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No pas de deux
Published: 7/22/2008 8:07 AM
Last Modified: 7/22/2008 8:07 AM

Tulsa Ballet and Ballet Oklahoma will dance to their own separate tunes, as the Oklahoma City dance company decided Monday night not to collaborate with Tulsa Ballet in creating a new statewide dance company.

I don't know what happened to the story about the Monday night meeting in Oklahoma City that I wrote and filed last night -- perhaps it was lost in the ether of internet commuting -- but it should have been in today's paper.

In any case, the potential merger between Tulsa's internationally acclaimed dance troupe and Oklahoma City's financially troubled ballet company is not going to happen.

Tulsa Ballet officials pesented their plan, that would establish something new and ambitious -- though not recklessly so -- that would bring dance in Oklahoma to a new level, with regional, national and international touring, with outreach programs that would take classical and modern dance to every corner of the state, that would create unique performance programs for the two major cities.

But Ballet Oklahoma said no.

According to reports out of Oklahoma City, the company's board of directors chose to name Robert Mills, a Ballet Oklahoma dancer and former artistic director of Ballet Nouveau Colorado, to be interim artistic director of the company, replacing Bryan Pitts, who stepped down at the end of the 2007-2008 season.

Mills earned praise in Colorado for building Ballet Nouveau into that state's second-largest dance company. He also set in place the contemporary choreography contest that included entries submitted via the website YouTube, that -- coincidentally -- Tulsa Ballet princiipal dancer Ma Cong won earlier this year.

We wish Mills, and Ballet Oklahoma, the best in its efforts to re-establish itself. While the Tulsa Ballet plan had much to recommend it, as Tulsa Ballet artistic director Marcello Angelini said, the whole purpose was to make sure that professional dance continues to thrive in Oklahoma City, however that may be accomplished.

There's always should be room in Oklahoma for people striving for excellence in the field of dance -- or any artistic discipline, for that matter.




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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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