BB: In today’s dance world there is concern with “career transition” for dancers after they stop performing. Can you point to anything that could have been more helpful in preparing you for your career roles as coach, ballet mistress, or company director? Can you suggest some ways that companies could help dancers better prepare for retirement from the stage?
Ms. Ruanne: Dancers in England subscribe to the Dancers’ Resettlement Fund which, as its title implies, helps to fund dancers while they are retraining or studying for another profession. It has been in existence for many years and is much accessed with great success. Some European houses try to help place dancers into other roles within the system such as technical or administrative. Of course these houses provide very comprehensive pensions upon retirement, which is why dancers stay put until the bitter end and in many cases have no urgent financial need for further employment.
I personally did not access the DRF, since as Rudolf pushed me off the bridge, as it were, and the whole process seemed inevitable. Also, my conversations with mentors like John Field at the Royal Ballet Touring Company—although held when thoughts of retirement were still in the distant future—took root and I learned about other aspects of the business by osmosis. You don’t realize what you know until you’re called upon.
I think most companies are as helpful as possible with regard to giving dancers time off in order to ease the transition. However, I do believe that it is the dancer’s responsibility to give serious thought to what avenue they wish to pursue in the future, after they stop dancing. The company has already maintained them in their chosen profession, and one encounters a surprising number of dancers who assume that the company will provide them with ideas about what comes next in their lives.
BB: What do you think contributes to forming a good ballet artistic director in today’s dance world?
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Patricia Ruanne during rehearsals of Raymonda at the Royal New Zealand Ballet, c. 1998; photographer unknown.
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Ms. Ruanne: Artistic direction—in whatever capacity—is about accepting responsibility for a company and the satellite departments that are crucial to its function and the public it serves. On the grassroots level, an artistic director’s role is a caretaker’s job and I suspect that this basic part of the job description becomes more and more difficult to maintain, not least because there are far more eggs in one’s basket now. Any company that requires a board of directors, alongside the artistic, administrative, and financial directors, will inevitably take longer to get to the artistic point.
Ideally, the buck should stop at the artistic director’s desk. Yet is it really fair to make one person publicly responsible for what may have been a corporate decision—often entailing many compromises? Perhaps we should accept that an artistic director today can no longer enjoy the luxury of being merely well qualified and experienced within the theatrical environment. Given the specialized zones of influence of the board members in most companies, it’s probably vital to have at least a working knowledge of their expertise as well. This may facilitate a balance of power in the sense that the artistic director would have some credibility and authority within the areas of marketing, fund raising, accounting, etc., and might stand a better chance of having the last word on artistic matters.
