BECKET, MA – In keeping with his history as a dancer who regularly threw up from nerves before performances, as of the morning before the Sarasota Ballet’s final performance at Jacob’s Pillow, Artistic Director Iain Webb had yet to read the half dozen reviews that had come in assessing his company’s week-long residency at America’s most venerable dance festival.
“After,” said Webb, referring to a time following the company’s final performance Sunday afternoon, when he would allow himself to read the critiques. “Then I’ll decide which ones to cut up for toilet paper and which ones will go in the archives.”
Dancers of the Sarasota Ballet and co-directors Iain Webb and Margaret Barbieri, pose on the "Pillow Rock" at Jacob's Pillow, where the company had a successful debut. The dancers are wearing t-shirts that read "#weightless," given to them as a thank-you gift by their colleague, Ricardo Graziano, whose newest ballet, "In a State of Weightlessness," had its world premiere at the festival. / HT photo by Carrie Seidman
In fact, Webb had little to fear. The company’s first appearance at this historic venue, which kicks off its 25th anniversary season, was almost universally acclaimed and principal dancer and choreographer in residence Ricardo Graziano’s newest work warmly embraced.
New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay -- greatly enamored of the works of British choreographer Frederick Ashton which have given the company its rising profile -- opined that “the Sarasota achievement in Ashton choreography would be cause for warmest congratulation in a British company; to find it in an American company based in a city perched on the Gulf of Mexico is beyond extraordinary.” Janine Parker of the Boston Globe called “In a State of Weightlessness,” Graziano’s seventh work for the company, “indeed weighted, with intensity and beauty.” And the Berkshire Eagle summed up the initial performance as, simply, “an enchanting debut.”
What Webb and his wife and assistant director Margaret Barbieri, were willing to admit to, even before the end of the run, was a great pride in the achievement and performance of their dancers.
“They’ve come into the spotlight and done themselves, the choreographers and the city proud,” said Webb. “And what’s most amazing is they just love it. For them, you can see that it’s more about the dancing than just where they are.”
Sarasota Ballet principal dancer and choreographer-in-residence, Ricardo Graziano. / Photo by Barbara Banks
Where they were, however, marked a significant peak in the company’s history. Founded by modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn in the early ‘30s, the “Pillow,” as it is affectionately called, has hosted a pantheon of dance greats over its 80+ year history, and launched many an artist, company and choreographer’s career.
So, after the farm house bell had called visitors to the historic Ted Shawn Theatre for the performance Sunday afternoon, after the dancers took their final bows and the fervent applause had dwindled to a trickle, there was time to reflect on just what this well-received showing will mean for the future of the company, its director, and Graziano, its rising star choreographer.
Even before the dancers caught their flight back to Sarasota today, Webb was headed to New York City for scheduled interviews with the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveller and Forbes magazine. And though it has yet to be formally announced, the company has already committed to a week-long residency at a New York City theater next summer. With the Sarasota Ballet no longer a regional secret, more doors will surely be opening.
The original farmhouse at Jacob's Pillow, founded by modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn in the 1930s as a retreat and rehearsal space. / HT photo by Carrie Seidman
While delighted with the reception for his newest work, “In a State of Weightlessness,” which Jacob’s Pillow scholar-in-in-residence Nancy Wozny called it “something that will be on his resume forever,” Graziano said he has no intention of abandoning either his dancing career, or Sarasota. While he did not perform in his own work, he did dance in the two other works on Sarasota’s triple bill here, Ashton’s “Monotones I & II” and Christopher Wheeldon’s “The American.”
“My priority is still the Sarasota Ballet,” said the 28-year-old. “I still want to dance and I’m not going to say yes to anything just because I’m asked. I can choreograph when I’m older, but I can only dance for so long.”
Juan Gill and Danielle Brown in Ricardo Graziano's "In a State of Weightlessness," which had its world premiere at Jacob's Pillow. / Photo by Frank Atura
And Webb -- who bought a home in Sarasota and signed an unheard-of 10-year contract last year to quell insecurity about his intentions after visitors who “didn’t just ‘happen’ to be in Sarasota” started showing up at performances -- also professed no attraction to moving on to a higher profile situation.
“I certainly wouldn’t want to take over the Royal Ballet,” he said of the company where he danced and was mentored by Ashton. “I can’t be bothered with all the politics. I am fortunate to have a board that understands and supports what I do and to know that people have opened their hearts” – and wallets, an observer noted – “to this company.”
The familiar outdoor stage at Jacob's Pillow, where "Inside/Out," performances by emerging artists, are offered nightly for free. / HT photo by Carrie Seidman
But as always, he was reluctant to project too far into the future. With its still-skeletal administrative staff, “there are still a lot of things we need to fix in the organization,” Webb noted. And the ambitious home season that lies ahead – which includes two more Ashton ballets, “Enigma Variations” and “Marguerite and Armand,” neither of which has ever been performed by an American company – will absorb plenty of attention before the company’s first performances in Sarasota in October.
Webb said he will continue to be judicious in his acceptance of invitations elsewhere and has advised Graziano to be equally careful in choosing where his growing collection of ballets might be performed. The company maintains rights over Graziano’s ballets for a few more years and Webb is closely mentoring his prodigy in terms of new projects and the staging of his work elsewhere.
“Even though we’ve had a very nice reception here, if someone came up to me tomorrow and asked if we’d like to dance at the Met (the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City), I would say no,” he said. “It’s just what I’m telling Ricardo – be very selective. Don’t walk into the sweets shop and just grab the chocolate bar in front of you. It may be worth waiting until you can reach the one of the top shelf. Sometimes it pays to take the scenic route.”
That scenic route surely included the visit to this bucolic dance campus in the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts, which provided the company not only with an artistic challenge, but a week of peaceful rural life on this former farm that dates back to the late 18th century. The dancers enjoyed classes in a studio resembling a wood-raftered barn, poured through the Pillow’s extensive archive collection, ambled down the pebbled paths of the 200+ acre campus, and added their names and messages to the verbiage-crowded walls of the dressing rooms, alongside those of such illustrious past visitors as Margot Fonteyn and Martha Graham.
Sarasota Ballet dancers gather around Nicole Padilla as she peruses a book about the ballet of British choreographer Frederick Ashton in Blake's Barn, which houses the Jacob's Pillow archives. / HT photo by Carrie Seidman
Visit Sarasota County, Sarasota’s visitor’s bureau, set up a colorful tent on the Jacob’s Pillow grounds, hoping to lure more dance lovers to the Gulf Coast, and an estimated 50 Sarasotans made the trip to rally around the home team, not all of them well-known supporters. Webb professed to be stunned by the number of people “I’d never seen before” who said they were regular attendees in Sarasota and Jacob’s Pillow’s executive and artistic director Ella Baff said more than once over the week, “If every community had the civic pride in their company that Sarasota has, the dance world would be in great shape.”
It was a welcome and satisfying affirmation for Webb who inherited a company in 2007 that was both artistically and financially precarious. Over the past eight years, he has transformed and enlarged the makeup of the ensemble – only one dancer, Kate Honea, who was unable to make the trip here due to injury, remains from the pre-Webb days – and its repertoire, which now boasts the largest collection of Ashton ballets in the world, as well as an unusual diversity of works by different choreographers, in various styles.
“What’s amazing to see is the change that’s happened the last few years,” said Webb. “People understand now just what we’ve got in Sarasota. And what we can have in the future.”
Interested?
For season subscription ($100-$698) or single tickets ($35-$105) to the Sarasota Ballet and more information on its 2015-2016 25th anniversary season, call 359-0099 or go to www.sarasotaballet.org.
For Carrie Seidman's complete coverage of the company trip to Jacob's Pillow, go to www.heraldtribune.com/jacobspillow.
