foundation) will be home to eight studios, a costume shop, scenery shop, administrative offices, and the Ballet West Academy. The facility will occupy 2.1 acres of land in Salt Lake's Sugarhouse community--a neighborhood with schools, shopping, and some artists' studios. The company expected to break ground this summer and move in by September 2003. Although the building's prime purpose will be for dance, Ballet West also sees it as a community center that would host traveling art exhibits and chamber concerts and provide space for community events and meetings.

The new facility will also play a key role in the growth of the Ballet West Academy, whose approximately 150 students now use two small studios. Peter Christie, director of the Ballet West Outreach and Education Program, explained that having all operations in one place will afford the academy students the opportunity of working in close proximity with the professional company--something they have never had.

Christie anticipates exciting possibilities for educational outreach. Ballet West's goal is to take lecture-demonstrations and dance instruction to every school district in Utah within five to six years. The company hopes to equip the new center with technology that will allow it to transmit (via satellite or Internet) images and sound from the studios to schools all over Utah. The students and the dancers would be able to communicate back and forth. "The possibilities are limitless," Christie said.

"The building simply marks the beginning of the next phase. This building is not the ending in itself. It's the launching of what is yet to come for the ballet," Jacobs said.