Ballet Theatre of Chicago’s Hot Start
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“I expected the quality to be there, but what I didn’t expect was the overwhelming support we received,” says de la Nuez. His surprise is understandable because ballet has long been a tough sell here. For several years de la Nuez and his wife, dancer Meredith Benson, worked with Ballet Chicago and watched that organization struggle to build an audience. After more than six years, Ballet Chicago still has a spotty track record and no company of dancers. But de la Nuez didn’t think the obstacles were insurmountable. His admitted frustration with Ballet Chicago prompted him to start his own troupe; he hoped to demonstrate that a company with vision and leadership could not only survive but thrive, even without major financial backing or a heavy-hitting board of directors.
But there were unexpected hurdles in the final weeks before the debut. A set stored in a New York warehouse suffered severe water damage during the major snowstorm that hit that city last month, and de la Nuez had to search for a substitute. He eventually found a replacement at the Indianapolis Ballet Theatre, but the cost of renting another set threw a wrench into the budget and prevented him from hiring a live orchestra. Despite the budget crunch, de la Nuez was determined not to skimp on rehearsals, allowing four weeks for Nagy to work with the dancers.
Don’t invite former Chicagoan David Dillon and Los Angeles theater critic Charles Marowitz to the same soiree. When Dillon’s play Party moved to an off-Broadway theater last spring after a long run here, the New York Times gave it a rave review. But Marowitz had a decidedly different reaction when the play opened recently in LA. In the February 5 issue of Theater Week, Marowitz wrote, “Every so often, the theater produces a monument to insipidity which thoroughly enthralls the lowest common denominator and brings herds of chortling bozos thundering into the playhouse….But the central repugnance of Party is not in the obviousness of its construction, the brittleness of its wit, or the banality of its characterizations, but in the fact that it blithely reasserts the crudest and most obvious sexual stereotype and, in so doing, is an aggressive insult to millions of gays and an equal number of heterosexuals who know, from first-hand social intercourse with them, that such a characterization is as shallow as it is contemptible.”
