The Georgia Ballet
The Georgia Ballet has not lost sight of founder and longtime artistic director Iris Hensley’s vision. “We’re following in her footsteps, maintaining a strong work ethic, a solid base in the classics and adding to that the work of contemporary choreographers,” says current Artistic Director Gina Hyatt-Mazon.
From 1960 until her death in 2003, Hensley was the driving force behind the company (formerly Cobb/Marietta Ballet). Based in Marietta, Georgia, a northern suburb of Atlanta, the ballet grew out of a dance school in Hensley’s basement, becoming a preprofessional company and then, in the early 1990s, a professional one.
In 1997, Hyatt-Mazon and husband Janusz Mazon, both former principals with Hamburg Ballet, came to the company. “Gina and [ballet master] Janusz are great assets to this organization,” says Michele Ziemann-DeVos, a former member and current executive director. “They are what makes this organization unique and special. The quality of the company has risen dramatically since their arrival. They are master teachers, coaches and mentors, and the speed at which the level of artistry in our dancers has risen is like nothing I have ever seen.”
Along with the Mazons’ arrival came a rapid surge in the company’s size. Not only did the number of dancers double, so did subscriptions to the company’s public performance series.
Hyatt-Mazon renewed the focus on diversity, injecting new works into the company’s steady diet of story ballets such as The Nutcracker, Coppélia and The Sleeping Beauty. Of its three to four annual productions, the company now regularly offers new and contemporary ballets by choreographers such as Mazon, Peter Anastos, John Neumeier and Lloyd Whitmore, a member of the Georgia Ballet School faculty. The company also pays tribute to Hensley’s choreographic legacy by performing her ballets each season.
“When I talk to people after a performance who have seen us for the first time, they seem quite surprised that this little company from the suburbs could put on such a great show,” says second-year company member Kevin Steele. “The company has gotten much stronger in recent years, and I am excited to see what the future holds.”
Along with the company’s public performance series, nearly half of its annual performances are part of its Arts in Education outreach program, serving more than 14,000 area schoolchildren.
“Ms. Iris had a great desire to reach out into the community through dance,” says sixth-year company member Kara Hill-Protos. “Education is a company mission.”
In 2004, The Georgia Ballet purchased a new 13,000-square-foot facility, realizing one of its long-term goals. Other goals include increasing the company’s annual budget of $600,000, thus adding more performances and increasing the dancers’ contract weeks along with raising the company’s profile in the Atlanta area.
“We are a hard-working company,” says Hyatt-Mazon. “Our dancers have a great respect for the art of ballet and love to dance. Each year we are becoming more recognized in the community, but we are still not where I would like us to be.”
Steve Sucato is a dancer turned writer/critic based in Erie, PA. He writes regularly for several newspapers.
