The Michigan Daily-Thursday, August 7, 1980-Page 9
da e' erts
A dacer's dream realiz ed
By ELLEN RIESER
Starting this fall, Ann Arbor's dance
community will welcome a new mem-
ber-Ann Arbor Ballet Theatre. The
ballet company is the result of a long-
time dream of a local ballet teacher,
Carol Scharp. Ms. Scharp, who was
raised in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti,
began her training in Ann Arbor and
then went on the Joffrey, Harkness,
IN RESPONSE TO student demand,
Ms. Scharp began to teach more and
more performance-oriented classes
such as advanced pointe classes,
variations classes, in which dancers
learned parts of the established ballet
repertoire and original works
choreographed by Ms. Scharp, and pas
de deux or partnering classes. However,
the problem of an outlet for performan-
of dealing with spangles and tutus, Ms.
Scharp was spending inordinate
amounts of time in lawyers' offices
pouring over incorporation procedures
for non-profit organizations, tax laws,
and insurance policies.
According to Ms. Scharp, Ann Arbor
Ballet Theatre will be different from
other local dance companies in several
important aspects. First, unlike Ann
Arbor Civic Ballet, it will not recon-
stitute itself for each performance. In-
stead, a permanent roster of soloists,
corps dancers, and auxiliaries (charac-
ter dancers, mimes, etc.) will work
together continuously throughout the
company's active season. Special
classes will be offered for members of
the company and beyond these, the
dancers will be required to take a
minimum number of weekly ballet
classes at any of the local dance
studios.
SECONDLY, THE company will
have a significant educational com-
ponent. It will go into Michigan public
schools to introduce students to ballet
and to encourage young people,
especially boys, to dance. Thirdly, the
company will provide opportunities for
local choreographers who desire to
work within the ballet idiom to
choreograph their works on adult dan-
cers and see them performed. Finally,
says Ms. Scharp, "the company will
welcome and encourage the in-
volvement of anyone who does anything
with the theatre." She notes that the
company will need lighting and makeup
experts, scenery painters, and costume
designers. "I'd like to see the whole
Ann Arbor artistic community get in-
volved in this," she said.
In September, audition notices will be
posted about Ann Arbor and Ms. Scharp
will have the task of picking her com-
pany from the dancers who respond.
With numbers pinned to their leotards,
the dancers will be put through their
paces in a combination technique and
variations classe. Dancers will be
selected on the basis of technical
ability, strength, musicality, style, line,
and (unfortunately) weight. The stage
adds some ten to fifteen pounds to the
human figure, and to steal a line from
the movie "Nijinsky", "Nobody loves a
fat faun."
At the moment, none of this exists. To
be more precise, the rehearsal space is
available, a theatre is being engaged,
and the company has even acquired a
resident doctor, James F. Herbertson,
a local orthopedist. But as of yet, the
most important aspect, the dancers, is
not even a shadow in the highly polished
mirrors of Ms. Scharp's studio.
As artistic director of Ann Arbor
Ballet Theatre, Carol Scharp will be re-
sponsible for everything that the com-
pany does. During occasional black
moments, she admits to being "scared
to death of the whole thing." However,
after listening to her talk about the
quality of local ballet students and the
service and pleasure that she thinks the
company could provide for the com-
munity, doubts vanish and one gets
caught up in the joy and passion of the
undertaking and hopes for its future.
Country singer Pride
survives air mishap
Deborah White and Thomas Ward, two dancers from the C.A.S. Ballet
Theatre School, will be among many local dancers auditioning this fall for
Ann Arbor's newest dance group the Ann Arbor Ballet Theatre.
DECATUR, Texas (UPI) - A large,
executive aircraft with country music
star Charley Pride and his entourage
aboard collided with a light aircraft
west of Fort Worth yesterday, sending
the other plane plummeting to the
ground and killing two persons. Pride's
aircraft landed safely.
The larger aircraft, a chartered
Fairchild 27 with Pride and 15 others
aboard, was returning from Rapid City,
S.D. It landed safely at Meacham Field
in Fort Worth with damage to its tail
section and an engine.
THE SINGER, a resident of nearby
Dallas, was en route to a private per-
formance for 600 Catholic nuns at the
University of Dallas. Pride's agent,
Randy Jackson, who was not aboard
the aircraft, said the performance
would go on.
"I wouldn't stand them up now for
anything," he said.
Jackson said he had talked to several
persons-on the plane and was told the
light aircraft skimmed over top of the
Fairchild.
"It damaged part of the tail and I
think it destroyed one of the cables,
causing one of the engines to malfun-
ction," Jackson said. "The pilot tem-
porarily lost control of the airplane but
he regained control. Nobody was hurt in
Pride's plane. It's a miracle. I don't see
how it could happen."
A Wise County sheriff's department
spokeswoman said the plane that
crashed was a Cessna 172 on a training
flight. It went down in a field about a
mile east of a church on Highway 380
between Decatur and Bridgeport just
west of Fort Worth.
Briansky, and other nationally noted
schools of ballet. However, as with
many other dancers, she eventually
moved from dancing ballet to teaching
it.
After experimenting with teaching
ballet in the Ypsilanti public school
system six years ago, Ms. Scharp
decided to establish her own ballet
school in Ann Arbor, C.A.S. Ballet
Theatre School. As things worked out,
her clientele was largely composed of
adults, many of whom were already
experienced dancers. This afforded her
the opportunity to experiment with her
own choreography. Through talking
with her students, it also revealed to
her the limited performance oppor-
tunities for adult ballet dancers in the
Ann Arbor area. "They don't want to do
recitals or to perform for children,"
said Ms. Scharp. "And Ann Arbor Civic
Ballet doesn't do much with men,
especially in terms of'partrierwork."
ce remained. Eventually Ms. Scharp
began to toy with the idea of founding
a company. "Ann Arbor's dancers have
a lot of potential. And they're very en-
thusiastic. I've gotten a lot of en-
couragement for what started out as a
daydream."
In March of this year, Ms. Scharp
succumbed to the lure and did all the of-
ficial and rather disappointingly
bureaucratic things that one needs to do
to establish a ballet company. Instead
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