From Cancer and Closure to Creating New Ballet: A Ballerina’s Journey

But as a dancer I never really stepped up and said I want to choreograph. What was then called Ballet San Jose was doing a program of new works and I went to my director Dennis Nahat and I said I would love to choreograph a ballet for the company and he incredibly generously said yes go ahead and again I was being too modest I said I'll just do something short just a little pas de deux he said no why why do something big use the entire company What do you want to do? Our area innovator today is Dahlia Rawson a former professional ballerina with the San Jose Cleveland Ballet who took a bold step when the local ballet company collapsed by founding New Ballet in San Jose in 2016. Dahlia's vision led to the creation of the new San Jose Nutcracker production that debuted to sold-out crowds and has since become a beloved tradition. Now she's bringing the timeless beauty of Swan Lake to life. Along the way Dahlia built a thriving ballet school and introduced live classical ballet to new audiences throughout Silicon Valley. In this episode Dahlia opens up about how she keeps ballet alive in the community the intricate process of staging a ballet production and why in an increasingly digital world the human connection on stage remains more vital than ever. This is Bay Area Innovators and I'm your host Steve Espas. Dahlia welcome to our program. Thank you so much. Well glad to have you here. So you've been a ballerina with the San Jose Cleveland Ballet for quite a few years and you've actually been involved in every single position within a ballet company. You've been a teacher, a choreographer, ballet mistress, principal, you've been you're now the executive director and the artistic director so you've kind of seen it all. I want to start with the Swan Lake which is a production that you're working on pretty soon is going to premiere in San Jose and this is probably one of the most beloved ballet in the world at this time. Certainly. It's Tchaikovsky's music you know it premiered in 1877 and it was a failure at the time and now it became the biggest ballet in the world. So tell us a little bit about your production and the history of. Well Swan Lake is considered a very important step in the history of ballet. Up until that time music was written with the input of the choreographer. So for Sleeping Beauty which is considered sort of the height of the classical era of ballet, Petipa said to Tchaikovsky I need 16 bars of music for a dancing fairy and then I need another eight bars of music for some thunder and so the music was sort of dictated by the choreographer and as you said that is actually how the original Swan Lake score was written but the original ballet was not successful and in about 10 years after its premiere it was re-choreographed by Petipa and Ivanov and so at that point they were creating the dance in reaction to the music for the first time instead of the other way around and up until that point in classical ballet there's a very traditional vocabulary. So in Sleeping Beauty if your arm is going to be in fifth high it's in fifth high and it's in a very prescribed position so in Sleeping Beauty sort of there's there's portions of the production where we tell the story and we do that through mime so story story story and then dance dance dance story story story dance dance dance it's two separate things. So Swan Lake now they have this beautiful score by Tchaikovsky which is one of the most lush and evocative and romantic scores of all time and now the dance was being created to the music and so for the first time we took these classical vocabulary the classical arm movements and we use them as an expressive tool as opposed to just now we will dance. So instead of having your arm above your head like this just in a classical position they changed it to a swan port de bras just a little bit yeah outside of the classical vocabulary and using that to create a character and tell a story which is a swan yeah and the story actually progressed through the dancing scenes very famously in the third act the prince has sworn his love to Odette who is the white swan and she's enchanted by von Rothbart who's the evil sorcerer but von Rothbart tricks the prince and he brings a the black swan who is an identical copy of Odette but in black instead of white and it's usually the same dancer right yes and in our production it is and that makes it very very challenging for the dancers so during the pas de deux which is a dance for two people and it's usually a section of the ballet in Sleeping Beauty for instance the grand pas de deux happens and we see the dancers perform but there's no there's no plot being forwarded there during that third act pas de deux we actually see the story develop during the pas de deux so in the history of ballet this had never been done before so it makes it a very interesting ballet historically but it's also just a timeless classic tragedy and a tragedy in the sense of shakespeare or ancient greek tragedy where at the end instead of feeling you know sort of downtrodden by the tragic nature of the story there's a sense of denouement where we're uplifted by themes of redemptive love and love that's stronger than than death that's beautiful one of my favorite parts of this ballet is the in act three i think it's the the princess variations where you have a hungarian yes start with spanish right spanish italian hungarian russian yes so you have all these four dances and tchaikovsky wrote the music beautiful all of them right anything you can tell us you know it seems pretty you know sounds spanish and yes sounds russian right so um well in classical ballet training we take character class where we learn um you know we don't get too deep into uh folklorico dancing or folkloric dancing folk dancing but we learn some of the flavorings of the different the different styles the spanish use of the arms in the head the hungarian use of the arms in the head the russian use of the arms of the head some very traditional versions of the the ballet those are strictly character dances maybe even done in different shoes not in pointe shoes but that's an area of the ballet that has not been passed down from generation to generation so that is one area where that is in our production those dances are my choreography so um i used my knowledge and training in the you know in character dance to um keep the flavor of each of those dances but i've made them our own to suit our dancers and our um our current our current cast how important is it for you to keep the traditional style of ballet the way you know as close as it has been from the beginning well i'm not a preservationist i believe that the tradition of classical ballet is a living art form and it comes from our training you know every single day every ballet dancer around the world starts their day with a ballet class and we all we all begin our day with plie which means to and for a dancer you know it's a way to prepare your body it's a ritual it's how we all begin together in a studio and that classical technique and precision and line is um the heart of classical ballet um i am not trying to do a production of swan lake that is you know exactly as it was performed right hundreds of years ago um i like to think i preserve the very best of those ballets that the scene to the act to the white act by the lake we perform um as it was passed down to me as it has been passed down for generations for great swatches of that ballet but you know the original ballet swan lake is over four hours long um and that's not something that many audiences feel is um is something they want to take their family to yes um so i don't do the full the ballet as it was presented i mean in the times that they were performed people's houses were not comfortable they didn't have heat they didn't have air conditioning um so going to the theater was a very nice way to spend six hours um we don't have six hours typically so i you know our production of swan lake is two hours long and i absolutely preserve the um the tradition of these beautiful dances that we you know that i saw as a child that i've seen uh countless casts perform um and that we all love uh but i'm i believe i'm presenting it in a way that's really um a fun a fun excursion for a family you know this episode is special for me because my grandmother was a folk dancer and she taught folk dance hungarian and romanian for a long time wonderful and my mother was a ballerina with the main opera house in romania for for many many years and she performed all of these dances she performed giselle coppelia swan lake sleeping beauty i know you've nutcracker so i know you've also done nutcracker last year and you called it the san jose nutcracker tell us about that what you know how different it is or what's well we do an annual production of the san jose nutcracker and um it we've premiered it in 2016 and um this past season we uh partnered with symphony san jose which is the leading symphony in the area really it was a tremendous co-production um with the the huge symphony in the pit and the dancers on stage i call it the san jose nutcracker because i took the story that's typically set in um russia or somewhere generically in europe hundreds of years ago and i reset the story in in san jose in 1905 right before the earthquake um i love san jose um we're a wonderful city and i firmly believe that san jose deserves its own rich nutcracker um but it is absolutely the classical valet that everyone will recognize same choreography no my choreography not the same choreography in fact nutcracker is not a ballet that was passed down clearly from generation to generation the most known examples of nutcracker choreography in the united in the world right now are george balanchine which is choreographed in new york city and san francisco ballet's original production was choreographed by the christiansen brothers and those are of course um the property of those companies right so every company around the world that does nutcracker has their own choreography so mine is my own choreography although again there are certain moments that have been passed down the sugar plum fairy variation i do the traditional version of the sugar plum fairy variation and the sugar plum plum fairy patata in the final act i do the traditional as close as we know from the original petapod but the rest of the ballet is is my choreography um but it will be very familiar we have dancing snowflakes we have the snow queen we have a beautiful waltz of the flowers but i have said it in san jose and in the santa clara valley so instead of going to the land of the sweets in the second act we go to the valley of heart's delight and instead of having a chinese tea dance we have a dancing walnut because this used to be um instead of an arabian harem dance we have a dance of the diamondback rattlesnake so it's inspired by the original it's very recognizable we have clara we have the nutcracker prince and the sugar plum fairy but with a little updates to uh keep it fresh and to give san jose something that's truly our own and just for audience when is your the premiere for the swan lake that's swan lake is on may 17th and 18th okay at the hammer theater center in downtown san jose and that will also be performed with live orchestra that's great now i want to ask you about your career you had a great career with the sounds equivalent ballet then you had some health issues and then you had to step down and you had the power the energy to come back and come back to the top you know in a different role tell us about that and your resilience to to turn things around and come back um i think dancers and artists are generally very resilient i i joined what was then known as san jose cleveland ballet in uh 1992 um right out of high school and i had a wonderful career with that company um under the artistic direction of dennis nahat who was a tremendous choreographer and leader i was very very fortunate to dance with him for you know 16 years um and i danced many principal roles many soloist roles and in his wonderful choreography and also um choreography of the great masters uh martha graham and george balanchine and um i was very very lucky very fortunate in 2006 um directly following a run of the nutcracker i had been having a little bit of back pain i thought i was just tired uh but it turned out i had hodgkin's lymphoma and i had some tumors in my spine that resulted in some fractures um it was quite well developed it was stage four at the time it was diagnosed and um that i i knew i was going to have to have at least a year of chemotherapy and i was already in my you know i think i was 31 at the time and i thought this is you know this is going to i will not come back to performing after this because you know especially with the injury to my spine it i didn't want to come back and not be able to get back to the the level i had been dancing before so i went through treatment for about over a year i ended up having to have a bone marrow transplant um but you know thank god this um this was successful and uh the wonderful doctors in stanford um worked their their magic and i'm i've been in remission ever since um considered fully cured at this point but of course you know this is a everyone says um dancers die twice you know the first time when they retire from the stage and for me this was um not a choice and not a uh something i had spent time thinking about and okay this will be my last performance and i didn't have any of that um uh that lead up or warning or even it just suddenly one week i'm dancing the lead in the nutcracker and then the next week my career is over um and for the first year of course i was just thinking about survival and um getting through treatment and then i i emerged and wondered what was next you know um my whole life had been about being a dancer i started training at age two wow um and it's it's really my my greatest love and my greatest passion so i went back to teaching um which i enjoyed more than i thought i would as a dancer but in my heart i had always wanted to make ballets always wanted to choreograph as a in fact when i was young i used to say i wanted i wasn't brave enough to say i wanted to be a choreographer at that time they were very only agnes demille and martha graham which were more modern dance choreographers not many female ballet choreographers so it didn't that seemed too big of a dream in some ways i said i wanted to be um the rehearsal assistant ballet ballet master type position um which is the person who teaches other people's choreography to the dancers but i started choreographing myself um i'm going to say at age nine or ten and i did ballets in my living room and it was my passion almost more than dancing and performing although i love that as much as anyone could love anything and i would write down my choreography in a notebook and invite over all my little friends and we would have a sleepover and i would be very annoyed if people didn't want to stay up all night long and learn choreography follow your yes and i spent the rest of the year collecting costumes and making sets and this was this was what i always wanted to do but as a dancer i never really stepped up and said i want to choreograph and at that time that was fairly typical for female dancers we it's so competitive that you don't want to be seen as anything other than a dancer um you know if you said you had another interest at all maybe you wouldn't be that's that again far less true now but after i retired the company was or after i stopped dancing for my health reasons um what was then called ballet san jose uh was doing a program of new works and i went to my director dennis nahat and i said i would love to choreograph a ballet for and he incredibly generously said yes go ahead and again i was being too modest i said i'll just do something short just a little pas de deux he said no why why do something big use the entire company what do you want to do and i said oh gosh okay so i made my first ballet which was to the music of legetti a very complex score it was live piano music so this is a turnaround time this is yeah well i it's all a turn it's all a process right so at that time i started choreographing i became eventually the director of the school but sadly the company went bankrupt in 2016 so that was another um you know huge huge blow to the arts in san jose yes um and i learned of the bankruptcy at the same time as all the dancers and everyone else with uh basically two weeks to go and at that time it was march no february 2016 sorry and uh we were told that the company was going to go bankrupt and the school was part of the company so that was going to be closing as well and at that time local families had paid over 250 000 in tuition that was all lost in the bankruptcy and because students pay early for classes all through the summer in march they already paid for classes through august so myself and my team committed to doing everything we could to make those classes happen for those families who had spent all that money so i volunteered my time for about six months and my entire team volunteered for a shorter period of time and i dedicated myself to doing some fast fundraising we had some families who really supported the vision of starting a new school right away and um the company was founded uh february 28th was leap year of that year um 29th actually and by august of that year we were operating in the black so um that was really uh it was a big challenge but it was an exciting time because my whole team these people who loved dance and loved ballet loved san jose pulled together to really make that happen so that was in 2016 we started the school 2019 we became a professional company with paid dancers and um you know we faced challenges since then but uh you know things are going beautifully that's a wonderful story how how similar would you say that two companies the san jose cleveland ballet and that your current school your company is as far as performances dancers well you know um there are none of the same dancers that was a in a dancer's history that eight years nine years is an eternity when a career is only 15 years long at maximum um so we are an entirely new organization um and the structure is a new structure um and it's profitable now um yeah we well yes we're in the black and uh we're about a 1.8 million dollar uh budget um the old company was a larger budget than that um we are structured differently um and i believe we're structured in a way that is sustainable and and um and the right fit for san jose um san jose is a wonderful city and there's a lot of support for the arts and for um families love to go and see productions but we're of course very close to san francisco where there's a wonderful wonderful one of the i would say and um their director tamara rojo definitely says the best ballet company in the world right now um with a budget um that's you know i believe it's a hundred million dollars or something it's it's you know we we will never be that in san jose and we don't want to be um we're something different i think we're something that is a celebration of our community and our our uh local and international talent um and so yeah we are structured in a different way i was thinking about that that there are some exceptions but there was a big uh wave of of people founding companies in the 70s in um the united states and um arts company a ballet company ballet company classical ballet companies i'm talking about classical ballads and and also modern ballet companies in the 70s there were many many new companies um now there were older historic renowned companies with huge endowment funds and and and families have supported those companies for years in in new york city in um boston in san francisco in houston there's there's companies with traditional histories that have gone on for hundreds of years and those huge companies are surviving and doing well they have uh legacy donors and people who have supported the company for generations so that model of company is surviving though kind of too big to fail right and the very very small contemporary companies maybe 14 dancers that tour a lot um those companies that math works but these companies a lot of them that were founded in the 70s that were sort of a mid-sized american company that is a challenging equation um and that's you know what what ballet san jose was it's um it's a challenge to keep those companies um operating in in in a modern economy so um and people aren't really founding new ballet companies um as much as maybe there's a sort of a wave of that happening in the in the 70s so you know i found i somehow found myself in this position to to start something from scratch um at a time when that wasn't really done um so much people would take over old companies or you know take over a structure that had already been there um but i was starting from zero um which was you know if i had thought about it more of the time maybe i would have been more afraid of that but i think it's really ended up being great for for the organization because i've built the organization to suit the needs of our community and to fit um we've grown with the funds we have earned income is a huge which is the right way to do it yeah yeah i mean earned income typically a lot of arts companies struggle to maintain 50 50 balance between earned income and donated income and um we've always been much more reliant on our earned income and um of course we have we do rely on generous donors as well it's very important to us but the the idea is that the the donated income um funds the growth of the but the school and and our general productions are are funded by um by our earned income which puts the responsibility on us on the artists to produce a product a school ballet classes and performances that the public wants um we need to really serve our community and be what the community needs and i think that just developing in the way that we did um it was an opportunity well what i think is significant it's beautiful to see is not just your comeback but how you're able to also be to be good at of course dancing and choreographing but also running a school which are so different aspects of life right the artistic part and the actual getting down to make things work um you told us how when you were little you like ballet what would you how would you summarize your love for ballet where where is it coming from what what makes you motivated to to to to go every day and produce work dance has been the way my soul expresses itself um for as long as i can remember um and my mother claims that um she never felt me move when she was she was pregnant um until she went to the ballet and she sat in the theater and that was the first time she felt me moving and she said i never stopped dancing and i haven't um i think some people it was never it never felt like a choice it felt like i am this is the only thing i want to spend my time to spend my heart um some people are just dancers and i was very fortunate that that i had that um i felt that calling and yet and then i also had the ability and was given the opportunities to um to live my life as a dancer because that's a very um it's a privilege um and it's uh it's an honor to be part of that classical tradition and and i've always been interested in the whole picture you know as a dancer i would spend my breaks sitting in the um administrative offices and just listening to um the the technical aspects of how things were going to happen and i i like the whole i like everything about it i like all of the little pieces that have to come together um from you know staffing staffing the theater or creating the sets and all of these pieces that have to come together in order to tell a story through movement and music and and i love the magic of that um and now i've forgotten your question your love like why do you love ballet but i think you pretty much yeah i mean it's just it's part of you yeah it's part of me and and it's um dance is such it can be such a transformative experience i think that every every person every culture in the world has a history of dance we dance before we walk and um i believe ballet is an art form for everyone um you you don't need to know anything to come into the theater and love a ballet because it's a very it's a very simple and straightforward thing there are beautiful people expressing themselves not not through words not through language but in a way that that can touch you emotionally no matter if you've seen dance before if you've seen dance a million times um and tell a story as well tell a story i love to tell the stories um my favorite part about putting together a ballet production is the day the first day in the studio where the whole cast comes together you know because i'll work on one dance with this group over here and at this dance with these dancers over here and it's all in my head but then finally there's a day where all the whole cast is there and we do the whole ballet and they see we all see together how this this this puzzle is going to fit together in order to tell a story and to feel the dancers realize in swan lake typically it was the moment happened when we got to the part where odette the queen of the swans says um you know she can no longer live under the curse of von rothbart so she's going to end her life and um in in honor of true love um and when the dancers the swans they hadn't seen that that part of it they had they knew their part of the story but when they realized how they fit in with that bigger part of the story we all felt it together it's a real moment of of of human human connection amongst the artists and of course then you know this is why live theater is so important because that that moment is real for us and then when we go into the theater and we have the live orchestra so live human beings creating this incredible score on the spot and the audience the audience is so important they're they're they're part of the experience um they're there live to witness human fallible human beings doing exceptional things with their bodies on stage to tell a story and to create an experience for all of us communally i mean it's a wonderful thing it's a wonderful thing and um you know to come back to the theater after the pandemic and and be together in in a theater and experience these incredible classical works is really tremendous and i recommend please come yes i recommend everyone do it well i think for the audience is very special also because i think how the audience feels that everything is choreographed so well it's planned so well but now you're telling me that the dancers themselves they're in this awe this this experience they have that they're not planning for it it just happens at the time so the audience probably senses that and that's what makes it more special absolutely that's the glory of live performance yes you know we have um the role of odette odile is it's it's an iconic ballerina role um very difficult very difficult just from a pure strength and stamina standpoint you know she she has multiple variations and pas de deux throughout the whole thing on the autistic side she has to portray two absolutely opposite characters um and this is roles that dancers you know dream about their entire lives um and then they have one maybe two chances to live that moment to live that life of odette odile on the stage for a very limited period of time and things never go perfectly you know there's no such thing as a perfect performance we're human and we can get close and and and a true artist it's it's perfection is not the goal right um it's it's if you're too perfect you haven't you haven't pushed hard enough right um these dancers are pushing themselves to the edge of their limit and that's what makes it so exciting the the very famous section in um swan lake there are many very famous sections but there's the the coda the the big finale uh in the act three pas de deux which is they've done a beautiful supported adagio a slow section there's a difficult solo for a man a difficult solo for the women and then we come and we do our tricks you know the music gets going and and there are some very historically difficult series of turns for dancers that are done by the man and the woman and that's you know this is we all know everyone on stage everyone in the audience is like here they come this is the fouettes they better do these turn you know you got to do these turns right so it's a challenge and um no matter how many times you do it no matter how many times you do it the the best professional dancer in the world will sometimes struggle on those fouettes they don't always go perfectly because it's it's pushing yourself to the limit of your ability and that's what makes it so exciting and if it doesn't go perfectly well you're a professional and you fix it but that's what makes live performance you know it's not digitally edited so that if if we fell out of a turn okay well we'll go back and fix that you know in in with cgi or something no yeah you know something happens it happens and it's live artistry that's actually i feel is very important because these days there's a lot of cgi a lot of this ai stuff that happens and i think that you you can tell us more but i really feel that that kills a lot of the the real art the real work yeah i mean that's it's a different thing right i'm sure there are tools and uses and and hopefully advances in science and everything else that this will be wonderful for but um i have a craving personally to go to the theater and see see the human effort see the the these incredible artists um using their bodies and their their their soul their their expressive their their intellect their emotions to to create a work of art um that is live that is uh it's um ephemeral it happens in an instant and it's gone we can videotape we can videotape the show and and there's it's not the same right it's not the same it's not the same because the you you know the outcome has already been decided whereas when you are in the moment watching watching the live performance anything can happen exactly we don't know what's going to happen exactly and it can be a tennis match or a football game or anything else absolutely absolutely and those are you know that's a that's a great analogy but there's something about when the goal is not competitive when the goal is art as opposed to sport i mean sports wonderful um but dancers are you know einstein said that dancers are the athletes of god and um i believe that to be true why is your company called neo ballet in san jose well ballet is i believe ballet can be um such a positive thing for a young person to study there's been many studies that say that classical education in the performing arts has benefits far beyond artistic practice um higher test scores you develop grit you develop determination you learn to work as a team you feel pride in yourself as somebody who's accomplished wonderful things um however you know traditional ballet training is um there are some negative things about the way that dancers were trained in the past i want ballet to be a celebration of of joy and of movement and um so our training is uh focused on dancer health and child development and this is in alignment with the american ballet theater national training curriculum which is a wonderful now there's there's schools of ballet from all around the world um the ballet started in france the italian school the russian school the danish school the english school all developed slightly different ways of training ballet all very good but um if you look but state funded um first funded by the crown funded by royalty um and then state government funded um and in the u.s that's not really the case so in those other traditions only the very specific bodies are chosen and plucked you you're you're tested your body is tested for flexibility for proportions for blah blah blah at you know age nine eight and those are the only people who study ballet um we don't have that type of state funding here in the u.s and we instead choose to make ballet training available to everyone um if you train in the same way one does in a school where you're only training the most ideal bodies this is not a safe way to train for every every body um and the the founders of the american ballet theater national training curriculum um franco devita who's italian and raymond lucans um they are experts in ballet training trained in europe trained in russia and know about all of these schools they took the best parts of these schools for classical ballet training and worked with a um a health advisory board in order to take into account um uh proper proper new developments in how a body should should develop and train healthfully to prevent injuries to prevent injuries to prevent injuries and make sure that um the ballet training was a positive outcome for every student who studied and um if you have a talent a body with with a ton of physical potential and a talented dancer training in a safe way still you reach the same result as if you were training in ways that um that would be more damaging to the body so um we also are very aware of dancers physical emotional and mental health those are priorities to us in training um you know if you watch a movie like black swan or some of these other popular cultural references to ballet you know you see the negative side of things um but we believe with a respect for and a belief in the emotional and mental well-being of young dancers that that it can be um a training process that promotes joy and confidence and and things that dancers take with them throughout their lives whether they move on to um classical ballet careers or or something entirely different so we believe that you know we are a new although we are absolutely in uh in training classical ballet traditional classical ballet um we're doing it in a slightly new way that is um there's no discrimination against body types um everyone is welcome everyone can thrive with ballet training is what we believe and that's it's a it's a bit of a new philosophy and the final question for you is we live in the silicon valley technology you know social media video games it's prevalent you know for everyone how do you bring ballet and and are able to keep it important for people and and and what are the difficulties to do that well um i think the biggest challenge is the cost of living and the cost of real estate um we have one of the greatest income disparities in the in the country um and uh you know commercial real estate in san jose is very very expensive because you know i'm i'm renting square footage that could go to google right or facebook or somebody who can spend a lot of money i guess meta right um they so that that's challenge and being able to pay salaries to retain the top talent um in an area where the cost of living for everyone is so high that that's a that's a huge challenge um that's a huge challenge we need to have a product and in this case ballet classes ballet training a ballet school and performances that is relevant and competitive and interesting and engaging and that people want that's my that is my responsibility that is our responsibility we can't be some you know sort of rarefied thing that we we think we deserve to be supported by whomever you know because we are the arts um no i want to be the place that um a family brings their their child on a saturday you know because it's a wonderful thing for them to do so i need to be part of san jose part of my community and be the ballet company that is right for my community and that's how i think we'll survive in a in a challenging in a challenging location um where you know foundational and grant support is um not what it used to be and and very uncertain so it's my job to make sure that we're we're doing the right things to survive talia thank you so much for your time thank you for the work you're doing for dedication and for bringing this amazing art form to the community and to everyone else in san jose thank you thank you come see swan lake thank you for watching another episode of bay area innovators if you enjoyed this episode and you know someone who should be on our show please send us an email at sfbay at epochtimes.com we would love to hear from you thank you and see you next week