Tallahassee Ballet's history: 50 years, countless Claras and a spacious new home

What a difference 50 years can make! Even two or three when they’re “COVID years.”

With a smile of triumph and gratitude, Tallahassee Ballet CEO Janet Pichard stands in the newly renovated 14,000-square-foot, world-class premises of Tallahassee’s oldest professional dance company.

Now situated in the Northampton Centre, this Sunday, Aug. 21, the company will celebrate its Silver Anniversary with an Open House at the new northeast Tallahassee site.

From a small band of dancers led in 1972 by Helen Salter, a former Balanchine dancer with the New York City Ballet who had dreams of inspiring careers in dance for others, to today’s paid principals and soloists and the large corps de ballet, the Tallahassee Ballet has done what so many other local or national companies have not done — it has grown and prospered.

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With just so many “arts dollars” available, and a worldwide pandemic that caused Pichard to initially make huge cuts in the Tallahassee Ballet’s budget, the boldness and successful management of the organization as seen today is astounding.

Pichard, who has been with the Tallahassee Ballet for the last 12 years, is eager to show off the company’s new digs, a northside location that once was a power-lifting gym, but now is a mirrored, music-filled, conservatory where girls lift their legs far above their heads and young men stretch out muscles and prepare to spin. But getting here has been a long road.

Out of the basement

Even though the Tallahassee Ballet had its beginning in 1972 as a small concert group that drew its dancers from local dance studios, it soon became clear that without a school to provide a steady revenue, existing on ticket sales alone would not sustain the organization. Thus, a school was created.

Lauded names from the past provide contributed their immense talents: Nancy Carroll Abbey, Joyce Straub, resident choreographer, Kathryn Cashin.  Straub and Cashin were responsible for the company’s first full-length ballet, “The Nutcracker,” in 1986, and Cashin continues her association with the company to this day.

From an original practice site in the basement of the Northwood Mall, the Tallahassee Ballet and school found rehearsal venues at the old library on Monroe, a Third Avenue setting, and in 2013 settled into street-level units at the Northwood Centre.

With eager students from the by-then thriving school, the company would go on to create a repertoire of 34 classical and romantic pieces, seven full-length ballets, 47 modern and jazz pieces, and six children’s ballets.

Artistic directors across the years provided professional knowledge from their own careers: Henry Hernandez who had danced in Belgium and as principal dancer with the Orlando Ballet; Rick McCullough, who is now on the faculty of Florida State University; and since 2013, Tyrone Brooks, a principal dancer and teacher with the Dance Theatre of Harlem, whose administrative and artistic vision has helped the company expand, each brought their own aesthetic and advanced the understanding of what ballet can bring to a community.

A sparkling new space

It is almost 6 p.m. and beneath a sparkling chandelier, a dozen little girls in black leotards and pink tights are stretching and arching, pointing toes, and going through the positions of the arms that they must remember when their class begins in the first of the three massive studios.

Here, with portable barres and mirror-covered walls, they develop an understanding of how the body works, the discipline of repetition, and how frustration can be conquered with practice. And all of it wrapped in a kind of musical dream.

Down a wide hall, another large classroom holds the advanced dancers, company apprentices and members. Each one slender, their physical power is nevertheless astounding. A pianist plays a bounding mazurka to which the young men and women soar in a series of “faille, assemble’, faille, cabriole” combinations that take them across a room that fills in for a stage. Athletes, certainly. Artists, for sure.

Out in the hall, Janet Pichard looks in through a one-way glass that allows parents or other observers to watch without distracting the dancers. She won’t stay long even though she herself was both a dancer and a dance teacher. Instead, she will soon be back in her office using some of her other skills at administration and marketing, artistic coordination, and fundraising.

Journey to a new home

But first, as Pichard walks along a glistening corridor to show a visitor the costume and storage area for sets, she muses about the journey Tallahassee Ballet has made — and its recent challenges.

“When the City decided it needed the Northwood Center, where we’d been housed for six years, for the site of the new Police Headquarters, we still had two years on our existing lease. For our needs — classroom and rehearsal space, storage and costume manufacture, we required lots of square footage. And that was not going to be easy to find,” she says.

Yet, the large space at Northampton, they thought, might just do the trick. With careful negotiation with the City, the Tallahassee Ballet was able to apply the two-year monetary difference between their old lease and the new property’s lease to secure the Northampton site.

“With the amazing help of GRC architects and Construction Solutions this amazing facility, complete with custom floors for dancers, would be created,” Pichard said.

But only months before moving in, COVID did too. Pichard says she was ruthless. “I immediately slashed our budget by 80%. I cut most of the staff. Cancelled performances. Then, we had no idea what the pandemic had in store for us," Pichard said.

She also wasn’t sure where the money would come from to complete the build-out of the Ballet’s new center. “Thank goodness, I discovered “Shuttered venues grants,” PPP Loans, and staffing grants,” she says. With these sources, and Pichard’s pre-emptive cuts, the Tallahassee Ballet not only weathered the worst of the pandemic, but now, like the dancers next door, is soaring.

290 students, 37 classes a week

With a current budget of $900,000, the CEO hopes to raise it to a million within the next years. “We have 290 students, teach 37 classes a week, and are able to actually pay our principals and soloists.” The new location, she says, has only added to the numbers wishing to learn to dance.

Janet Pichard then turns the key on a magical room at the end of the hall. It is the costume room, located just across from the space where theatrical furniture and props are stored. The costume room has a strange scent, clean, yet warm—alive in the way that memories might be.

Here on hangers are Clara’s white dress from "The Nutcracker"; jackets with gold-braid; long blue and rose and lavender skirts of tulle; and drawers of jeweled tutus, their stiff netting glittering with rhinestones and pearls.

Sewing machines are lined up against one wall where the seamstresses and designers create and alter the costumes for one Snow Queen after another, or cygnets who have grown into swans. It is the dreams and experiences, the curtain calls remembered, and the aspirations that survive that animate this quiet room of stage cloth.

Pichard locks the doors and glances in again at the dancers, who are tying on pink satin shoes. They are in rehearsal for “Sounds of Brazil,” on Sept.23 and 25, and later, for the “Nutcracker” in December.

Going to schools with 'Dance Chance'

With Leon County schools now open, the Tallahassee Ballet will also be taking its artistry into the schools and community with the Title I program, “Dance Chance,” and professional TB performances for $8 during the season will be presented for bussed-in school students at Ruby Diamond Hall.

This weekend’s “Backstage at the Ballet” is another of the many ways the Tallahassee Ballet hopes to invite the community into their world and celebrate their 50th Anniversary. Sunday, from 3 to 4:15 p.m. children can meet “Clara,” “Cinderella,” and even Frozen’s “Elsa and Anna,” and from 4:30-5:30 adults can sip a glass of wine as they watch Tallahassee Ballet dancers rehearse and take a tour of the new Northampton Centre, the doors will be open and the music playing.

And Janet Pichard will likely be seen smiling beneath a pretty chandelier.

If you go

What: Silver Anniversary Open House at the Tallahassee Ballet

When: Sunday, August 21, 3-4:15 PM for children; 4:30-5:30 for adults and older children.

Where: Tallahassee Ballet in the Northampton Centre, 2910 Kerry Forest Pkwy. Check out the Tallahassee Ballet on Facebook or visit tallahasseeballet.org.

Marina Brown can be contacted at mcdb100@comcast.net Brown is the author of four Gold-Medal-winning books, including the 2020 RPLA Book of the Year.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Resilient Tallahassee Ballet marks 50th anniversary with open house