Kansas City Ballet
Kansas City Ballet is marking its 50th anniversary with a season-long celebration. Along with assorted local performances, parties and galas, the Missouri company will make its Kennedy Center debut, spend a week performing at New York’s Joyce Theater and honor its heritage by mounting an entire season of works never before performed by the company, including a new Donald McKayle ballet that pays tribute to the golden age of jazz in Kansas City.
All this follows last season, when KCB earned its highest revenues ever, breaking box-office records with a production of Carmen, choreographed by Artistic Director William Whitener. The company is now poised to move into new digs in a historic power plant that once fueled Kansas City’s Union Station. By 2009, the site will be transformed into a state-of-the-art home for KCB’s studios and administrative offices. And, as part of a major initiative to reinvigorate downtown Kansas City, a grand performing arts center is undergoing construction and will become the company’s new performance venue in 2010.
But what really makes KCB an exciting place to dance is its diverse repertoire of 185 ballets, which includes works by Alvin Ailey, Twyla Tharp, George Balanchine, Antony Tudor, Agnes de Mille, Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham.
“I’ve never gotten bored here,” says Kimberly Cowen, who has danced with KCB for 17 years. “We do such a wide variety of styles that I’ve always felt challenged, and it’s a great surprise each year to learn what new kinds of things we’ll be doing.”
Perhaps the most unusual aspect of KCB’s vast repertoire is Whitener’s recent solo series. The new initiative provides company members the opportunity to study and perform historically significant dance solos ranging from Michel Fokine’s The Dying Swan to modern dance classics by Isadora Duncan, Lotte Goslar, Anna Sokolow and Mary Wigman.
Since he came to KCB in 1996, Whitener has been educating audiences on how to look at choreography. “Solos are a great way to get an audience to focus on choreography,” says Whitener. “By being able to [concentrate] on one person, viewers take in the nature of a piece more deeply. Also, solo performance is a uniquely challenging experience for the dancer. Dancers develop enormously as performers when they’re in that situation. So we try to feature each of our dancers individually.”
Founded in 1957 by Tatiana Dokoudovska, a soloist with the Original Ballet Russe, KCB began as a civic ballet and turned professional in 1976. In 1981, former New York City Ballet principal Todd Bolender took over and established a notable national profile for the company.
“This is a great place to work,” says dancer Christopher Barksdale, now in his 20th season with KCB. “It’s a friendly environment. The dancers strongly support one another and the leadership really cares about nurturing us as artists.”
Lisa Jo Sagolla is the dance critic and movement columnist for Back Stage and the author of The Girl Who Fell Down: A Biography of Joan McCracken.
