The virtuosos next door: Brooklyn Ballet

By the time choreographer Lynn Parkerson relocated to Brooklyn, New York in 1998, the borough had been steadily developing a performing arts infrastructure meant as an alternative to the long-established cultural scene across the river in Manhattan. Adding to the stately, familiar presence of multi-arts pioneer Brooklyn Academy of Music, the historic Fort Greene area was poised to receive a jolt of trendsetting flair with the inauguration of the Mark Morris Dance Center in 2001. Other relevant players in this critical mass of cultural offerings included the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the fledgling Opera Company of Brooklyn, along with an active community of independent performing artists. Notoriously missing from the artistic roster was Brooklyn’s own ballet company. As it was, this decades-long gap would not go unattended for much longer.

“I was looking for my next step as an artist,” recalls Parkerson, who at the time was Assistant Director of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center on the Upper East Side. An internationally-acclaimed performer, educator and presenter, she had also served as Director of Dance at Manhattan’s Church of the Holy Trinity since 1991. Parkerson’s artistic career began while she was living in Germany, as one half of an improvisatory duo with musician Roland Kohle. A classically-trained dancer who apprenticed with the Boston Ballet and performed with the Chicago Ballet before moving to New York City in 1984, she always felt drawn to the collaborative aspects of the creative process. “There was never a desire to focus exclusively on my own individual voice,” she remarks of her vision for a ballet ensemble. “I have always felt more supported, and it has always been more interesting for me to work in a collective type of situation. A ballet company allows that to be,” she adds.

Brooklyn Ballet was founded in early 2002 under Parkerson’s artistic direction, with the goal of bringing artistic and educational ballet programs to the richly diverse population that calls the borough home. In response to pressing demand from the community, the company inaugurated its Ballet School in September 2003, ahead of its original schedule. Central to Brooklyn Ballet’s mission is making the classical dance form accessible to audiences of all stripes, including the most culturally underserved neighborhoods in the area. In pursuit of that goal, the company has developed a vibrant outreach program that includes lecture demonstrations, free site-specific performances through their Take Ballet to the Streets initiative, and a groundbreaking in-school program called Elevate, which aims to educate both students and their teachers about the evolution and gestural language of the ballet form through a multi-week residency conducted by the company’s professional dancers.

Brooklyn Ballet’s in-school curriculum is “interactive right from the get go,” explains Parkerson. The residency begins with a 50-minute presentation called What is Ballet?, which traces the trajectory of the form through a sample of classical and contemporary works performed by the company dancers. Following the presentation, the children have a chance to try — right from their seats — a few moves from a typical ballet class; they are also introduced to an innovative system of movement notation called Language of Dance. According to Parkerson, the symbol-based notation system facilitates a creative environment that quickly engages the children’s natural curiosity and intellectual cravings. Just as importantly, the notation system serves as a tool to manage the children’s attention. “Dance is so expansive,” she remarks, “sometimes it’s hard to focus.”

The resounding success of the Elevate program across the public school system — with over 1,000 children grades 2 to 6 taking part in the program each academic year — owes much to the multicultural background of Brooklyn Ballet’s young virtuosos. Among its ranks are dancers who trained at such prestigious institutions as the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, the Juilliard School, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, and Cuba’s Escuela Nacional de Arte. The Elevate program affords the company members the opportunity to delve beyond the technical and historical aspects of the classical dance form. The rapport these talented dancers establish with the children during the extended residency turns them into natural role models for positive, life-affirming skills that far transcend the artistic realm, such as discipline, attention, precision, and self-expression.

It’s an exchange that has proven mutually enriching. The company’s ongoing exposure to street dancing and non-traditional performance settings has been gradually transforming how the classical dance work is performed. The incorporation of improvisational structures and unorthodox musical scores adds rich, enticing layers to the company’s expressive range. This artistic cross-pollination is decidedly appealing to Parkerson, who is as passionate about the intrinsic virtuosity of classical dance as she is about infusing the form with new nuances. “Just bringing racial diversity to the ballet form adds another element to the work,” she notes, adding that the resulting fusion of vocabularies makes the work “very current and automatically relevant in some way.”

The relevance of the Take Ballet to the Streets program has an enthusiastic advocate in Gloria, a ballet mom who enrolled her young daughter in the Brooklyn Ballet School after watching one of the company’s free outdoor appearances. Recently arrived from her native Colombia, Gloria had been making the rounds of the Manhattan ballet studios in vain, unable to meet the cost of tuition. She recounts how her fate changed the day she took a stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge, and stumbled onto a performance by the Brooklyn Ballet at Fulton Ferry State Park. Gloria’s story highlights the remarkable community impact that has been earning accolades for the company since its inception, and garnered Parkerson a Paul Robeson Award for Artistic Excellence and Community Service in November 2006.

Parkerson’s eclectic background as both artist and curator gives her unique insight on what it takes to secure sustainability for an organization. She believes much relies on being able to identify, attract and — not least of all — give due acknowledgment to the right team of collaborators. Along with the gifted cast of dancers, Brooklyn Ballet’s commitment to artistic excellence is championed by seasoned artists such as violinist Gil Morgenstern and composer Jim Papoulis, as well as Education Director Oona Haaranen, a former member of the Finnish National Ballet. In January 2006, dancer Caridad Martínez came on board as Education Director of the Brooklyn Ballet School. Martínez, formerly of Ballet Nacional de Cuba, was appointed the company’s Resident Choreographer in June 2006.

Brooklyn Ballet embarked on its first international venture in October 2006, when the company was invited to perform in Mexico by the Cultural Consulate of Chiapas. As reported by the local press, the sold-out audience in San Cristóbal de las Casas rewarded the dancers with a standing ovation. The company’s 2007 season will include the theatrical premiere of Parkerson’s Brooklyn Caprice, a piece for ballet dancers and street dancers which has been presented at site-specific venues throughout Brooklyn since 2004. Along with its ongoing outreach curriculum, Brooklyn Ballet’s future plans for growth include continuing to build world-class repertory and the development of new touring opportunities.

The Brooklyn Ballet School is located at 397 Bridge Street, between Fulton and Willoughby Streets, right off the Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn. A complete schedule of classes is available at www.brooklynballet.org.

The company’s administrative offices can be reached by phone at 718-246-0146 or by email at brooklynballet@earthlink.net.