It’s been a rocky nine months for the American Repertory Ballet, which cut short its season last March due to budget problems and in May parted ways with its artistic and executive directors. Now, like the proverbial phoenix, ARB is about to reemerge.
The occasion is ARB’s annual production of The Nutcracker. Each year, it is the company’s biggest show in terms of budget, potential revenue, size of cast, and number of performances.
New company director Douglas Martin knows the stakes are high. The company restructured to eliminate debt, which had ballooned to $300,000. But if Martin is feeling the pressure, it’s hard to tell.
“This is an exciting time,” says Martin, 48, a former principal dancer with the Joffrey Ballet, the Cleveland Ballet, and ARB. He had been teaching at ARB’s affiliated Princeton Ballet School and leading its junior company before taking the reins. “The dancers, the sets, the costumes, it’s all coming together,” he says.
Martin has big shoes to fill. When former artistic director Graham Lustig left in May after his position and salary were downsized, he took with him his unique production of The Nutcracker, which ARB had been performing since 2000. That production, though critically acclaimed, caused local controversy by jettisoning the beloved party scene and the battle scene created by company founder Audree Estey, and performed annually by the company since 1963.
Martin is restoring the popular Estey scenes while creating new choreography for the rest of the performance. The company will present The Nutcracker at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre (November 26-28), the TD Bank Arts Centre in Sewell (December 4), Trenton’s Patriot’s Theater at the War Memorial (December 11), and the State Theatre in New Brunswick—with a live orchestra—(December 18-19).
An abbreviated spring season will see ARB present Philip Jerry’s acclaimed version of Our Town—a hit from the pre-Lustig era—as well as the company premiere of Twyla Tharp’s Eight Jelly Rolls. (Lustig had initiated the company’s presentation of Tharp’s works.)
The new season will be shorter than previous years, and the company has been reduced from sixteen dancers to twelve as it continues to cut debt. “We may be smaller, and we still have to keep in mind our budget situation, but there are a lot of things we will do,” says Martin. “We are still very much committed to presenting the highest artistic standards.”
Martin, who lives in Lawrenceville with his wife, Mary Barton, plans to increase ARB’s presence in its host communities with open houses and collaborations with area businesses, especially in Princeton, home of the largest of the organization’s three studios. The company also will work closely with Rutgers University. (Joan McCormick, wife of Rutgers president Richard L. McCormick, is a new board member.)
Martin plans to continue teaching at Rider University’s Westminster Choir College. He says he hopes to find time for hobbies like travel and gardening.
“Doug has a really great game plan in place for lining up material that people will want to come and see,” says Thomas Flagg, who runs the Frenchtown arts-management firm Terpsichore Entertainment. “He understands that you have to balance the artistic goals with an understanding of how you’re going to bring people in. And his background in this community and with the Joffrey means he has an enormous amount of impressive resources to draw from.”
Those resources include a host of colleagues from Martin’s Joffrey days, including sought-after choreographers like Patrick Corbin, who will contribute a work for ARB’s spring season, and the directors of top companies like the Joffrey (Ashley Wheater) and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (Glenn Edgerton).
Martin says he also has been receiving input from former ARB directors Dermot Burke and Septime Webre. Indeed, ARB’s new Nutcracker will use sets and costumes from a production Burke created for the Dayton Ballet, where he is now excutive director.
“We have to create a buzz,” Martin says. “That’s what will bring people in and make them decide they want to be involved.”