This keynote address was delivered on January 16, 2000 at ISPA's New York Conference.

Session sponsored by MusicalAmerica

What an honor it is for me to address the members of ISPA as the keynote speaker. We guys in the world of classical dance, we have a mute art form, but some of us can go off at the mouth. I'm accused of being one of those from time to time.

When I was asked to talk about ÒRisk and Reward,Ó I thought for about 12 seconds, and then I said to myself, "Oh, my God! Are you kidding?" Think 1945, a nine-year-old kid in tights becoming a classical ballet dancer in Queens. You don't think that's a risk, eh? My mother was taking my sister to a local ballet school, I got knocked unconscious by a baseball--the next thing I knew I was in tights at the barre.

What were the risks? My pals! When they heard that I was doing these funny things, pointing my toes, they would walk to school with me and go "hoo, hoo!" Along comes high school, and I am told by my family that I've got to finish high school in three years. What was the risk? Hey, man, that's a lot of stuff to get done. I got it done. What was the reward? My father said to me, "Enough of this. No more ballet dancing." I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I did high school in three years to become a ballet dancer a year earlier. My father said, "Whew! I don't want to introduce my son, the ballet dancer, any more."

My father ran a trucking business in the garment center here. He didn't understand the esthetic pursuits that I was involved in. So he said, "You're going to college." I went to college. They found out I used to wear tights. What else was the risk or reward? I stopped dancing for four years. What did I get out of it? I got a Bachelor of Science degree in marine transportation.

What else did I get out of it? I won my letters in baseball and I was Welterweight Boxing Champion. However, something inside said, "Hey, man, I don't want to go to sea. I really want to speak with my body. I want to do a physicality beyond boxing and baseball because the stuff that I had previously been involved in was terrifically physical but it was mind-driven.Ó

So I started to sneak off the campus and become a dancer. Again.

I graduated with my BS. I gave it to my father and told him I was going to become a ballet dancer again. He stopped talking to me for a year. Ah, well.

Anyway, I dive into this thing called classical ballet. What did I have going into it? I had all the physicality I needed. I could jump. I could do tricks. Hey no problemÑI was a boxer, a baseball player.

I go back to dancing. What a reward that was! To step back, to recapture the passion of my earlier times--a passion that continues to drive meÑto possess the ability to move with quality, the ability to speak in an international language that crosses borders. Wow!

And who are the guys I was hanging out with? George Balanchine. Jerome Robbins. Igor Stravinsky. Lincoln Kirstin. Whoa! To be the raw material for these guys and make my own comment on what they provided for me. And again, I thought, "Hey. I'm an athlete. I'm physical--that's all I need. You jump up and down, you grab the girls, you pick 'em up, you put 'em down, that's all there is to it.Ó

But I had to get serious about this. I had to risk body and soul. Wow, did I ever do that. I loved it. It was nutsÑfour years of not dancing and I plunged right in. It was in the early days of television, when they had [huge] cameras and cement floors for the stages. The reward: Wow! I became this almost household name on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Bell Telephone Hour, Carol Burnett's show--all of them. What did I risk? I have nine broken toes, stress fractures in both legs, I have a knee that can't be operated on again, two artificial hips, a bad back, and a bad neck. None of that from that sissy stuff--from baseball and boxing--but from this other thing.

So there I am, working with Balanchine at the very best place that I would ever want to work, in the second golden age of ballet. But pretty soon, my body starts to tell me "You know what? You really messed this up." And as I continued, my body got tighter and tighter. I was desperate.

Balanchine introduced me to a man named Stanley Williams, who became my very best friend. He was a dancer becoming a teacher at the Royal Danish Ballet. I took Stanley's class. He changed my life. He changed my whole understanding of what dance was all about. It wasn't just flying around and jumping and doing all that stuff that I could somehow do with a certain joie de vivre. I had been missing the internal qualities of what it was to be a performer. Wow! The challenge, the risk to get to "artist."

What did I have to risk? I stopped taking Balanchine's class. Everybody took his class. If you missed one, you were obvious by your absence. Thirteen years I didn't go to George Balanchine's class. What were the risks? Obvious. What were the rewards? I danced for 20 years. But not only that, Williams became my buddy--him an emerging teacher and me an emerging dancer. After a performance we'd sit at the old Carnegie Tavern 'til three or four o'clock in the morning, drinking beer, talking about where a tendu battement comes from, what the attacks are, what the musicalities, the styles, the period, the energies, the relationships, the communications. What rewards, what rewards.

I still live with that. I live with the genius of Balanchine, the genius of Robbins, of Williams. I had an intimate exploration of the technical and musical elements of a tendu battement. As time went on I started to get offers, from commercial sources, like television and Broadway. I had to ask Balanchine his permission, I was going to do a Gene Kelley special. And he said to me: "You know, dear, you should only work for Picasso, Cocteau, and Stravinsky.Ó Well, of course, he meant himself as well. Again, a risk.

I did every show you can imagine. I did six revivals of "Brigadoon" at City Center. There are great ups and downs in life. I had a great up: I danced at the White House. The next day I had a great down: My hip went away, and that was the end. I was dancing for President Ford. I had a little pain in my leg and I went to the orthopedic surgeon. He said, "That's it.Ó This was the reward for being foolish, for not having the internal understanding, for going too far, too fast. But, that's me. That's who I am.

You want to take a risk? Know who you are. Understand the risks and reap the rewards. The rewards for me were overwhelming. There was no choice.

So what to do with the rest of my life? I produced, directed, and wrote for TV. I choreographed, I taught, I lectured, I won an Emmy. It wasn't really what I wanted to do. Sure, it was interesting and offered some wonderful challenges, but where was the final reward that I could put my arms around?

So how about becoming an artistic director? What are the challenges? There is no education process for an artistic director. Doesn't exist. Take your tights off, hang up your dance belt. Now you're an artistic director.

I said no. It's not who I am or what I am or what I want to be. I like to know what I'm doing before I do it, not invent things as I go along.

My wife said to me "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm going back to school. I have to learn. I have to figure it all out again. I know the studio stuff, I know the stage stuff. But what about boards and fundraising and finance and PR and marketing and dealing with unions and orchestras and contracts and all of those things?Ó

I took over two companies over about a four- to six-year period and they had the worst problems you can imagine. I spent about six or seven years learning how to solve them. My reward was, I was lecturing in Miami and five people came up to me and said, "We want to make a company here. Can you help us? Can you guide us? Can you consult?" I said "Sure." I wrote an 11-and-1/2-year plan: A year-and-a-half of organization and pre-production and raising money and various and sundry other things, letting the community know what was coming at them. And a three-, five-, and a ten-year production plan. I did five years of programming before we opened, so that as I was bringing up dancers I was also bringing up audience.

So these people in Miami said, "Wow! Would you do it?" I said, "No, no, no. I'm from New York. I was born here. Nobody leaves New York. New Yorkers don't do that." I went back to my wife, I said "Hey, this is the challenge. This is a risk." She said to me, "What's the reward?" I said, "I think we can hit a homerun down there." "But, you're telling me all your friends say it's a wasteland. You want to take a risk in a cultural wasteland?" Well, I did some research and I found that, at that time, there were a thousand people a day moving to South Florida.

And they were coming from up around here and other major places. Then I found out there was an opera company, symphony, theater company, and I said, "My God, there's an audience down there!" My wife said, ÒDo you want to risk it?" I said, "If you do, I will." She said "Okay." So we did. We left New York. That was 1985.

We now have as our reward a company in its 14th season. We do approximately 160 performances a season. We have a repertoire of over 85 ballets. We have an audience of about 16,000 subscribers, in four counties. Wow! I predicted we'd have 2,500 people as subscribers in our first year. We had 5,000. Wow, what a reward!

Of course, as you go along, odd things occur. Hurricane Andrew occurred to us. And that was in a very early time. Cost us half-a-million dollars in lost revenues and other things. Two weeks after that our orchestra came to me and declared "We are yours forever. Not only that, we don't audition, not only that, we all declare tenure."

I said "Guys, I got a four letter word for you: Tape." What was the risk? Getting picketed and having all kinds of terrible things happen--that guy from Vegas from the International came, Sam Folio.Ug. Sam told me his father died on the line with John L. Lewis. I said "I wish you the same success as your father."

Anyway, we behaved legally, because my two top administrators were attorneys. Not too many attorneys in the pit. And they began to behave badly. They were taking a risk, because we sued them. We sued the International. Know what happened? The local went bankrupt, all the instigators got fired, and we negotiated with the International. I said, "I'm not withdrawing this Federal suit until you change your manner and attitude. I'm not going to start back where we were." Guess what? We now sub-contract with a union orchestra. We have a ÒrequirementsÓ contract. I can hire four people or 48, or I can do tape. It's called survival. If I hadn't risked that, I wouldn't be here right now. I'd have my grocery store down in Coral Gables or something.

I'm not afraid. I'm crazy, that's why I'm not afraid. I look at the risk, I imagine the reward. I'd been at the New York City Ballet for 20 years. You may have heard about the recent circumstances there, when the orchestra struck and for the first time the New York City Ballet said "No. We're going to work to tape." I started getting phone calls from them: "How are your tapes?"

We are evolving and developing. And as we do, more and more presenters such as yourselves are interested in us. The Lyon Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the Kennedy Center. I said to my board, "Hey, guys, if we are gonna do this I can't go with a minimum number of people. I can't have the same number of people on stage as in the company, it just doesn't work. And we've got these big ballets coming on." I added close to a million dollars to the budget, and that board was ready to kill me, except they were a little afraid of me. I'm nasty. I'm from Queens. Don't fool with people from Queens.

We went ahead, hired our people. We had grand success at the Edinburgh Festival, the Lyons Festival, the Kennedy Center--it kind of put us on the map. And we got the money done. A scary time. But we got the money done.

Which brings us to the current situation at Miami City Ballet. Seven years ago we began to think about a new facility, because it was desperately needed. As of last year we had raised $12 million. We had a 62,000 sq. ft. facility coming on, eight 60 x 40 studios, board room, costume shop, administration, a school of 600 to 700.

What's the risk? What happens a after capital campaign? Donors are very happy to have names on buildings, but what if they donÕt want to give to operations? Well, what happens is, we have all these wonderful tours--Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Spoleto, West Coast, Berkeley, East Coast, where we performed at the New Jersey PAC and 18 New York critics came. The risk there was NOT to have additional dancers. Again, in a financially challenging time when we had just raised $12 million in our first-ever capital campaign.

And, in the face of a serious financial problem, I hired another $250,000 worth of dancers. Whew. I'm not afraid. We came back from the West Coast tour with reviews that I'm so thrilled about. We came here to the East Coast, the New York Times, which doesn't like me so good, called us "nothing short of a triumph."

I returned to Miami. I was told to cut 23 dancers. I said, "When the going gets tough, get the hell out of my way. Here I come." We have raised about $800,000 in the last eight weeks. We have a million more on the books. IÕve got to raise another $1.5 million before April 30th.

But look at what I've got. Boy, have I got a product! I also have the reviews. I'm going home to my guys and I'm saying, "Read the reviews." The first thing I did was, my wife and I made a $10,000 challenge to our board, our major donors, our community. I visited with the Non Group, which is a top-25 business people in Miami, the Mesa Redondo, which is the top-25 Hispanic people. I had a meeting with Mayor Penelas, I petitioned Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State, our dancers have joined in--it's become a community circumstance now. I have a $10 million dollar budget. I've got to cut back to $8.5 million, reduce operations by 15%. What are operations? Dancers' salaries, that's what operations are. We're digging in, we've got that building flying, we've got the reviews flying, we've got dancers like we've never had before. That's my risk.

You see, the moment you play it safe, you're practically moribund. Nobody wants safe. Everybody wants risk, where there's reward at the end of it. Don't be afraid. Just a little afraid.

Because if you canÕt take the risk, there is no reward. If you can't stand the heat, don't be a chef. If you can't do some of the things that IÕve been doing, don't be an artistic director. It's a nightmare. It's a wonderful nightmare, because I know what these guys have done for me. I know what the community has done for me. The community knows now what we have done for them, and to me that's the reward for risk.

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