Dark clouds on the South Bay arts scene haven’t blotted out the light, not as long as New Ballet provides a luminous silver lining. The March 13 Peninsula Lively Arts announcement that Peninsula Ballet Theatre is shutting down at the end…
New Ballet founder and director Dalia Rawson works with choreographer Erica Patton and New Ballet dancers in a rehearsal for the upcoming Fast Forward festival.is shutting down at the end of June after six decades of training young dancers and presenting well-conceived productions was a shock but not a surprise given its high profile, ultimately unsuccessful, search for a new facility.
New Ballet faced a similar challenge several years ago, relocating in downtown San Jose just months before the pandemic put almost every performing arts organization on hiatus. With the company’s 10th season coming up in the fall and its 9th annual Fast Forward festival filling the Hammer Theatre Center with a promisingly eclectic program of new works this weekend, New Ballet seems to have cracked the code for connecting with South Bay dance fans. “Things really changed for performing arts after the pandemic, but ticket sales are rebounding,” said Dalia Rawson, choreographer and founding director of New Ballet. “The enrollment at our school is about 220. The upper levels are doing really well, but classes for 3-to 7-year-olds have not fully come back. Families are doing fewer activities, and it feels like we have to keep adapting.” Fast Forward, which plays March 27 and 28, is perfectly adapted to TikTok-era velocity, with a program featuring new works set on New Ballet dancers by illustrious choreographers and budding dance-makers from the company’s ranks. Montreal-based, Cuban choreographer Julio Hong, known for his work with Cirque du Soleil, has created a piece set to music by Cuban trumpet great Arturo Sandoval. Emmy Award-winning San Francisco choreographer, filmmaker, and composer Natasha Adorlee presents “Enraptured,” one of several pieces she’s premiered recently for leading Bay Area companies, including Oakland Ballet and Axis Dance Company. In May, Oklahoma City Ballet premieres her new dance set to the music of soul great Otis Redding, one of several major commissions she’s got coming up. “She’s really sought after, and the work she created for us is so good,” Rawson said. “It’s energetic and rhythmic, fun and funny, with moments of real lightness. There’s no way you can’t be rocked to your core, and it’s going to close the program.” Rawson connected with Adorlee through Amy Seiwert, the glass-ceiling shattering choreographer who became the third artistic director for Smuin Ballet in 2024. Adorlee had worked with Seiwert’s company Imagery, and Seiwert knew Rawson as a dancer from a short run with Smuin Ballet back in 2004. Tapped by Michael Smuin for a choreographic protégé program, Seiwert got to work with Rawson while developing a new piece, “and she was fantastic to create on,” Seiwert recalled. Rawson had spent decades with Ballet San Jose as a dancer and running various programs when it shuttered in 2016 . She launched New Ballet to fill the void, “and to see what she held onto from that seed and what that has grown into is so impressive,” Seiwert said. “Dalia is a badass and nothing stops her. I’m so impressed by her passion and love for the field.” A central component of the Fast Forward concept is to give New Ballet dancers the opportunity to participate in the creation of a disparate array of new works. Rawson notes that the expectations for dancers when she was coming up were much more constrained. “Dancers now are both allowed and expected to be contributors, not just be a vessel,” she said. “You have to have your own movement voice, and be able to improvise or create a movement based on an idea from a choreographer. Those are all skills you have to build.” Rawson has created her own work for Fast Forward, a ballet/tap collaboration with New Ballet guest artist Erica Patton set to several pieces by the sadly disbanded Bay Area chamber ensemble Tin Hat. The program also features new works by Mariana Sobral, director of San Francisco’s eMotion Arts Dance, and award-winning dancer Joseph Phillips, co-founder and co-director of San Mateo’s El Camino Ballet school. In many ways, Fast Forward embodies New Ballet’s steady growth, first moving to the Hammer Theatre for a single night in 2023 and then adding a second show last year. For the company’s 10th season in 2026-27 New Ballet is partnering with Symphony San Jose and moving from the Hammer to the California Theater for the spring program, “a huge step for us,” Rawson said. And unlike the situation for too many arts organization in these difficult times, it’s a step in the right direction.California governor debate draws backlash over who made the stageAsking Eric: My friends tell me I'm lucky. Who can I talk to about what my husband does?San Jose: Family seethes as judge further reduces sentence in 1987 capital murder caseEnd of the road coming for legal battle over gate in Fremont
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