Business as Usual: Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre

Okay, so good afternoon, everyone. This is Audrey Russo, President and CEO, the Pittsburgh Technology Council. And we have entered I don't know, we have, we must be in our six month one week of doing business. As usual. I'm here with Jonathan Kersting. He's vice president of all things media, and marketing at the Tech Council, he's going to be monitoring the chat. And he's just our partner in crime and all things that we do around exposure and visibility. So I want to give a shout out before I introduce our guests today, I want to give a shout out to Huntington bank. They have long friends of ours, and they have helped right from the onset in terms of COVID. But they've been partners of ours for a long time, including tech five radio. And when we used to go to the streets, Jonathan, do you remember that we used to go and do tech five neighborhood tour. And right, we used to do that back in the day. So anyway, today, we're pretty thrilled today is our 100 and 26th session of business as usual, we launched at the beginning of the pandemic, I actually thought it was only going to be for two weeks. And here we are on our 126 day. And we are thrilled to be able to have the guests that we're having today as we do every day. But I'm excited about having a chance to talk to the folks from the ballet because they have been impacted just as many have but the cultural arts are pretty important piece of the fabric of our region. And it's really and they've been longtime members of the tech Council. And we've been partners for a long time on all things. So we've muted your microphones. And but that doesn't stop you from being a part of the chat. And we are going to jump in. And I'm going to introduce today, Harris Ferris. He's the executive director of the Pittsburgh ballet, and Susan Jaffe, the artistic director. So good afternoon, and I would love for both of you to introduce yourself, share some information about the journey and talk about, you know, the look and feel of what's happening right now with the valet and all that's changed. So I'm going to pass the baton to Harris, who's a dear friend of the tech communities, and welcome him to business as usual. So hi, Harris.

Hey, Audrey. Hey, thanks for having us. Yeah, it's hard to believe that the season that got canceled, and under COVID March, beginning in March of 2020, was our 50th anniversary season. So it was already poised and loaded to do major things, including, we're gonna be going to New York, the Joyce Theater in New York in April, of course, we had our 15th anniversary gala that wind up going online, but also about that keeping our school going. But most importantly, welcoming a new artistic director, which is something that doesn't happen every year. In fact, I think it's been 27 years since PBT had a new artistic director. So there was a lot of enthusiasm to welcome Susan Jaffe, with despite all the constraints that we had to work with. So we're excited though, that we were able to continue programming, moving to virtual and then recently back to live performances, thanks to the acquisition of a major Performing Arts venue, mobile, a mobile Performing Arts venue that we're sharing with our other cultural brother and in the cultural district, to, to put on live performances. And we've just this past weekend, we had the SAM for 50 set up in our parking lot in here at Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. So this new venture for us kind of innovative, but I'm sure that Susan can talk more about the programming that she put on it and what she's been doing up until now having just arrived a bit. So

pause for one second, it's been six months, what what immediately did you have to do back in March? Let's just talk about what happened back then. And all that you've done to pivot though.

So first of all, of course, we have to cancel seasons, we had to talk to subscribers and get a good a good line of communication going with donors that, you know sponsoring events that now had to be postponed at that time. We're just talking postpone and, and then figure out how we could get the anniversary Festival Gala. That was that was co chaired by Arne Rooney, to a virtual event and, and we had a great, great turnout for that. It was the first time and we even had our orchestra perform each each orchestra member from their home and then it was all pieced together to play the waltz from sleeping beauty. And I think it brought tears to people's eyes because at that point when we did that there was already June. By the time we pulled that together and the gala was supposed to have been amazing. But to see all the players and one of the themes for our 15th anniversary season has been to establish a long term fund for our orchestra. And so people made donations online and we wound up doing a good good job of fundraising for that. Then again, we needed to move our school to virtual. And we arranged for floor resilient flooring to be going to students homes and to dance and our company's company enters so that they can work from what we moved the dancer weeks, our agma dancers there that we sort of advanced their weeks and move them into the June timeframe in hopes that we will be able to do some programming. And indeed, by that time, Susan was fully on board. And she figured out how to she can explain how she managed to get up agba, which is the musicians, union or dancers or members have to agree we got the first waiver to return to work under COVID of any of the adequate companies in the US. And, of course, the site that they returned to was actually hard one acre. So maybe Susan can explain that project. It was a great project.

So So immediately, though, Harris, you've been at the helm, for how long now have the ballet

14 year seniors.

So you've obviously never been through anything like this. And you know, none of us have, but we count on the cultural arts to be an important part of the ecosystem of the tech ecosystem of the New World, as well as you know, your long standing subscribers. So how are you doing through all of this? How is Harris doing?

I'm exhilarated because, you know, with adversity comes opportunities. And, you know, we've always wanted to be a little bit more in the digital space. And, you know, Audrey, we've spoken, I mean, day one will be dancing with holograms, as long as you keep a high tech.

High. Yeah, Harris and I have talked about that for a long time.

Though, you know, there's always room for technology to play a bigger role. And we and certainly for us, and we had to outfit our studios with cameras with large screens, the video robots as we call them, so that our teachers could could conduct classes in our studios would send them to the thumbs and watch up to 25 students and give corrections at a time. So just that alone is the technology that we'll use in the future. But that also is streaming, you know, streaming content, not that we figured out how to monetize that yet. But nevertheless, we've managed to keep our patrons engaged and, and content going out in our dancers working. So that's been important. But a recent thing that I'm excited about is the idea that the art Ellen foundation came for an opportunity to apply for innovative funds, that would not only help us navigate through the pandemic, but how would we reposition the arts post pandemic in in an adaptive way, because the world will have changed the way we see the world has changed as access more people need access to the arts and the performing arts is elevating and inspiring role needs to be enhanced. And and technically How could we do that technologically? Well, that was that was the mobile Performing Arts unit. And this is something that will now get literally get legs into the future we'll be able to deploy not just the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, but the PSL who joined us and the Pittsburgh opera clo center all performed on the stage as the trial balloon, it was a big success. Again, there weren't that many people watching. But if you take a look at some of the slides that I think we might be showing up, we'll see some pictures of this of this same 450. This made by dateline out of Montreal and we are the only it's the largest stage of its kind. It's rebellion theatre, Pittsburgh cultural truck is the proud owners of the only unit of this size in the country right now.

And so just tell everyone how long the Pittsburgh ballet has been around.

We just celebrated 50 years. This was our 15th anniversary season.

Oh, and, and the structure of the ballet and the relationship to the cultural trust.

So we're president company, that cultural trust along with the opera and the clo and that's that we are basically anchor tenants. We produce programming five shows a year at the bed, generally at the Bennett and or at the August Wilson Center. There's sometimes one at the August Wilson Center, you know, a cracker alone place. It's some 35,000 people over the course of a season Pittsburgh Ballet Theater has the lights on in the cultural district for equivalent of about two months worth of programming over over a year. So I'm close to 20% of the nights that there's programming. It's people vt. So what we need to do is we need to keep that that engine going and bringing people down to the cultural district. And they continue to contribute to the $2.38 billion economic impact of the cultural performing arts community here.

Well, we're going to pass the baton and we're going to introduce and meet Susan Daffy. She's the artistic director and welcome her to Pittsburgh. And then then we'll get back to Harris. So Susan. Hello. Hi, how are you? Welcome. Tell us a little bit about about you hate when you landed here, where you came from, what your work is, and just Welcome to Pittsburgh.

Thank you so much. Hi, everybody. It's nice to see you. Um, I danced as a principal dancer and an international bouncer with American Ballet Theatre for 22 years. And after that, I retired I from dancing, I opened a dance school, I then actually went back to Ballet Theater as a coach. And then I became the Dean of dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts for eight years. And from there, I came to Pittsburgh. So I am here I've had a, you know, a deep background in dance and, and also just in organizing a dance institution, like at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. So it's been really wonderful to come here because things that I did at the university, have also translated very well into Pvt. And it's great to be here. I wanted to say a little bit about my first entry into PBT. I was still living in North Carolina, I hadn't officially started as the artistic director. But when Harris told us that we had this opportunity by Katie K, a, their sister station, Pittsburgh CW to do a performance at heartwood acres that they would film because we weren't allowed to actually be on that stage. But we were allowed to perform on the grounds, and that it was going to air when we were going to perform August 16. That immediately I had the idea to do A Midsummer Night's Dream, because what kind of what wonderful background could you have, but the beauty of heartwood acres in the background. So I took a 15 minute ballet and I condensed it into 13 minutes of the overture. And I storyboarded it out because I was still living in Winston Salem. And I divvied out each of the characters to four koryak dancer choreographers in the company. And so four choreographers actually choreographed it with this storyboard. And it was even filmed while I was still in Winston. But it ended up being just incredibly charming. And in fact, you can see that performance still on our website. And also, as I was researching Midsummer Night's Dream, I saw that some companies had just a little synopsis verbal synopsis. And so the idea of having children dressed up as fairies on heartwood acres grounds, telling the story of Midsummer Night's Dream verbally before you actually saw the ballet, was it also extremely charming. So that was even before I arrived here in Pittsburgh, my moving company dropped off my stuff on July 1. And by July 3, I was in the offices and starting up, you know, this whole new life, which I'm so happy to be here I have to say and hairs well hairs had been talking about the SAM for 50 for a while and was in the process of fundraising for that Sam for 50. And the idea of the performing openair performances to come around Labor Day

was available and that we weren't we had the opportunity financially to do that. So I started dreaming of the programs. And we did very short programs actually just you know, I called them COVID friendly performances because they were short enough that people didn't have to worry about too much social distancing and not using public facilities, etc. So there were 4550 minute performances and we did AB programs every day. And we ended up doing eight performances. So that was really a tremendous amount of fun. We we social distanced our audiences in 12 foot pods and only people who either co host agitator families could be in those pods together. And there was a lot of cleaning in between, you know, there was a lot of safety protocols in place, so that not only were our dancers safe, but so were our audience members. Additionally, I was very fortunate that many people, dancers in the company, actually like each other, and they're either married or they cohabitate together. So I had eight couples to work with. And we had eight podeu, which means dance for two. So they were able to dance together without masks. So that was really fortunate for our audiences, because most of dads you know, you to see the facial expressions is really important. And actually, I don't know if any of you can see Aaron's dzerzhinsky from PVT her the background behind her. Is this the actually is the Sam 450 in our parking lot. And, yeah, there it is. And it was huge. And it was amazing to see this, this gigantic thing come up in our parking lot. And because it was in our parking lot, we could really regulate it and keep it keep everybody safe. So it was a really important opportunity. Oh, yeah, here it is. Here's the sand for 50.

This is

from the view from the bleachers we actually had built, built it up bleachers so that our audience could see better.

Okay, and so where people outside in chairs, are they in cars,

they were outside they were in chairs and see them in their pods. And, and even if it got to sunny we we even put up umbrellas so that people could stay in the shade.

Wow. So yeah, it was. And so this is right in front of your building right down on Smallman Street. Yes, absolutely. Uh huh. Beautiful.

Wow. photographic,

what is a photograph of heartwood acres, this is not the sand for 50. This is our performances that we do every year. But we did not get to do this year. So as you can see, the audience is out there. Normally, the normal circumstances get to sit together. But this is what open air series looks like. And we're thinking about for future programs for the Sam 450, where we can take that that stage into multiple different parks or places around Pittsburgh, anywhere really, and be able to do these open air series performances. So it's really been a lot of freedom to be able to program whenever we really feel like and of course, the weather has to comply. But yeah,

what are you thinking about for the, for the fall and winter?

So Well, we finished our open air series, we do have a very exciting performance coming up on October 31. And because of all the details not being able to be spoken about just yet, I can't give you as much information as I do. But it is very exciting. And we're actually sort of nailing down the exact location today. So things have been, you know, I think coming in as an artistic director at hitting the ground running and just figuring all this out in a very short time front has been it's just been a lot. We're also doing an at home experience version of the Nutcracker, because of the theater closures we're not able to go into the theaters. And so there will be a performance that will really just bring the magic of the Nutcracker into the homes and also because we have a really important educational part of our component to PBT LED BY KATIE Giggler, we are going to have an educational component of the Nutcracker for the children in the community. So it'll be somewhat of a you know, hands on sort of interactive experience of the Nutcracker. while they're at home. Watching won't be the full cracker but it will be you will get the full experience of the Nutcracker as as you see it. So we'll be busy actually filming that. Next

starting starting next week. Oh god. Oh,

how are the dancers? I'm asking both of you, Harrison's been there for a long time. How are the dancers? And what about the school where students come from all over to attend? Can you either want to be talked about that? Or Susan, can you talk about that?

Yes. Well, one of the first things that I did when I got here was to be introduced to our agma, which is our dancers union, American Guild of musical artists, agma representative, and working with him with our HR director with Harris with Jay and myself and the dancer representatives on how do we bring dancers back into the studio safely, which was, I would have to say, all in it was about three months of discussion, and then nailing it all down. Because dancers, as you all know, are athletes and we cannot, we cannot abide by the six foot distance, we actually have to have a 12 foot distance because of the amount of air coming out of an athlete. So it was really a 12 foot distance. And then also, we work with our engineers, for our h vac systems and medical doctors to ensure or to nail down exactly how much time we need in between cohorts, we put down SIRs and cohorts so that the error would exchange completely be clean, so that it would be safe for the next cohort to go into that studio, as well as you know, washing down floors. One of my job descriptions now is floor washer. You know, I mean, you do what you have to do these days, and cleaning everything. So it's a 45 minutes, space between rehearsals and between classes and rehearsals and and dancers. The Union told me I could have 10 people in a studio at the same time, according to our measurements. But I said let's start with five because I thought the dancers were very squeamish. And then once they got here, after about two weeks, they started asking if they could increase their cohorts because some of them were in studios. And because there wasn't enough space. Some of them were at home on zoom, which is what the dance world did, within two weeks of the pandemic, closing everything down the dance world went on zoom, and started teaching classes on zoom. And so yeah, and so we even had for the for the open air series, I zoomed in choreographers to teach pata to our dancers and coach. So we have three different choreographers and stagers zooming in on as Paris was saying, these gigantic video robots, and able to see the dancers in them corrections and teach them how to do things. So it was a really, it was hard to get all of this together, because it's a new world. And just like going into the digital world, you know, I looked at Harrison said, Who knew? Who knew the dance world was suddenly gonna go digital. But here we are, and but now the dancers are increasing their cohorts. And we're going to try to get 10 people in the studio at once, because of the filming of The Nutcracker. And because of this new up and coming performance on Halloween, we need to start increasing those. But they know that they know the drill, they know the protocols, and it has kept everyone safe. So we're taking temperatures and all of that. So there's this is all of what pretty much what everybody else is doing.

So welcome to Pittsburgh, right?

So I have I have like a cartoon in my head that I'm imagining that there are northern cities all around the world that have figured out how to do outdoor performances, right through heaters and through lighting, and am I hallucinating? Is that? Is that possible that we could have a nutcracker or something similar to that while we're sitting outside? And it's warm and there's heaters, and we can actually experience it? Or do we think that the winter season will really bring a little bit more digitization to what you folks are planning.

There's talk there's definitely talk about tenting the same for 50 that these are still concepts. Yes. And as we all know, the world is saying is close to being outdoors as you can in terms of the air circulation, safest place to be. And yes and then and then Audrey, there's also the possibility that you don't have stage has wheels. There are other parts of the country that are warm in the winter, right

by drift, right. So could be that you have some mobility in terms of your ability. So yes, you can be there doing that and then we can work with you for all the jobs that we have available. here and we can beat we can tag team that so people can understand the innovation in tech. And you're out there helping us hustle for some of the job opportunities that are here in Pittsburgh.

We could we could I mean, it's worse. I mean, cultural diplomacy has been known to work through, right. If administration's we, we definitely sign us up. We want it. We want to spread the word. Right. It is a cultural city. All right, on the on any of our size, well beyond others, keep us

connected as your

mobility. It might be something fun, right, Jonathan?

I think this is a fantastic idea. And you guys are packing up and going someplace south, let us know. We'll give you some good materials. And

some, yeah, we'll do some virtual job fairs while they're down there.

We're building some bridges, man, it's gonna be

cool. Right? So

the ballet has been a tremendous asset to our community. Susan, you will know that you've probably noticed that already. Harris has been at the helm of this and has been a great partner to the tech community and vice versa, right from the onset. So what do you both want to say? How can people become involved? How can our members How can the tech community become involved and be supportive? Is there tell us

ideas about locations where the sand for 50 can go? We also, oftentimes, there's very, there's entry level ways in which corporate sponsor sponsors can get involved with content, you know, because the does our oyster as far as acquiring new kinds of works. And innovative works. And so it's not always one leg. I mean, Susan can tell you, she she has the best Rolodex in the, as far as works that are being done in Europe and being done in a far east. And I know, she got on her wish list, very, very exciting, innovative choreographers that are that are, you know, stretching the boundaries of what dance does. And when you start talking about stretching the boundaries in the arts, you're talking to the tech community is a great be looking for partners when she says,

absolutely, I mean, I think there'd be so much that we could do together, including just, you know, the creativity of what was actually seen up on stage. I mean, there is tremendous possibility of what we could do together. And bringing in new works from famous choreographers. And then how does that look up on stage I think would be truly exciting. It'd be a dream come true for me for sure.

The other part of that is just what you were referring to earlier, which is cultivation, you know, you bring people to Pittsburgh, and you want to bring in your investment capital, and you want to bring in your startup community. And what better thing to do. I mean, I think we they were going to try to bring Amazon here, I guess. You know, let's show them they are. So let's really show there has to offer in the arts. And with people being able to work remotely more and more they can go anywhere they want. So why not pick a place that stuff that kind of legacy in the arts that we do have here, right in Pittsburgh?

Absolutely. So our time has come to an end. I am thrilled to kick off this Monday with everyone talking about the ballet. And welcome, Susan to Pittsburgh. And thank you, Harris, for you being an entrepreneur, you really are. And the tech community cares about the work that you're doing. So if you can go to pbt.org. There's lots of ways to find out what they're up to whether it's through support, whether it's through any kind of ideas. They're very open, very collaborative. And we have found them to be great partners over the years. So on that note, I want to thank Harris Ferris, and Susan Jaffe, for joining us. And stay tuned, we're going to be watching you and we're going to come up with a whole bunch of ideas. So have an amazing day. Thank you, Jonathan, for being here. And thank you, everyone for joining us. And there have been great links that have been put out there. But you can also go to pbt.org. Thank you both. Thank you, here tomorrow.

Jonathan. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai