New Utah ballet companies create space for unique performance opportunities

LEHI — Two young ballet companies are creating a space for dancers to continue performing while balancing other responsibilities or working toward greater professional opportunities.

Salt Lake Ballet Cooperative and Chrysalis Ballet are companies you might not have heard of yet, but they are making waves in the Utah dance community.

An untraditional company

The Salt Lake Ballet Cooperative was formed in 2021 after Municipal Ballet Company closed, leaving almost a dozen dancers without a company. The dancers banded together to create the cooperative as a subset of Deseret Experimental Opera, a nonprofit dedicated to giving local unestablished artists professional opportunities to show their original works in the Utah community.

The cooperative is partnered with Westminster College so it can use the school's facilities for weekly classes, and students can join the cooperative's classes at any time.

The members of the cooperative take turns teaching class and running rehearsal because there is no artistic director like a traditional ballet company has.

"We decided we did not want the system with an artistic director. The whole cooperative, as well as the shows are run by the performance planning committee," cooperative member Carly Schaub said.

The cooperative wanted to move away from the hierarchy that is often found in professional companies so it could focus on creating a welcoming atmosphere that gives dancers a sense of belonging.

"The performances are a little bit less traditional. I think that Salt Lake Ballet Cooperative is hoping to sort of make people who enjoy dance feel like they can belong here. They can belong as an audience member. They can belong as a class taker, as a dancer," Schaub said.

For each performance of the cooperative, members can choose to join the planning committee to help make decisions and decide what will happen next. This leads to collaborative shows with multiple choreographers, Schaub said.

"What's really special is the atmosphere. It's unlike any ballet atmosphere I've ever been in. It's super relaxed, super supportive and just really, really great people together. You really can make whatever decisions you want about your body and what you need, and no one is there to judge you or have any opinions about it," cooperative member Sierra Govett said. "This atmosphere is pretty much what we wished we could've had growing up."

The cooperative offers affordable technique classes each week and pays the dancers for each performance.

Most of the cooperative's shows are outdoors on a floor the company can assemble anywhere. The performances range from ballet to modern styles and incorporate music composed and performed by local artists.

"It opens our possibilities for performance locations and also makes it a lot more accessible to the public who may not come to a traditional theater," Schaub said.

Govett and Schaub love performing outside and say it brings a "magical" feeling to the performance.

The cooperative's upcoming show will be on Aug. 13 in collaboration with musical duo Darling and Debonair at the Snowpine Lodge lawn at Alta Ski Resort. Schaub said the company has something in the works for another performance in September.

The dancers in the cooperative are always changing, but typically there's around 10 dancers in each performance. Many of the dancers are out of college, have full-time jobs or have other responsibilities, so they love that the cooperative gives them the opportunity to perform without having to commit all year long to a company.

"It really opens it up for personal lives and other job opportunities and just life events. So, it gives a really great performing opportunity without the rigors of what a normal ballet company would bring," Govett said.

A place to transform

Jennie Creer-King opened Central Utah Ballet in 2020 amid the pandemic and was able to succeed because Utah County was more open then the rest of the state in regards to COVID-19 restrictions, she said. Creer-King would use her studio to teach Zoom classes for her University of Utah students and slowly, her students started trickling into her studio to dance in person again.

A lot of dancers who had moved to other states to try out for professional companies were starting to come back to Utah because of the pandemic. Creer-King saw that Utah was lacking in professional level opportunities for those dancers and decided to organize Chrysalis Ballet.

"I chose the name chrysalis because it's an awakening or a beginning. As the butterflies go into their cocoons, into their chrysalis, they come out a more seasoned, more mature dancer from the experience. That's what Chrysalis is for us: It's the beginning parts of a full professional experience," she said.

Creer-King worked with choreographer Garrett Smith to create the first Chrysalis piece, which piggybacked off the studio's recital. She had always wanted to have a professional company based out of a studio so talented dancers could have opportunities in Utah and wouldn't be forced to move to other states to find jobs.

Chrysalis is a nonprofit entity just like many professional dance companies are. Because Chrysalis is so young, the company does not qualify for grants yet, and so Creer-King has been personally funding the company with her studio profits.

"The dancers are paid for performances, which is wonderful. They are paid a really nice wage for performances, but they're not quite paid for rehearsals yet, so most of the dancers are working in the evening or have other jobs," she said.

This year there are 10 contracted dancers, three high school-aged apprentices and three college-aged apprentices.

The Chrysalis dancers are mainly college graduates who are looking for the rigor of professional training to help them prepare for full-time positions at larger companies. Creer-King said Chrysalis isn't meant for dancers to stay for long periods of time, but it is a place for dancers to perform while working toward other things.

"I love it. It fills my days, bringing amazing artists into the studio where it would otherwise be empty. I get to work with dancers that I worked with in university programs, some students that have graduated, a lot of the dancers I have trained since they were little dancers," Creer-King said. "They are exceptional dancers. It's an amazing, amazing thing that we do."

Chrysalis shows range from classical works to "innovative, cutting edge contemporary works," she said. When you see a small company like Chrysalis perform, you'll see a wide range of styles, not just "classical ballet tutus," Creer-King said.

Former BYU ballet professor Shani Robison will join Chrysalis this year as co-artistic director. She said Creer-King is a go-getter and she is excited to see how the company will grow.

"Her drive, her passion for providing dancers with the opportunity to perform is phenomenal," Robison said. "She wants community building of dance. It's not exclusionary, it's just inclusive. I love that about her. She has provided this fertile ground to grow things and she's good at it."

Enhancing the community

"Utah has amazing studios and amazing artists and three amazing college dance programs. They have two professional companies — Ballet West and Utah Metropolitan Ballet — and two modern companies and tons of studios. But there's also, right now, a need for more than just those two companies, especially in ballet but also in contemporary and modern," Creer-King said.

Ever since the pandemic, it's been "exceptionally hard" for dancers to get full-time positions on classical ballet companies, resulting in dancers all over the country being unemployed, she said.

"These smaller companies are providing professional opportunities, enhancing and creating a vibrant community in the arts in all of these different states, and they're very important. It also creates opportunities for local, national and international choreographers to come work in our community," Creer-King said.

Robison said there were dancers who graduated and were wanting to take the next step, but there wasn't anywhere for them to go.

"We had some amazing dancers, and they auditioned for a ton of places and didn't get a position. Jennie saw a need to provide this opportunity — a different option," Robison said. "It offers a really cool balance of fulfillment as dancers for kind of a stepping point into other professional opportunities, or could be a place where they can really grow and flourish as dancers and continue their journey."

Smaller companies like Salt Lake Ballet Cooperative and Chrysalis Ballet are popping up around the country to accommodate for this lack of job positions in all styles of dance. Typically, these companies are attached to studios or schools in order to be financially viable.

"It usually comes at the sacrifice of an artistic director or owner that has a passion and wants to give back and has the knowledge and ability to give back and create something for artists, and that's where it comes from," Creer-King said.

Creer-King commissioned Robison to do some choreography on the Chrysalis dancers last year. Her piece "Obscured" was one of only two American works that were selected for the Florence Dance Festival in Italy.

"It gave this new company a jump-start in their exposure to the world, which was super exciting," Robison said. The Chrysalis dancers travelled to Italy to perform their piece in the festival.

"That makes me happy because that means I'm contributing creatively to the company and dancers so they have opportunities they've never had," she said.

Robison's choreography has also been chosen for the Palm Desert Choreography Festival, the Rocky Mountain Choreography Festival and the International Online Dance Competition.

"It's been thrilling to me to work with dancers that are so talented and are able to push the boundaries of contemporary ballet and be able to really set the path forward for Chrysalis Ballet," she said.

She is pleased that in only two years, Chrysalis has already had international, national and regional exposure at high level choreography competitions.

This exposure led to more than 70 international dancers submitting online auditions for Chrysalis at the most recent auditions. However, because Chrysalis is still growing and can't employ dancers full-time, the company isn't sustainable for international dancers and Creer-King had to turn those dancers down, she said.

Creer-King partnered with University of Cincinnati professor Qi Jiang to connect with a ballet company in Taiwan to bring nine teenage dancers to participate in Central Utah Ballet's summer program.

"All of those cultural exchanges create a vibrant arts community in Utah, which already exists, but it can't just exist from a big huge entity that gets a huge amount of money from the government and from donations. It also has to happen from the grassroots area, from artists that give back in the community," Creer-King said.

In 2022, Chrysalis collaborated with three other professional companies — Shift Dance Company, Junction Dance Company and Salt Contemporary Dance — that all had women artistic directors. Creer-King and Robison said that performance was a great way to empower and support other female leaders while giving dancers the chance to perform with diverse choreography.

"My philosophy with the company is I'm just a vessel to create opportunities," Creer-King said. "We're really excited as two women who have been in the arts here in Utah for 30-plus years, whether we were dancing or choreographing or working at the universities, to bring back full circle of all of our experiences to the community."

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