Tulsa Ballet closes one of its most successful seasons with the announcement that it has achieved its $25 million Defining the Future Campaign – the largest fundraising initiative in the history of the company.

The integrated campaign exceeded its goal by raising a total of $25.2 million, thanks to a $450,000 major gift from the Lou and Connie Miller Charitable Foundation and trustees Kirk Clausing and Max Vowel.

Funds raised from the campaign are being used to:

• Broaden the reach of the Tulsa Ballet Center for Dance Education.
• Build and create new productions.
• Increase the Tulsa Ballet endowment to provide for the long‐term sustainability of the organization.

The campaign, first chaired by Kayla Vaughn, began in 2015. Billie Barnett assumed the chair role in 2017. Hannah Robson served as Honorary Chair.

“We are especially grateful for the Lou and Connie Miller Charitable Foundation’s gift, which has helped us reach the finish line for this campaign,” says Scott Black, Tulsa Ballet’s Managing Director. “As a World War II veteran, Lou Miller became an entrepreneur establishing L&M Office Furniture as a successful Tulsa-owned business and finding continued success through real estate investments. I am sure that Mr. Miller would be pleased that his legacy of philanthropy is being carried out by the trustees of his foundation.”

Marcello Angelini, Tulsa Ballet’s Artistic Director, says, “The Defining the Future Campaign was developed to substantiate the relevance of dance in our community for decades to come, through audience growth and education, and the long-term artistic and financial health of Tulsa Ballet. We are thankful to every individual who contributed to this campaign, and for their investment in the future of the arts, culture and quality of life of our community.”

About Defining the Future – An Integrated Campaign for Tulsa Ballet

Completion of Center for Dance Education in Broken Arrow
The Tulsa Ballet Defining the Future Campaign consists of multiple funding areas, the first being capital funds to build The Hardesty Center for Dance Education in Broken Arrow, the result of a generous gift of 13.72 acres from the Hardesty Family Foundation and its founders, Roger and Donna Hardesty.

This facility, designed by Bob Schaefer of Selser Schaefer Architects, opened in 2016 as part of Tulsa Ballet’s 60^th anniversary season to support the growing needs for ballet training, education and outreach programs.

The school houses the Ann and Jack Graves Studios and the Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation Performance Studio, a state-of-the-art, in-house theater with a seating capacity of 160. Additional funding came from the JE and LE Mabee Foundation in the form of a challenge grant, and the Lou and Connie Miller Charitable Foundation, along with multiple individuals, corporations and foundations.

Creation of New Productions
Mollie Williford provided the lead gift to support capital funds for new productions, including this past April’s world premiere of Tchaikovsky: The Man Behind the Music by resident choreographer Ma Cong and the world premiere of Dorothy and the Prince of Oz by Edwaard Liang in collaboration with BalletMet of Columbus, Ohio, that debuted in 2016.

Additional capital funds from the HA and Mary K Chapman Charitable Foundations and the Suzanne and Jim Kneale Family Foundation have been raised to support an all-new production of The Nutcracker to premiere in a future season.

Endowment Growth

Gifts to the Tulsa Ballet endowment have been established to support essential programs in perpetuity.

Lead gifts have been committed by:

• Bonnie Klein, who has established the Audience Favorite Endowment Fund, providing support for productions with mass audience appeal.
• Kathy and Bob West World Premiere Endowment Fund, providing support for productions that foster the creation of new works.
• Margery Mayo Bird Classical Masterpiece Endowment Fund, providing support for productions that preserve the tradition of classical ballet.
• Judith and Jean Pape Adams Artistic Excellence Endowment Fund, providing support for Tulsa Ballet’s commitment to uncompromising artistic quality.
• Sanford and Irene Burnstein Arts Access Endowment Fund, providing access to ballet performances for at-risk youth
• Hannah and Joe Robson Endowment Fund for general support.

Sustaining the level of excellence for annual operations during the campaign has been critical to Tulsa Ballet’s success. Major campaign gifts from George Kaiser Family Foundation, the Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation, and The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation are just a few who have made increased gifts to support Tulsa Ballet’s annual performances and educational outreach programs.

Major gifts and donors
Providing a combined $21 million in major gift commitments for Defining the Future are: The Hardesty Family Foundation; E. Ann Graves; Margery Mayo Bird Foundation; Rita Willis Trust; George Kaiser Family Foundation; Bonnie Klein; The Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation; H.A. & Mary K. Chapman Charitable Foundations; Mollie Williford; The J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation; Judith and Jean Pape Adams Charitable Foundation; Kathy and Bob West; Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation; Lou and Connie Miller Charitable Foundation; Suzanne and Jim Kneale Family Foundation; Janet Selser and Bob Schaefer/Selser Schaefer Architects; Bobbye Ruth and Dewitt L. Potter; and Hannah and Joe Robson.

Major gift donors pledging a combined $2.4 million in contributions include: Billie and Howard Barnett and the Barnett Family Foundation; The Albert and Hete Barthelmes Foundation; SemGroup; Monica Williford and Steve Bayles; Kayla and Scott Vaughn; Katrine and Ramez Hakim; The Maurice DeVinna Charitable Trust; The Mervin Bovaird Foundation; Meinig Family Foundation; Oxley Foundation; Sanford and Irene Burnstein Foundation; Wendy and Gentner Drummond/Blue Sky Bank; Jill and Robert Thomas; Susan and Bill Thomas; Jo and Jack Babbitt; KKT Architects; GlobalHealth; David O. Hogan; IBC Bank; Jackie Kouri and Gary Paxton; Betty and Steve Pirnat; Susan Parrott; Patsy Savage; Will Smith; Charles and Marion Weber Foundation; and Karen Young.

About Tulsa Ballet
Since 1956, Tulsa Ballet has evolved from a small regional ballet company to a nationally and internationally recognized arts organization. For 24 years, the organization has thrived under the leadership of Artistic Director Marcello Angelini.

Today, Tulsa Ballet consistently attracts the finest choreographers in the world, employs around 30 professional dancers from around the world, 25 full‐time artistic and administrative staff members and a pre‐professional ensemble composed of 12 American and international young dancers, all graduates from the top ballet academies of the world.

This year, Tulsa Ballet fulfilled its role as an Oklahoma cultural ambassador by representing the city and state in Italy, Switzerland and Spain on the company’s first three-country tour.

Performing to sold out crowds in six of the top venues, Tulsa Ballet received standing ovations and was called by the European press, “without a doubt, within the Top Ten American ballet companies,” and “one that, for decades continues to enrich the international landscape of our field” and “a company made up of 30 dancers from 14 countries, dancers who are absolutely extraordinary for their technique and versatility … Tulsa Ballet’s work was truly exceptional.”

The recently completed season also saw some of the company’s greatest successes to date, including the highest subscription sales ever, the highest selling run of The Nutcracker in the history of Tulsa Ballet, the largest enrollment in the Tulsa Ballet Center for Dance Education, and the highest grossing special event, Icons & Idols 2019, in the history of Tulsa Ballet.

A translated review in Spettacoli by Silvia Allegri

Synchrony, polished technique and great physical expressiveness were welcomed with enthusiasm and warmth from the audience.  Tulsa Ballet’s Masters of Dance, the fifth engagement in the Teatro Ristori’s dance season, conquers the audience with a program of noticeable depth, where dance transforms in an art-form capable of accompanying the audience member in an introspective journey, thanks to pieces of choreography that have achieved legendary status.

What most surprised us was the continuous, palpable emotional escalation, partly due to the change in the order of the program that allowed Shibuya Blues by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. This piece is an abstract work of great impact inspired by the Tokyo intersection that bares the same name, known for being the busiest in the world.

There, during the peak hours of the day, thousands of people move from one side of the intersection to the other, and on stage we relive the frenetic pace through the classical virtuosity of the piece melted together with contemporary movements, all with an incessant and pressing pace that unlashes an energy that engages the audience.

And then we are presented with the lightness and innocence of Who Cares?, by George Balanchine, a work that blends the refined music of Gershwin, composed between 1924 and 1931, to the beauty of neoclassical solos and duets, where the smart use of lighting effects beautifully highlights the female dancers and their pastel costumes against the dark skyline of the backdrop.

To close the program with its hypnotic circular structure was Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table, ‘a dance macabre in eight scenes’ as the subtitle express:  diplomats wearing masks altercate around a green table and shoot their guns in the air to symbolize the declaration of war, which segues into dramatic sections that illustrate the conflict and its inherent stupidity with the presence of Death, depicted like a skeleton moving like a robot, perennially thirsty for victims.

Tulsa Ballet confirms itself, without a doubt, within the Top Ten American ballet companies, one that, for decades continues to enrich the international landscape of our field. To make this engagement even more precious was the presence of Marcello Angelini at the gathering, organized Saturday by the Associazione Evgenij Polyakov- dancer, choreographer, ballet master- in collaboration with the Liceo Coreutico “Michelangelo Buonarroti” and Immagine Danza Asd, in Verona.  Angelini, who has lead the organization for the past 24 years, talked about his experience working with Maestro Polyakov, as his pupil, as a dancer and as a choreographer.  

The American company performed Sunday for the south stage of LAC

A review in Corriere Del Ticino by Antonio Mariotti

LUGANO – An “American perspective” of extreme interest the one offered by Lugano Scena over six appointments (two engagements dedicated to theater and four to dance), one that reached its final performance Sunday night at LAC with Eclectic Stories presented by Tulsa Ballet directed by Marcello Angelini. The three works are surely eclectic, as the title of the program suggests, and showcased the versatility of all the artists involved, and the sometimes educational essence of this institution born more than 60 years’ ago in Oklahoma.

A successfully eclectic spirit that was already evident in the first work of the program, Shibuya Blues, a very recent dance by choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa on diverse musical scores, among them a famous tune from one of the most celebrated composers of this genre:  Rene’ Aubry.  After this high class “aperitif”, the show entered its core, offering to the Lugano’s large and attentive audience two works of total contrast.  First we witnessed the light and carefree Who Cares? a piece created by George Balanchine in 1970 on music by George Gershwin. A series of short dances (mostly pas de deux and solos) from which transpires the typical American attitude of looking at life in a positive way, lulled by catching melodies that seem out of a Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers’ movie.  

This work is diametrically opposite from the one that followed, The Green Table by Kurt Jooss (1932), with music by Fritz Cohen played live on pianos by Andew Lahti and Joseph McNamara.  This last work occupies a very important place in the twentieth century’s dance history, one hand foreshadowing the advent of Nazis and the inevitability of the war that ensued, while on the other pointing its finger in an accusatory way to political intrigues.  Those are the political intrigues that prefer to play with human destiny around a green table, one just like the ones of the Roulette table, instead of looking for solutions that can satisfy the needs of the majority.   A discourse with strong political tones, one that has its roots in the aesthetic styles of German expressionism and in the Brecht’s theater form, brining to life well defined characters, with caricatural tones (like the one personified by the character of Death) that become the protagonists of a true narrative, making The Green Table an extremely actual prototipe of the dance-theater that will bloom after the first half of the twentieth century.

Tulsa Ballet has proved to be a high-level ballet company, capable of developing an amazing philological work on several fronts. An approach that the LAC public has truly enjoyed .

Tulsa Ballet comes to Spain for the first time at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville with works by Jooss, Balanchine and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa

A translated review in ABCdesevilla by Marta Carrasco

It’s very exciting to see, in our own Teatro Maestranza, a ballet company that stages one of the mythical choreographies in dance history. In this case it was nonetheless than The Green Table, a 1932 work by Kurt Jooss. And it was the American company Tulsa Ballet who premiered it in Spain in the Maestranza theater in a program that also included another choreography that has made history, Who Cares? by George Balanchine. Completing the program was Shibuya Blues by the Belgian-Columbian choreographer Annabelle López Ochoa.

The Green Table is much more than a dance piece. It is about how a single man came forward and warned Europe that madness was coming, and that madness would soon invade Europe. Men saluting with an extended arm would later become reality, bringing horror, death and the Holocaust. Hitler came to power in 1933. The Green Table (1932) was a warning call that nobody wanted to hear, despite the strength of the work of Kurt Jooss.

Ten men are around a green table dressed in grotesque masks and tuxedo coats. Death appears at the back of the stage and is omnipresent in all scenes. The horrors of war appear, the broken families, the separated couples, the refugees, the survivors among the desolation of war. There are some moments that recall scenes from Les Ballets Russes, but the choreography has the exceptional modernity of a work of art, one that has turned 87 years old.

The piece is danced with the live accompaniment of two pianos, which still influences its drama. The company looked impressive in this work. Not only for its impeccable technique, but for the interpretation, fundamental in this choreography. It was really exciting.

And, while The Green Table closed the program, the two pieces that preceded it undoubtedly showed the enormous versatility of this company and above all the impeccable technique in pirouettes, batteries, fouettés, jumps, turns, port de bras …, it was a delight to see them dance.

In 1937 Gershwin asked the choreographer Balanchine to go to Hollywood to work with him. Tragically, Gershwin passed away due to a brain tumor before he could complete the ballet music for the movie. In 1970 Balanchine choreographed Who Cares? on 16 songs of Gershwin composed between 1924 and 1931. This choreography, by the way, was staged by the Compania Nacional de Dansa in 2013. There are songs that we all know, we heard them in movies and Broadway musicals. The Tulsa Ballet dancers feel comfortable in this very American music, at times it seemed as we were watching Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse on stage. Their dancing is joyous, and you can feel it. The choreography of Balanchine takes us in the streets and through the lights of New York. It’s a dynamic piece and a pleasure for the viewer.

And no less important is the choreography of the Belgian-Colombian, Annabelle López Ochoa, Shibuya Blues. The choreographer, one of the most awarded on the European dance scene, has created a piece with the fast-paced music of Banabila, Mens, Manuel Wandji and René Aubry. With the whole company on stage, the choreographer moves the entire cast in a spectacular way, in group sections, duets and trios, all danced with an enormous vitality.

The Tulsa Ballet is a Tier One North American ballet company. On this European tour they will visit Spain (only Seville), Italy and Switzerland. This is an exceptional company, one that stays away from the stereotypes of the star system and one where the entire ensemble is the star, although some soloists do stand out, and one where Italian Marcello Angelini, the artistic director since 1995, takes pride in the virtuosity of its troupe.

Great night of dance in the theater of La Maestranza, the only pity being that this was a one show only engagement given the audience response and the full house. When the program is this good, this is what happens.