Toe to Toe
Is Indy big enough for two ballet companies?
On Sept. 12, the upstart Indianapolis City Ballet will host an inaugural gala at the Murat Theatre featuring a lavish performance directed by Australian ballet star John Meehan. Bob Hesse, who oversees operations for ICB, calls the $250,000 event a “test.” If the community responds with the appropriate enthusiasm (read: financial support), he plans to keep the chamber ensemble alive, returning “a professional ballet company” to Indy after the collapse of Ballet Internationale in 2005.
That assertion has ruffled some tutus at the Indiana Ballet Company, founded in 2006 by Alyona Yakovleva (a former instructor at Ballet Internationale) and her husband, Russ Smith. The group employs a handful of paid instructor-dancers and puts on four shows a year at the Athenaeum and the Madame Walker Theatre. “Our dancers go to class every morning and teach every afternoon,” Smith says. “They have two world-class choreographers. It’s a dismissal to say we’re not professional.”
Hesse, however, says he hopes to somehow include the IBC in his plans for ICB. “I call it win-win or win-lose,” he says. “It’s win-win if we all collaborate. Otherwise, one of us is going to lose.”
