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General information The Company presents two full-length ballets each year. The Nutcracker is always the Christmas presentation, and the spring ballets have included Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Coppelia, Les Sylphides, Hansel and Gretel, Alice in Wonderland, and The Wizard of Oz. Each year York County Ballet performs selected works at Piccolo Spoletto in Charleston, S.C. and at "Jubilee," a local Festival of Arts. In addition, the Company completed tours of Europe in 2000 and in 2004, performing in both France and Italy. The next European Tour is scheduled for 2007. Additional travel has included a trip to New York City where many dancers took classes at Steps on Broadway, a well-known professional school. Through the years York County Ballet dancers have been accepted by audition into some of the most prestigious dance programs in the nation. These programs have included the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Washington School of Ballet, the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, the Pittsburgh Ballet, the South Carolina Conservatory of Dance, and the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts. We are very proud of our extraordinary group of talented, young dancers!
History It may come as a surprise to many locals that there exists a high class, sophisticated ballet company in York County, but the real surprise comes in discovering that the York County Ballet company has been around since 1978. The project began when the Fine Arts Association (now redistributed under the Arts Council's umbrella) showed an interest in having a full-length ballet production of the Christmas ballet, The Nutcracker, in Rock Hill. A former director of Greenville Civic Ballet (mother of current artistic director Anne Blackwell) resided in Rock Hill and was chosen to aid in artistic direction. She and some folks from the area began to gather together dancers for the project and ended up not quite finding enough dancers to make a company. The group then secured a partnership with a Greenville, SC, ballet company and the two groups of dancers began rehearsing for The Nutcracker, alternating rehearsal in Rock Hill one week and Greenville the next. When the joint company held its first concert ballet performance in Byrnes Auditorium at Winthrop, the 3,500 seat auditorium was packed. The Nutcracker was a resounding success and the York County Ballet was born. The company has had its ebb and flow over the years with its cast of young dancers coming in and going out, some groups gelling very well, others not so well. Anne Blackwell, artistic director for the York County Ballet, says there is no single show that she would call the pinnacle of performance for the Ballet: "it's when you're not getting better that you start on that slippery slope toward not existing" and Blackwell is sure that the company is continually challenging its dancers as they move toward bigger and better things. While she may not be able to cite a real peak for the company, the artistic director can certainly remember one occasion of near-disaster from the second season. During a performance, a shoulder strap burst on one dancer's flower costume exposing half of her chest. The dancer luckily had her back to the audience at that point and was able to follow the old ballerina saying, "When in doubt, bourée out," which, in layman's terms, means "get onto your tippy-toes and scoot offstage," and was able to fix the strap and finish the show. Through 28 seasons, York County Ballet has progressed in its sophistication as the company grows. What began as a group costumed by the dancers' parents with the set and props created by volunteers has become a spectacular display involving professional lighting and scenic design performed in Winthrop's Johnson Theatre. Despite the progression, the company has not yet completely shed its need for parental and volunteer help; parents still help by renting their dancer's costumes and buying pointe shoes (those are the shoes that help ballerinas stand on their tiptoes), and donations to help with production costs are always welcome, of course. One of the challenges that the Ballet still faces is finding a permanent facility or as Blackwell says, "home," for the company to hold it performances. Right now, they must rent a performance space which limits them financially and also leaves only a small window of opportunity when the space is available. Homeless or not, the group is still alive and well and maintains its founding mission of giving young dancers the opportunity to showcase their craft in full-length ballet productions that also function as fine art entertainment to York County and surrounding areas. Their next production, Alice in Wonderland, is a step off the beaten path for York County Ballet in its unusual story and presentation. "It is truly a 'trip,'" says Anne Blackwell and she sees the excitement of the dancers grow with each rehearsal. Blackwell's choice to perform Alice came from repeated requests from friends and she had not closely read the text before choosing the piece. After closer scrutiny of the story, she realized that they could either play it straight or go with the trippy, funky style implied in the original story-the company chose the latter. This ballet should be different than any the company has done in the past and will hopefully have a broad appeal. At the very least, the production has awakened a great sense of excitement and energy among the dancers even at this stage of the game and Blackwell says that it might be her best ballet yet. © 2005 - 2008 -
York County Ballet
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