Music credit: 'Black Swan Pas de Deux,” from Swan Lake, composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky  Jo Reed: That’s Kevin McKenzie, the Artistic Director of American Ballet Theatre, and this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed. 2015 is a banner year for both American Ballet Theatre and the National Endowment for the Arts. ABT is marking its 75^th anniversary while the NEA is celebrating its 50^th. As you heard from Kevin, our relationship goes way back. ABT received the very first grant ever given by the National Endowment for the Arts. Although always a brilliant and innovative ballet company, ABT was going through some rough financial waters 50 years ago and the NEA gave it an emergency grant to insure the company’s immediate survival and then the Endowment gave ABT an additional grant toward the expenses of touring the United States, and those tours helped foster an appreciation throughout the country for ABT and for ballet itself. Ballet Theatre, as it was originally known, began as a small struggling collective—determined to put an American mark on dance. It did that and much, much more.  ABT is now one of the most respected dance companies in the world, as renowned for its contemporary work as it is for its dazzling full-length classical ballets.  ABT is a rarity in any circle in its stability. Over the course of its 75 years, it has had only three artistic directors, and what a trio they are-- founder Lucia Chase, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Kevin McKenzie. These three, each in his or her own way, have overseen a company that honors the great tradition of dance as it pursues and nurtures innovative talent that continues to push the art form forward.  According to Kevin McKenzie, this insistence on the vitality of dance can be traced to Lucia Chase’s vision for the company and the collaborations she sought to bring it to fruition. Kevin McKenzie: She had a unique vision for this. I have to give credit to Richard Pleasant, too. It was him, as the first official director, that took all the energy that she had, and all these ideas, and focused them into this unique beast we call Ballet Theatre; and it was that it should have wings. It should encompass many types of dance. It should not be a single choreographer’s vision. And, beyond that, it shouldn’t even be one genre of dance’s vision. What they needed was a really versatile group of dancers, who could, in fact, do it all. It was such a radical thing for any dance company to do at that time, especially a big, international-scale ballet company. All the national ballet companies, like the Royal Ballet, the Bolshoi-- they all grew out of schools and a style: a particular style that became emblematic of a national heritage. ABT started from the reverse. It didn’t come from a school. It came from the very notion of the American Experiment: that we all come, as a national character, from all walks of life and from all ethnic backgrounds. Hence, in that first year, she-- to quote Agnes de Mille, she invited every choreographer who was worth anything, who was any good at all, and they all came. I don’t remember the number right at this moment, but it was something like 18 choreographers, or 15 choreographers, that very first season. It was unheard of. And they ranged from established Russian tradition, like Mikhail Fokin, to radical American newbies, like Eugene Loring. And then she took, I think, the most daring step, and it was to engage Antony Tudor as the resident choreographer, if you will. You know, it was a very unique thing. Jo Reed: And Kevin, what about the name, which is unusual for a dance company—“Ballet Theatre.” Kevin McKenzie: That’s right. Ballet Theatre coined a phrase. People who don’t know anything about ballet, if you say the word “a theater piece,” or “a theater event,” or “an art installation,” what you’re describing is an event. If you say “Ballet Theatre,” why not “Ballet Company”? Why not “American Ballet Company”? And it was called Ballet Theatre, because it wanted to use the vocabulary of ballet in the context of theater, which reflects the times in which you live. And this was made in 1940. I think she captured, at a moment in time, our national character, in this ballet company. Jo Reed: When did ABT begin adding full-length classical ballets to its repertoire? Kevin McKenzie: Do you know that that didn’t come until the NEA’s first big grant? Jo Reed: I did not know that. Kevin McKenzie: Yeah, that’s true. The company existed, for its first 20-plus years, entirely on repertory works of various genres, as I just discussed. We did do a Giselle. But we had never done anything from the classical canon as a big, full-length ballet, until the ’60s, when Lucia decided, “We are going to do Swan Lake.” And that was huge, because it coincided, roughly, with the time that the NEA grant came to us. We were on our knees. <laughs> We were about to disband, and it was the turnaround moment, because suddenly we claimed, without having an official designation, that we were the nation’s ballet company. We were the nation’s classical ballet company. We were going to take on Swan Lake-- petits pas-- the emblem of what classical ballet is. And it changed our course. That was also the moment in time when we added the name “American” to our title. So there was a convergence of circumstances and a moment in history when that grant came to us, and Eisenhower had already planted the seed that we should start to use the name “American,” since we were doing state-supported tours to foreign countries, and couldn’t sustain ourselves. Then the NEA grant came in to save the day, and then Lucia mounted Swan Lake, and our fortunes changed forever. Jo Reed: Do you think Lucia was on to something? What made her think going to classical ballet was the way to go? Do you have any clue about that, Kevin? Kevin McKenzie: I think it was because Swan Lake is an emblem of classical ballet, and classical ballet is the standard of measure by which you can measure, not your uniqueness against other national ballet companies, but what does excellence actually mean? And here we were, the American company, and didn’t have that in our repertoire, so how could we claim ourselves to be an international serious force for dance? And I think that’s why she chose it. And the truth of the matter is, through time, if you fast-forward now, 20 years, to the ’80s, the company quickly had added literally the full canon of classical petits-pas ballets. And, indeed, it did become the standard of measure of how American dance stood in the world. But the thing that was still, at that time, unique, was that Ballet Theatre, now, not only did the classics, and did them on a standard that put us on the world stage, we were still unique in our choice of repertoire that encompassed genre-crossing works. Antony Tudor broke all grounds, with coining the phrase “psychological ballet.” Agnes de Mille and Jerome Robbins emerged with and from the company, and crossed the lines to Broadway. There was something incredibly unique about the versatility. It was hard to suddenly-- come the ’80s, when Lucia passed the baton to Mikhail Baryshnikov, it became very difficult to say, “What is a Ballet Theatre dancer?” The easy answer was “versatile.” By the time I came along as a director, and was asked that question, I said, “You know, the thing is, we are no longer, now, unique in the world, because all the other companies have tried to copy our model, in that you have to do the classics, because that’s a standard of measure, but you have to do innovative work to see where the art form is going to go.” The fact that ABT had been doing that from its inception didn’t give us, necessarily, exclusivity to doing that. But what was different and made us unique, to describe what a Ballet Theatre dancer was, was the training. When you looked at a Russian dancer, it was unmistakably a Russian dancer. They had been trained in a very grand style. And if you looked at a French dancer, it was very precise, and you looked at an English dancer, and it was very reserved. And you looked at an American dancer, and it didn’t have a physical look, but it had an energetic appeal that was palpable. And that is what made us-- and keeps us-- unique in the world. Jo Reed: Well, your dancers, they’re primarily American, but they do come from around the world. Kevin McKenzie: They come from all over the world, and you know, the thing is, that we created what, I guess, would be called an American style, based on that energy that I just talked of, because we had Cuban-trained dancers standing next to Russian-trained dancers standing next to British- and French-trained dancers, and a bunch of, you know, wily Americans, <laughs> and they all learned from each other. And eventually, the Russians were no longer Russian, and the Cubans were no longer Cuban, because they were taking what was the best of their trainings, and what they observed on how each other worked, and a new thing was made, exactly the way this country was established. Jo Reed: The patchwork that’s America. Exactly. Kevin McKenzie: Yeah. Yeah. Jo Reed: Every art form is unique, so, not to be trite or overstate it, but ballet, to me, most particularly, is so paradoxical, because the gracefulness and the effortlessness that one sees on the stage is dependent on this extraordinary strength that, in some ways, has to masked. Kevin McKenzie: You know, I think the thing that’s unique about it, and where it separates itself, in physicality, from sports, is that... hmm. Where the similarities lie is that the conditioning has to be extreme, like many sports are. The physicality and the strength of the body has to be integral and all-encompassing, as it is also needed in sports. In ballet, then you put one more layer on top of that. It’s not a competition. There is no one who wins or loses at the end of it. But it is trying to achieve excellence for the sake of excellence, with the objective to communicate the human condition and celebrate the human form. Ultimately, the thing that really sets it apart is that it has to be beautiful. <laughs> At all times, it has to be beautiful. There was a very interesting thing that Antony Tudor once said to me, when trying to sort of portray a particular jump. And I thought he wanted me to do the jump, physically, better. It took me a while for me to understand that what he wanted for me was to say something with that jump. And he said, “Listen. It’s time for you to trust your training. It will be beautiful, and as beautiful as it needs to be, but it doesn’t need perfection at this moment. It needs to be dramatic.” That’s one of the great artists, as a director, <laughs> working on everyday stuff. That’s what ballet dancers work on every day. Jo Reed: How did you come to dance? Kevin McKenzie: Totally accidentally; a little bit, the Billy Elliot story. At the grand old age of seven years old, I had a friend who was taking some tap lessons, and was excited by them, and was explaining them to me, and trying to get me to go and join him. And I was like, “Eh, I don’t know.” And my father overheard the conversation, and he was not particularly into the arts. But he said, “Well, what the hell, boy? Go join him. Who knows? You could be the next Fred Astaire.” So I did. I went and took the tap lessons with my friend. And a while later, my father wanted to see what I knew, and I was not terribly good. And he said, “Hmm. Why don’t you take your sister’s ballet class? They’re sending football players to ballet class for coordination and strength. Maybe it’s just that you’re not coordinated.” And I really resisted that. I was not-- I did not want to put on a pair of tights and get in a room with a bunch of girls. And the teacher was very good, worked with my parents, and said, “I’ll give him a couple of private classes with just his sister, and if he can’t deal with it, then don’t push him.” And so they did that, and there was something about it. There was something about the relation to music, and how it felt, physically, to do, that within a month or so, I was okay going to the girls’ ballet class. And within a year or two, I was giving up the basketball team and the acrobatics team and the tap-dance lessons, and all the-- my parents were looking at each other, going, “Whoa, what have we wrought, here?” And then, just like in the Billy Elliot story, my teacher went to my parents and said, “This kid-- and the sister-- are really talented. They should go get some real training. They’re beyond my pay grade.” And so she helped my parents look for good teachers. And we were incredibly fortunate to be accepted at the Washington School of Ballet, with Mary Day, who, at the time, was in Washington, D.C., and had an academy and a dormitory situation, where she trained kids through their high-school years, with a mind to be professional dancers. And the academic courses all related to a life in the theater. It was remarkable training. And so, at the grand old age of 12, I went off to school, and I stayed there until high school, till I finished my high-school training, and had, in essence, completed my ballet training, and got my first job in Washington, D.C., with the National Ballet of Washington. Jo Reed: And then you went on to the Joffrey. Kevin McKenzie: That’s right. And then on to ABT, and... Jo Reed: And you were hired by Lucia. Kevin McKenzie: I was. I have to correct past statements. I have been on record saying I was her last hire, and I’m not so sure that I was, but I know that I was her last promotion. She hired me in March of ’79, and in December of ’79, she promoted me. Jo Reed: Now, that’s a very quick promotion to principal, isn’t it? Kevin McKenzie: It was. It was a very quick promotion. But I had had a lot of experience by that time, and, you know, it’s interesting. I had said to myself-- I auditioned for Ballet Theatre when I left Washington, and it was the year that Mikhail Baryshnikov defected and had his first performances in New York, so I literally couldn’t get in the door. So I suppose it could be explained that my time at Joffrey was a detour, because I always wanted to be at Ballet Theatre. But I wouldn’t have traded that experience at Joffrey for anything, because what it gave me was what I probably wouldn’t have gotten in my formative years at Ballet Theatre, and it’s what made me completely ready to be promoted as quickly as I was, when I got to Ballet Theatre. Jo Reed: So Lucia left, and Baryshnikov became the Artistic Director. What did he bring to ABT? Kevin McKenzie: When Misha became director, we were at the height of what’s called the “ballet boom.” Dance was in general society’s lexicon. Mikhail Baryshnikov was a household word. Makarova and Nureyev were steady attractions. Gelsey Kirkland was the first American ballerina to be on the cover of TIME magazine, and the money was flowing. It was just the height of the game. What he brought was a sort of recognition that ballet had come into its own, as a profession, and that, you know, for the general public, it was okay to go see the ballet. It wasn’t necessarily just for those people who, oh, maybe also see the opera. And, as I say, that was the height of the NEA support for touring, and we went every single year, for 16-- anywhere between 12 and 16 weeks on the road, before we came and did an eight-week season at the Met, and literally went everywhere. It was a phenomenal thing. As a performer, it was an amazing thing, because it afforded you so many performances. As an institution, it allowed us to cement our reputation in the country, to become the de facto national ballet company. And he brought in many, many contemporary choreographers of the time, and he added to our repertoire in the classical canon. He did his own production of Nutcracker. He did our first production of Don Q, a brilliant staging of Giselle, and, you know, he brought Kenneth MacMillan to us, and with it, the Royal Ballet has it, also, but we have Kenneth’s production of Romeo and Juliet; Twyla Tharp, and she created more works than any other choreographer. So it was a very exciting time, and a burst of creativity, and a burst of activity, and we were all riding the high, that ballet had come into its own, you know? And then came the end of the ’80s... <laughs> and our whole world changed. It changed for the NEA, and it changed for ABT, and the NEA’s budget was slashed, and so was ABT’s, and our fortunes changed, and we kind of had to rebuild, at the moment in time that I came in as director. Jo Reed: Did you expect to become Artistic Director? Kevin McKenzie: I did not. Jo Reed: Was it something you had thought about? Kevin McKenzie: No. It was a... shocking moment in time. I-- without being self-deprecating, and without painting a bad picture about anyone, basically what happened is that anyone with any experience or knowledge about how to run a big ballet company was not about to touch ABT with a 10-foot pole, and I ended up with the job because I was known here at ABT. The dancers were very supportive of it. And basically, because of my relative lack of experience and as an administrator, and my unknown track record as a director, the company had nothing to lose by giving me a try, because no one else was going to do it. We were-- the choice was me, or shut the place down. Jo Reed: And the reason-- because of that, was because of financial difficulties. Correct? Kevin McKenzie: We were in such dire financial straits. It was just-- it had eroded so quickly and so fast, as is the fate of artistic institutions in America. It only takes three or four key people, who are either funders or star performers or good administrators, to leave at the same time, and a place can go out of existence. So I just started the way I knew best, and had some severe on-the-job training. And because every single person in this institution wanted me and needed me to succeed, I did. Jo Reed: What is it that you wanted to bring to the company, financial stability aside-- which I know is nothing to sneeze at-- but artistically? Kevin McKenzie: I felt that, at the time I took the company, it needed to go a little bit back to its roots. It needed to rediscover the theater part of its roots. I-- but ultimately, I felt that there was nothing wrong with its mission. I wanted to continue the tradition of expanding the classical repertoire, and expanding relationships with very high-end choreographers, and trying to explore new creators, to promote them for-- you know, where’s the art form going to go in the future? So it was really less about... what I thought I could do for it, but how I thought I could do for it. And I think it was really just a sobering moment in time that I came, and I had to say to everybody, “Hey, guys, just because we’re Ballet Theatre doesn’t mean we deserve to survive, and we all have to remember that. We’re literally only as good as our last performance, now. It doesn’t matter that we have a great history, because that’s just the way it is in America. We have to earn our way out of this.” And everybody went, “Okay. Great. How do we do that?” <laughs> And I just set about programming the company, one ballet at a time. Jo Reed: One ballet at a time. Kevin McKenzie: Build it one ballet at a time. Exactly. Jo Reed: Well, ballet dancers are performers, which means, among other things, it’s a jumble of ego and insecurity. So, as Artistic Director, you both have to nurse fragile egos, and also, I would think, sometimes foster a little humility. That’s quite a juggle. Kevin McKenzie: It is. It’s... but I think that... I think that there was-- I was lucky, in that when I came in, there was a generational turnaround, also. I had a unique situation, in that I was suddenly directing people in the principal ranks that, six, eight months prior, had been my partners onstage, but they were all kind of beginning the ending years of their careers. So I was able to set my sights on new talent, and build an entirely new generation within about five years, and set the stamp of the expected behavior on that new generation. And that’s the one that brought us into the late ’90s, and a new culture had been sort of introduced into ABT, that basically, “For better or for worse, you guys all have to understand that you have a director who grew up in a very large family, and I’m used to organized chaos, but one of the really unifying things is that, when you’ve got that many people to take care of, we don’t have time for your ego. We have work to do. And we’ll respect you and your talent, but we don’t have time for your ego, and it’s not okay to act out.” And it was a just a credo. And... you know, it didn’t mean people didn’t act out, but they knew that, you know, we were either not going to put up with it, or there just wasn’t time for it. <laughs> Jo Reed: That’s funny, because one of my questions was, does being one of eleven kids, did that prepare you for a life in a ballet company? Kevin McKenzie: Do you know, it took me almost 10 years of directing to suddenly realize the shock of recognition in that statement. But I do. In retrospect, I absolutely believe that’s one of the keys to my longevity here, is that, you know, I’ve been preparing for this since, obviously, from a sociological viewpoint, my entire life. Jo Reed: ABT also made headlines when Misty Copeland was promoted to principal dancer: the first African-American woman in ABT’s history to be principal dancer. Kevin McKenzie: Yeah. Jo Reed: I know ABT is engaged with outreach, to diversify its dancers. Can you tell me about some of those efforts that you’ve made? Kevin McKenzie: Well, you know, it became apparent to us, when our schools started to really develop-- and we have all these summer schools all over the country, and so we audition broadly and see lots of kids in the audition process. And we began to discover two things. One was that the training in America out there was not what it should be; and what training there was, was not terribly diversified. So we kind of, through time, we developed this national training curriculum to teach the teachers. So we instituted this training curriculum, and then the next step was trying to reach and address the diversity issue. So black people are excluded because mostly they don’t have the opportunity to train young enough, to get good enough at an early age, to be seen at ABT’s level. So how do we address that? And we set about doing outreaches to schools around the country. We established a partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of America-- which is where Misty was discovered, by the way-- and have entered into those communities through local ballet companies and their schools, to help us identify young students of color, or teachers who teach in the communities of color, to help us identify the talent, and then give them scholarships to train, and give them access to really good training through our national training curriculum. And the reason we go through all this is that, “Now, wait a minute. We’re the nation’s ballet company, and if ballet’s going to get rid of this elitist thing, then we have to reflect the country.” And let’s face it: The country isn’t white. It’s about inclusion. Jo Reed: And about a lack of opportunity. Kevin McKenzie: A lack-- yeah, exactly. And it’s really begun to work now, that partnership with Boys and Girls Club. And, of course, Misty... God bless her. She goes out there and... she-- on days off, she’s, for free, going to the Boys and Girls Club, and she’s aware that she is an avatar to that entire community, and she’s embraced that. And it’s great. It’s-- but the thing that’s also amazing is that, when she comes here to work, it is her absolute priority. Nothing gets in the way. Jo Reed: And as we’re ending this, let’s just go back to the NEA for a moment, and the importance of the relationship between the NEA and ABT over the years. Over the years, what has NEA’s support meant to American Ballet Theatre? Kevin McKenzie: You know, I would say, at exactly the times that we needed it, it supported, in a very large and generous portion, exactly what it was that we needed to do to get the message and the power, and the transformative power of this art form, out to the broadest public. And, in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, it was helping us tour. But in the ’90s, and on till now, it’s focusing on the creations of new works: the things that will redefine the art form, the things that we might, in fact, be claiming will be the Swan Lake a hundred years from now, that we-- the NEA and ABT-- created together. Jo Reed: And, Kevin, what about the significance of the NEA to the cultural vitality of the country, over the past 50 years? Kevin McKenzie: You know, I think that it’s... it’s certainly not what the European model is, but what it has addressed is the notion that the arts are an integral part of what it means to be a civilized society; that the performing arts, the visual arts, and literature are the key to thinking in a language that is free to invent. If you will, I think part of the American entrepreneurial spirit-- that sort of daydreaming, limitless ability to think up something new, and take a chance on it-- that’s the type of thinking that immersion into the arts promotes, and that’s what the NEA promotes. Jo Reed: And finally, tell me the most rewarding aspect of your tenure as Artistic Director of ABT. Kevin McKenzie: That we’re still here. Jo Reed: Amen. And I am so glad. Kevin McKenzie: Well, that makes two of us, and thank you. Jo Reed: Thank you, Kevin. I really appreciate it. Kevin McKenzie: Thank you. That’s Artistic Director of American Ballet Theatre, Kevin McKenzie.  You’ve been listening to Art Works, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. September 29, 2015 marks our 50^th anniversary.  Check out our website for stories from around the country about the wonders of art ---or contribute one of your own. Go to arts.gov to find out how. For the National Endowment for the arts, I’m Josephine Reed, thanks for listening.