Webinar Recap: Radical Transformation – Aspen Santa Fe Ballet and the Fund for Innovation in Dance
March 24 (Replay at end of page)
We were delighted to host Jean-Philippe Malaty, Executive Director, and Tom Mossbrucker, Artistic Director, of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet for our ABA Live! Webinar this week. We discussed their transformation of their resident company into the Fund for Innovation in Dance, which will share knowledge, forge connections, and provide resources and support to artists and organizations within the field of dance. The two shared fascinating insight into their journey through a series of strategic changes at the Ballet and the useful lessons they have learned along the way.
A Broader Look at Changing Identities
To kick off the conversation, we started with a broad view of change — not in the arts but in the corporate world. Many high profile companies started with a product entirely different from what they are known for today, and we had our audience take a few guesses at these transformations.
It is not only corporations going through bold evolutions in their missions over time. We have seen various types of consolidations in the hospital and healthcare industry, as well as interesting changes in strategy in the education sector. But in the arts, this type of radical change is exceedingly rare, which makes this latest innovation at Aspen Santa Fe Ballet an exciting one to explore.
A History of Reinvention
Tom set the stage for our conversation by sharing a brief overview of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s evolutions over the years, which he phrased as “a thirty-year history of evolution, change, and risk-taking.” The company began as a one-room ballet school in Aspen, Colorado. Several years into the venture, founder BeBe Schweppe invited Tom and Jean-Philippe to come join her from New York City. Together, they built a unique mixed repertory touring dance company not led by a single choreographer — the first of its kind. They also elected to find an opportunity to share resources with another company, which brought them to Santa Fe, New Mexico and formed the dual-state organization as it is known today.
Over the following years, the team expanded the Ballet’s scope to include a festival, community engagement, a resident dance company, and even management of a flamenco company. Their latest in this series of evolutions is the dissolution of the resident company and formation of the Fund for Innovation in Dance.
Jean-Philippe highlighted that while each strategic decision was made in consideration of different factors, the common thread was the team’s pragmatism. Some initiatives were motivated simply by survival and others were created through the lens of growth and sustainability. A decision to create a Mexican folk dance program came about after identifying a want for children’s dance in the community, while the expansion to Santa Fe was a result of a need for audience growth. Everything is about embracing opportunity.
Challenges & Lessons Learned
When reflecting on the areas where they faced potential challenges and obstacles, both Tom and Jean-Philippe emphasized the importance of learning from others who had undertaken similar projects. Having worked together at the Joffrey Ballet, they were familiar with the dual-city approach, which that company had taken in Los Angeles. So when considering the move to Aspen to start a similar project, they knew the obstacles and reasons why the model could potentially not work. They would be taking a risk, but there would be a thought process behind it.
The team continued applying lessons learned from past examples in the ballet world when approaching the logistical details of finding a partner in another city. When considering the merge with Santa Fe, they spoke to the director of the Cleveland Ballet, who was very open to sharing his company’s experience with their previous partnership in San Jose. These conversations allowed Tom and Jean-Philippe to build a framework for assessing their potential joint effort in Santa Fe, including:
Geographic feasibility for commuting between the two cities
Market readiness for a new major dance company in New Mexico
Alignment between the companies and their audiences, especially in terms of the type of dance styles they responded to
What remained important to both leaders in facing these challenges was the foundation of adaptability that they built at the Ballet. They said from the start that they could not know what the organization would end up as, and kept this “pioneering spirit” strong from the moment they began working with their blank slate in Aspen. This allowed them to grow organically over the years.
Looking Ahead: The Fund For Innovation In Dance
We then turned to the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s latest evolution: sunsetting their existing resident ballet company and creating a new funding mechanism for innovation in the dance world. Creating the Fund was a result of the challenging question they posed to themselves: how to honor the pioneering spirit of the Ballet and decide what to continue celebrating into the future. Tom emphasized that the roots of their company will remain the same, and that this will only be a change to one element of their work — Aspen Santa Fe Ballet will continue to serve their mission, just in a new way.
Like with many of their past initiatives, Tom and Jean-Philippe are taking a thoughtful approach to shaping the vision of this project by listening and learning where they can be most impactful post-pandemic. Their goal is to do similar things that they did with the company, but in the field at large: including nurturing work, supporting choreographers, organizing hometown premieres, and helping companies similar to theirs to be more successful.
For Jean-Philippe, the ability to take this on successfully is baked into their identity. As he said, “we always knew who we were and who we could become.” The mission of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet was also broad enough for them to serve in a wide variety of ways. By understanding that their core offering was their educational programs, they could experiment in smaller ways with their projects on the “edge,” like the resident company and now the Fund.
Pandemic As Accelerator
While Aspen Santa Fe Ballet is always considering opportunities for evolution, the pandemic certainly accelerated the transformation of their resident company into a new funding structure. As Jean-Philippe noted, in times of crisis it is important to know which of your programs are most vulnerable and which you can best defend, which led him and Tom to this decision. They acted quickly to get ahead of the disruption and to come up with an appropriate response to it.
Fortunately, much of their past self-reflection work over the years allowed them to start this process with a strong foundation, including a good understanding of their strengths and weaknesses through market and SWOT analyses. The team already knew what the roadblocks would be, and therefore when imagining a post-pandemic world they realized they needed to make a more radical change.
The biggest challenge was not knowing what this future world would look like. As a very data-driven team, leaping into the unknown was daunting — as Tom put it, “like driving 80 miles per hour full speed in complete darkness.” They leaned on their confidence from having a history of radical transformation, and made sure to focus on the effects these new changes would have on the people of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet (including giving dancers enough time to audition for other companies).
Process & Reactions
The process of creating the Fund was guided by a series of questions around how to recover, stay relevant, and meet the challenges that will arise after a two-year shutdown of the industry. The company had established a strategic planning task force five years ago, which included several consultants and had already addressed sensitive issues in the past, so by the time the pandemic hit this task force took on the role of crisis management team.
Tom and Jean-Philippe also had a strong partner in their board of directors, who had created the ethos of change in the organization and were very well aware of the existing challenges and sustainability issues they had pre-pandemic. Over the years, they have worked together successfully through both long- and short-term changes.
The reaction from the local community — and the ballet world at large — has been inspiring to the team at Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. Many people were relieved to hear that the organization would continue on, although they will miss the contributions at an artistic level. The positive response, however, has been a testament to the reputation the company has cultivated as a group that is always evolving. As Jean-Philippe shared, “we’re a dance organization, movement is a part of who we are and not being able to move and make decisions this past year has been excruciating.” The audience was grateful to see this type of strong movement once again.
Parting Advice For Arts Organizations
We closed our session by asking Tom and Jean-Philippe to share a few words of wisdom for any arts organizations facing a moment of pivotal change. The two shared several valuable insights:
Avoid limiting yourself with a narrow mission or vision that gives you no room to breathe
See how many ways you can serve the same mission -- it is not “either/or”
Experiment with both your “core” and “edge” products
Start small, change doesn't happen overnight
Aim to thrive, not just survive, when looking down the road
