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Ballet San Jose Sat Matinee cuts


kbarber

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I have no inside info about BSJ! I just read an article online from the San Jose newspaper. (It was of particular interest to me because I'm planning to take a group to the Bay area in May, and as luck would have it, a BSJ Saturday matinee was part of the program.... )

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Here's one article from the San Jose newspaper:

http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_24980549/ballet-san-jose-moves-cut-costs-before-feb

The shortfall came from (1) $75,00 less in revenue from their Nutcracker than they expected and (2) a cut in support from their biggest donor, John Fry.

To compensate, they are using recorded music at the next programs, cancelling the Saturday matinee, and postponing a planned premiere until 2015.

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It looks like a fairly standard budgetary move. The loss of live music for their upcoming performances is unfortunate, but not unheard of. Coming in the middle of the season is more of a concern than it would be if this were a change in the 14-15 season.

According to the AGMA website, Ballet San Jose is a union shop, but you need to be a union member to look at the contract details.

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The Feb 14th performance was really good, happy to report. Missed the live music, especially in Serenade, but hey, I understand that this little company has gotta do what it's gotta do. Carreño is establishing a positive presence in the area and creating a good buzz for the company, so I see that as all good.

I think it's smart of them to cancel an under-producing matinee, but, yes, that does sort of create an anti-buzz. And the worrisome thing to me is how little performance time those dancers get. I'm hoping Carreño does good on his ideas to get the dancers on the road and performing elsewhere. They were really, really good, especially in Jorma Elo's Glow-Stop, and Naharin's Minus 16 was a big crowd pleaser. Rachel Howard wrote a great article on her blog that summarized the performance, what worked, and how it should be a nudge to get venture capitalists in Silicon Valley to consider investing in this company. I don't have the link here (and I can't remember if we're not supposed to post links within replies) but Ballet San Jose has a link to the article, as well as links to several articles/reviews of Program 1 on their blog site. (Okay, so one of them is mine, but I'm not peddling it; I'm peddling Ballet San Jose b/c they're worth it.) I think their blog is called "In Studio With Ballet San Jose."

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