Kansas City Ballet announces new executive director. Here are his ideas for its future

It’s always momentous when an arts organization hires a new executive director, especially when the outgoing director had a long and successful tenure. The Kansas City Ballet has just announced who will succeed Jeffrey Bentley, who has served as the company’s executive director since 1998.

David Gray, with an extensive career in both ballet and finance, seems the perfect choice to take the reins from Bentley. Gray will officially take over on July 1.

Gray’s career in ballet began when he became press director for the New York City Ballet. It was there he would meet his future wife, Kyra Nichols, a former principal dancer for the dance company. Gray would go on to found his own financial planning company whose clients included a large number of nonprofit organizations.

He was also executive director of American Repertory Ballet and Pennsylvania Ballet. In 2017, after his wife took a tenured position at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Gray decided to retire and devote his time to writing.

“My wife and I became empty-nesters, and I decided I should do something more than sit here quietly,” Gray said. “So I started looking around to see what was happening in the dance world, where most of my experience is. I saw that the Kansas City Ballet was looking for someone, and I made some calls.”

Gray said he wanted to learn more about the ballet’s artistic director, Devon Carney.

“A big part of what is going to make this work is the relationship between the executive director and the artistic director,” Gray said. “I didn’t know Devon, and I wanted to make sure before I even applied that I would like to work with him. After I got some kind and very warm responses from people who did know him, I thought, well, in that case, I’ll apply for the job. And I did.”

And he got it. It’s understandable why. Not only does Gray know and love dance, but he also has a head for finance, which, of course, is critical for anyone running a large nonprofit organization.

Gray was introduced to ballet at his first job out of college, working in the press office at Doubleday Publishing and meeting some of the ballet world’s biggest celebrities.

“Jackie Onassis was an editor there, and she did a lot of dance books,” Gray said. “I was arranging author interviews with people like Judith Jamison, Leslie Caron, Frances Mason, a wonderful dance writer, and Chris D’Amboise and his father, Jacques D’Ambroise. Through my Doubleday job, I met the press office at New York City Ballet.”

After leaving Doubleday, Gray was working as a bartender and a writer when he received a call from his friends at the ballet’s press office telling him there was a job opening and that he should apply.

“So I went to New York City Ballet’s office at Lincoln Center, which is an incredibly cool place to be,” Gray said. “I watched dancers walk in and out of this office, and I’m single and in my 20s. What idiot doesn’t take this job?”

Gray was hired to learn the job of the current press director because she was planning to leave in a year.

“She said she had problems with men who worked for her who had been ‘indiscreet,’ but she had known me for a few years and knew that I would be discreet,” Gray said. “I took it to mean don’t date dancers … but then I met Kyra.”

Gray married Nichols, and would work at New York City Ballet for four years before leaving to devote himself to writing. He long had plans to write a sequel to one of Shakespeare’s plays.

“In high school, I was extremely disappointed in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’” Gray said. “I thought it was a lousy thing to call a great romance because it set a really bad example for teenagers everywhere. My fantasy was to some day write part two, where they fake their suicides and escape across northern Italy. It’s called ‘Escape From Verona: Romeo and Juliet Part Two,’ and it’s still available on Amazon.”

Gray also became a certified financial planner. He says that his clients mostly seemed to have nonprofit backgrounds.

“When I would give them my intro about budgeting and the like, they’d say, ‘Gosh, my organization needs what you just told me,’” Gray said. “So that morphed into more of a nonprofit consulting firm. That led to a career as an itinerant executive director where people would call me and say, ‘I know an organization that’s kind of on fire, so come help us.’”

Luckily, Gray says, the Kansas City Ballet is not on fire.

“It’s been a really well-run organization for a really long time,” Gray said. “It’s very exciting to me that when I walk in the door, no one’s going to be in a panic. Well, they might be in a panic when they see me, but they aren’t going to be in a panic over the health of the organization. Jeff Bentley and his team have done a remarkable job.”

But Gray does see challenges ahead, the same challenges facing any large arts organization.

“There’s the bigger issue in ballet in general, not just the Kansas City Ballet, to increase the diversity of ballet in every facet,” Gray said. “The problem is that we don’t train enough dancers of color and we don’t retain them long enough in our programs for them to become the excellent dancers that we need.”

Gray says that in recent years, ballet companies have made a serious effort to attract boys and men. He says those efforts have been successful, and he would like to see similar initiatives directed to dancers of color.

“The ballet world has bent over backward to create opportunities and to find ways for boys to stay with ballet,” Gray said. “We have special classes, we make sure they have male teachers, we have scholarship programs. And we tell them constantly how wonderful they are. There are a lot of things the ballet world has done to address this issue. The question I have is so how do we do the same thing for dancers of color?”

Gray says that those with the answer to that question are people of color themselves.

“We’re not going to be able to address this and move forward if we don’t listen to those uncomfortable conversations and try and grow and change from that,” Gray said. “So I see that a big part of my role going forward is to try to figure out how to make sure that we are an inviting place.”

Of course, finances are an ongoing challenge.

“We have to find a lot of money,” Gray said. “I know the company’s gotten a great deal of support. The community support is actually really impressive.”

But in the end, it’s all about the dance. During a Zoom session with The Star, Gray sits in front of a wall of photos of his wife when she was a ballerina — what he calls his “shrine.” He obviously has a deep love of ballet. He says that basically his main purpose is to ensure that Carney has the money and tools he needs to make his artistic visions come true.

“I think Devon does excellent work, he has passion, he’s kind, he’s dedicated,” Gray said. “Devon has ambitions and things he wants to do, and those also got put on hold because of COVID. I would love to make sure that Devon is getting the artistic opportunities that he wants to continue to grow and excite him.

”You can reach Patrick Neas at patrickneas@kcartsbeat.com and follow his Facebook page, KC Arts Beat, at www.facebook.com/kcartsbeat.