Toni Pimble, Eugene Ballet’s Founding Artistic Director, Retires After 46 Years

After 46 years of leading Eugene Ballet, artistic director Toni Pimble is stepping down from the daily routine of running the company she and then-husband Riley Grannan co-founded in 1978.  Associate artistic director Jennifer Martin and resident choreographer Suzanne Haag, both of whom danced with the company for a number of years, will assume the positions of artistic director and associate artistic director, respectively.

That stewardship hasn’t kept the British-born Pimble from making over 60 ballets for the troupe she and Grannan built from the Eugene School of Ballet. Or stopped her from fulfilling commissions from ballet companies all over the U.S., including New York City Ballet (where she was part of the first Diamond Project in 1992), Atlanta Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Kansas City Ballet, Oklahoma City Ballet, and The Washington Ballet. She is the recipient of two Oregon Arts Commission Artist Fellowship Awards, a Choreographer’s Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Oregon Governor’s Arts Award.

Pimble danced professionally in state-supported companies in Germany, including Kiel (where she met Grannan, who retired as Eugene Ballet’s managing director in 2016), Bonn, and Mannheim, before moving to Oregon in 1978. By 1982, her company was ready to perform Pimble’s production of The Firebird for opening week of Eugene’s Hult Center for the Performing Arts, thanks to her talent for collaboration, and her willingness to do whatever it took to put on a show (including sewing costumes in the very early days). Today the company, which has grown to 17 company members and 7 aspirants, performs five programs a season there, accompanied by Orchestra Next. Their studios at the three-story Midtown Arts Center, designed by Pimble’s husband, architect Paul Dustrud, are state-of-the-art.

As a choreographer she has worked with composers, writers, and visual artists to create a repertoire that ranges from a child-pleasing Nutcracker to the deeply feminist Still Falls the Rain, inspired by reports of Taliban brutality against women. While the company performs work by a number of guest choreographers along with Pimble’s substantial repertoire, this season they are honoring her by performing solely her ballets. Pointe caught up with her in advance of the company’s performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to talk about her legacy and creative process.

How old were you when you knew you wanted to make dances?

I did not view making dances as the end goal of my career. I wanted to dance. Consequently, when Riley and I took over the Eugene School of Ballet and were invited to choreograph The Soldier’s Tale, it seemed natural that, to continue to perform, we would begin choreographing our own work.

Who are the choreographers you most admired when you were dancing?

In Kiel I loved working with ballet master Tony Taylor. In Bonn we worked with Milko Šparemblek, who created contemporary works, and Nils Christie from Nederlands Dance Theater. I had the privilege of dancing in Lothar Höfgen’s Bolero in Mannheim. At the same time, we visited Wuppertal and saw Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring and John Cranko’s ballets in Stuttgart, including his The Taming of the Shrew.

You once said one of the reasons you came to the United States was you thought you would have more opportunities to make ballets here than in Europe. Why?

Oddly enough, despite the lack of major government support of the arts in the U.S., I found that making our own way and building a company from the ground up with support from the community gave us the ability to grow slowly but continually. We were also in the right town at the right time. A bond measure soon passed to build the Hult Center, and there was a strong movement to support the local performing arts groups’ transition from high school auditoriums to a professional theater.

Looking at the body of your work, you seem to be primarily a storytelling choreographer. Apart from your own versions of existing stories—The Snow Queen, Peter Pan, The Nutcracker, Cinderella—what are your sources of inspiration?

As artistic director, I plan a season that will encourage families to attend. Children are our audience of the future. The story ballets were created with this in mind. Not all of the story ballets have had the ballerina as the main character. Mowgli: The Jungle Book Ballet, based on Rudyard Kipling’s books, has Mowgli as the main character, as does Peter Pan. When not choreographing story ballets I respond most strongly to specific pieces of music, The Lark Ascending [which premiered in April] being one such example.

What is your process when making a new ballet?

Depending on the complexity of the work, I begin with a synopsis if it is a story ballet and map out scenes, their length, characters involved, and more detailed notes. This usually goes hand in hand with research for music for the ballet. Working with Kenji Bunch, who has now composed two full-length ballets [for Eugene Ballet], I mapped out each scene with notes on what would take place in each one, its length, and what I thought the overall mood and, therefore, sound of the scene might be.

Do you make written notes?

When I first started choregraphing, I planned out in detail each piece and would write down steps. As I became more confident and experienced, I worked more with the dancers in the studio. I still make detailed notes of the music I am working with before I step into the studio and have a clear idea of where I am headed with a piece.

What advice do you have for beginning choreographers?

The only way to learn your craft is to practice it.

Is there anything you would have done differently?

Hah, that’s an impossible question. Since I didn’t do it differently, it’s hard to imagine what might have happened. The one thing I did that was right for me was to remain in Eugene. It has been a safe place for me to create, and for that I count myself extremely lucky.