Oakland Ballet folds.Only months after celebrating its 40th birthday, the Oakland Ballet announced Jan. 31 that it was dissolving immediately, thereby ending a historic chapter in both the Bay Area and American dance. The principal culprit in the company's closure was financing. Box office revenue at the end of the critically commended 2005 fall season came up $129,000 short of projections. Oakland had previously gone on hiatus hiatus /hi·a·tus/ (hi-a´tus) [L.] an opening, gap, or cleft.hia´tal aortic hiatus the opening in the diaphragm through which the aorta and thoracic duct pass. in 2004-05 in order to undertake a (successful) $500,000 fundraising campaign. Karen Brown, the former Dance Theatre of Harlem Dance Theatre of Harlem, the first black classical ballet company. The group was founded in Harlem, New York City, by Arthur Mitchell, then of the New York City Ballet, the first black principal dancer of a classical company of international standing. dancer who became Oakland Ballet's artistic director in 2000, noted that "the company was in the eye of the perfect storm." Although individual donors had pledged $160,000 for the 2006 season, the city of Oakland added to the woes by permanently shutting the Calvin Simmons Theater, to which the company had relocated after its hiatus. Long before Brown's arrival, the Oakland Ballet had secured a place in the annals. Under founding artistic director Ronn Guidi, who retired abruptly in 1999, the company undertook an ambitious series of revivals and reconstructions of repertoire commissioned by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes Ballets Russes: see Diaghilev, Sergei Pavlovich. Ballets Russes Ballet company founded in Paris in 1909 by Sergey Diaghilev. Considered the source of modern ballet, the company employed the most outstanding creative talent of the period. , culminating in the first U.S. production of Bronislava Nijinska's Les Noces in 1981. Classic American ballets American Ballet was the first professional ballet company George Balanchine created in the United States. The company was founded with the help of Lincoln Kirstein, and was populated by students of Kirstein and Balanchine's School of American Ballet. were also programmed. At Guidi's invitation, dance legends Leonide Massine, Anna Sokolow Anna Sokolow (born February 9, 1910, Hartford, Connecticut; died March 29, 2000 in New York City, New York) was an American dancer and choreographer. She began her dance training with Martha Graham and Louis Horst at the Neighborhood Playhouse. , Ruthanna Boris, and Eugene Loring Eugene Loring (August 2, 1911-August 30, 1982) American ballet and other dance-forms dancer, choreographer and teacher and administrator.[1] Biography came to Oakland to stage their dances. Brown is looking ahead: "I firmly believe that there will come the right time, place, and financial circumstances for the return of a dance company based in Oakland serving the multicultural needs of the city." |
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