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Anna Kisselgoff of the New York Times recently described James Kudelka as “easily ballet’s most original choreographer.” David Bintley, who has commissioned his work for Birmingham Royal Ballet, is also an enthusiast, regarding him as among the most compelling ballet choreographers working today. In 1996 Kudelka became artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, the company in which he began his career as a dancer.

Kudelka is acutely aware of the ebb of public interest in ballet. “The dance boom is over”, he admits. “We’re not really doing the job we once thought we would do. Governments want to put their money into education and health, which makes perfect sense. And, you know, computer games and other noise have taken over young people’s lives. Our generation

“The dance boom is over. We’re not really doing the job we once thought we would do.” James Kudelka

finally got to the table and are running the companies, and there’s no food! It’s very hard.”

Last May James Kudelka hosted the National Ballet of Canada’s Past Present Future conference in Toronto. The directors present ran large companies. Kudelka was keen to discuss with his peers the management issues they had in common: large corps de ballets, orchestras and unions. “The most important thing was being able to talk in the same room to someone who does what you do. When you are running a large ballet company, you tend not to have many people around you who really, really ‘get it’.”

Globalisation and distinctiveness

Several conversations, which began at the Toronto conference, will continue when artistic directors meet this weekend at Snape. Globalisation will be on many of the their minds. Kudelka’s own company has been through what he called its ‘international’ period. But, Kudelka suggests, in choosing him, a choreographer, as its director, National Ballet of

“You might decide to get all these ballets that are being done in other places: but it might be at the expense of who you are.” James Kudelka

Canada’s board opted for a policy of distinctiveness. “The board knows I want to do work which will makes us unique”, he told me.

Globalisation may not be as problematic for the National Ballet of Canada as for other ensembles. “It’s not like the Royal Ballet is coming into Toronto very often.” Nonetheless, it was important to Kudelka to curate his company’s repertoire to make sense of its mission. “You might decide to get all these ballets that are being done in other places: but it might be at the expense of who you are. We are very well placed at the moment to know who we are. We try to make sure that when we tour, we don’t take Onegin. Stuttgart should take Onegin”. Similarly, when a tour promoter suggests that the company perform Manon, his instinct is to respond: “There is a company that does Manon. Please go and call them. I don’t feel badly about letting any of that stuff go, in order to make sure that we’re doing what we should ”. There are countervailing considerations. It is legitimate, Kudelka argues, to bring Nikolaj Hubbe to set Napoli in Toronto, because that experience is valuable for the company and enlarges its sense of dance’s collective heritage.

International stature – but not for creative reasons

For Kudelka, it makes little sense to base a contemporary repertory around the works of Ek, Duato, Kylian and Forsythe. He accepts that his own company’s repertory may have been insufficiently distinctive in the past and that it neglected its own heritage. Glen Tetley was a key figure in NBC’s history. He was under-represented in the company’s repertory. “To get a Glen Tetley piece was a really big deal. We did Voluntaries last year. In the end he was a very important person with NBC. He created La Ronde on us; he created Alice on us, which we’re doing again next year. He was a part of the company. When we were working with Rudolph Nureyev, and being seen all over the world as the backdrop to Nureyev, we achieved international stature, but not for creative reasons. I’m trying to ensure that does not happen under my leadership. I am not interested in getting In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated and going to New York with it.” He would do it in Toronto (“if I could afford it”) for his local audience.

Kudelka feels further absolved from performing the contemporary European repertoire, because Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, based in Montreal, does so. While Jiri Kylian’s ballets featured in NBC’s repertoire in Reid Anderson’s years as director, they are not, for now, part of the company’s artistic strategy. “I said at the last conference: ‘Why don’t we all just stop buying each other’s ballets, go home, and become who we are and then visit each other. It was a sweeping statement, intended to get everybody talking.”

“Running a whole organisation is like doing a full-length ballet every day of your life.” James Kudelka

Creativity, risk and direction

Kudelka, a prolific choreographer, acknowledges the tensions between his personal creativity and the artistic direction of a large company. “Running a whole organisation is like doing a full-length ballet every day of your life.” For him the most satisfying part of the job is creative engagement with his dancers in the studio. He makes a full-length ballet for NBC every year, most recently The Contract, based on the Canadian evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson. He has a rule of thumb: one sixth of National Ballet of Canada’s annual programme must have a degree of risk. Only then does Kudelka feel justified in his more conventional repertory choices.

“What I miss out on”, he told me, “is doing interesting short ballets.” Last year he made Sin and Tonic for ABT in 2002 (his third work for that company) and Gazebo Dances for Ballet Met in Columbus Ohio. His board allows him occasional creative breaks to choreograph work for outside companies that he could not easily make for his own. His growing network of artistic director contacts is an enormous asset. “I could call Kevin (Kevin McKenzie of ABT) up and say, look, I need a period of output. Can you help me? Would you like to do something next year? And he would say: ‘Yes – that would be great!’” A disadvantage of being an artistic director, Kudelka says, is the prevalent assumption that one is unavailable to make work for other companies. That affirmation from outside is important to Kudelka for his own sake. There is another consideration. “It really helps in Canada to have a success in New York.” Sin and Tonic was a critical success Anna Kisselgoff of the New York Times considered it to be a ‘triumph of creativity’.

Engaging audiences

Kudelka is fortunate that other companies are prepared to commission his work. He is less happy about the expense of arranging international tours for his company. He would like to bring National Ballet of Canada to London and has already been in touch with impresarios and theatre managements. “It used to be in the past that you felt, if you could get yourself somewhere, there were people waiting there to see you. It just doesn’t feel like that anymore. It’s more like; ‘if you get yourself here, we’ll do our damnedest to see whether anyone wants to see you.’

Running a company

Might artistic directors be trained differently? “You really don’t learn it until you’re in the hot seat.” he replied. He was fortunate, he says, to have worked with many companies as a freelance choreographer. It allowed him to observe their workings at close quarters. When Reid Anderson, his predecessor as artistic director at National Ballet of

“You are never really ready, until you’re in it. You’ve seen how problems have been handled, but you don’t necessarily know what will happen, when you make a decision.” James Kudelka

Canada, invited him to return to Toronto, he chose to do so as ‘artist in residence’ rather than as ‘resident choreographer’. It gave him unparalleled license to be a fly on the wall. “Reid was a producer/director, whereas I was a choreographer. He was a very good artistic director and I learnt a lot from him. Everyone does it differently. I was ready for it. But you are never really ready, until you’re in it. You’ve seen how problems have been handled, but you don’t necessarily know what will happen, when you make a decision.”

Questioning the relevance of hierarchy

On the issue of hierarchy, Kudelka is interestingly open. He resists the once prevalent notion of talent as a pyramid. While in the past, there may have been a decisive talent gap between the dancers at the top of a company and those in the other ranks, and. there has been a levelling up, he argues, particularly so in the last twenty-five years. In part, this is because dancer training is more rigorous. This means he has more options from casting from the company’s various ranks. For Kudelka, this begs an interesting question: “With ten principal dancers, and we have just finished

“Ten people in my company cost me $1,000,000. I have to ask myself a lot of questions. I don’t know if this is the time of the dancer. It’s the time of the director and the choreographer.” James Kudelka

twenty three performances of the Nutcracker with seven principals off, you have to really ask yourself the question as to whether you need that kind of hierarchy anywhere; to do four performances over a weekend of Romeo and Juliet, where there is not a principal dancer, and all the roles are taken by soloists, and sometimes senior artists, and the performances are very good. I’ve seen the all-star/no-star system at work. I’m not sure it works either. But, ten people in my company cost me $1,000,000. I have to ask myself a lot of questions. I don’t know if this is the time of the dancer. It’s the time of the director and the choreographer. None of my dancers will sell out a house in a 3200-seat barn that I’m working in at the moment. It’s not like when people paid more money to see Rudolph and Margot. I could bring Sylvie Guillem to Toronto. No one will have heard of her. So I can’t raise the ticket price! It’s a different time and it is as well to be realistic about that. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have some wonderful principal dancers, who are at the top of their game and who should be doing well. But I don’t know if I can afford them, because money is so tight. It’s really difficult.”