Carolina Ballet
Introduction to Performing Arts Management & Entrepreneurship
Spring 2019
Lilia Hasiotis, Emma Crossman, & Jill Suprenant We were hired by Carolina Ballet to complete an analysis and evaluation of the current company. We performed interviews and conducted in-depth research in order to learn about the organization's mission, background, business model, budget, audience, strategic priorities and more. At the conclusion of this data collection process, we offer strategic recommendations based upon arts management practices so that Carolina Ballet may stay at the forefront of the arts in North Carolina, the country, and the world.
Carolina Ballet History
Carolina Ballet was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1998. It was established as a professional ballet company under the direction of Founding Artistic Director and CEO, Robert
Weiss and has been co-directed by Weiss and Zalman Raffael since 2007. The company is an independent non-profit organization and has successfully risen to the forefront of dance and the arts in the United States. Carolina Ballet’s repertoire includes world-renowned traditional ballet works, as well as new works by contemporary choreographers. They are currently taking steps to extend their reach and audience even further. The company’s rapid expansion and growing reputation requires us to take an in-depth look at where the organization has been, where it is now, and where it hopes to go in the future.
Mission Statement
The mission statement is an organization’s northstar; it strives to provide valuable information regarding the company’s perception of itself, as well as set its goals for the future.
Carolina Ballet’s vision is to remain one of the top ballet companies in America with national and international recognition, thus contributing to the enhanced reputation and ever-increasing quality of life in the community and the State of North Carolina. Their mission is to perform world-class professional ballet, entertaining and enlightening audiences in Raleigh, the Triangle region, the State of North Carolina, and beyond. It hopes to accomplish this mission by attracting, developing, and retaining excellent dancers and artistic personnel combined with a fiscally responsible management and board of directors; commissioning new works by innovative choreographers; presenting traditional ballets of legendary masters; and educating current and future audiences through programs for school-aged children and other performance outreach activities1. The current mission statement is bold and robust; however the magnitude translates to a lack of clarity and focus. The timeless values expressed in a mission statement must be vague enough to offer the organization flexibility, without encompassing so much as to resulting in a loss of direction. Following the review of this analysis and upon setting goals for the future of Carolina Ballet, we recommend a renewal of the mission statement to reflect the new desired trajectory of the company. This mission statement should be inclusive of each dancer, executive member, board member, community partner, and audience member. A new mission statement, while maintaining the foundational purpose of the original mission statement, will add new energy, motivation, and perspective to the future of Carolina Ballet and its role in the North Carolina community.
New Goals
At the conclusion of our analysis we outlined three goals for the organization that we used to drive our recommendations and ensure that they align with Carolina Ballet’s mission.
These three goals are: to create a business community and structure that is reflective of the
1 “About.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/company/about/. collaborative, energetic, and artistic atmosphere we want to show our audience, to open the door to new artistic endeavors by exploring new financial strategies and expanding our budget, and to reevaluate our responsibility as artists to bring both new and traditional works to our community and reinforce our relationship with community members. These three goals echo essential themes from the mission statement, while also offering some guidance and clarity as to the future goals of the company. We felt that it was important that these goals address both the internal and external relationships that the company holds to maintain cohesivity and community. A unified business culture, bold financial strategy, and strong community connections will propel Carolina
Ballet forward in both the local and international arts communities.
Executive Structure
The leadership and executive structure of an organization has the ability to either drive or withhold a company from attaining success and reaching its goals. Carolina Ballet looks to the artistic director and executive director to unite the organization and establish both artistic and business goals. The organization recently experienced a shift in their leadership: Zalman Raffael will replace Robert Weiss as Artistic Director and CEO in the upcoming season. Michele
Weathers will continue in her role of Executive Director. Until this past month, Raffael has collaborated with founding artistic director, Robert Weiss and they have crafted the artistic vision for Carolina Ballet as a pair. So as to maintain the important distribution in leadership responsibilities and to balance the dynamic artistic vision of Carolina Ballet, we recommend the company maintain a two person leadership structure for the position of artistic director. The Five
Practices of Exemplary Leadership - model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart - can best be pursued when the artistic director responsibility is shared2. The boldness and breadth of the performance season that
Carolina Ballet produces, and the artistry they seek to inspire, requires the artistic visionaries to reflect these qualities, and that they too are inspiring one another throughout the creative process.
Another foundational element of success is to set priorities and align them across the executive structure. We recommend that Carolina Ballet clearly define the roles of each team member and their responsibilities in propelling the organization forward. The time taken to define these roles will result in the efficient allocation of each team members’ time and resources and will ensure that the value that they are bringing to the team is productive.
Board
A company board is often seen as a foreign entity, often distinct from the organization, that advises and contributes to its growth and trajectory from a hierarchical position. We would like to see Carolina Ballet break the barrier that exists between board members and the members of the organization and involve the dancers in this process. The board members should be highly involved in the organization’s programming and knowledgeable about the artistic works and goals of the company. In order to do so, the board must be brought internal; events such as open rehearsals, private performances for board members and their friends, open board meetings, and annual social events will help to deepen relationships within Carolina Ballet and to align their goals and vision for the future of the organization. An open rehearsal will offer evidence of the hard work, artistry, and talent that goes into each role that the dancer performs. Private
2 Kouzes, J.M., and Posner, B.Z. (2007). What leaders do and what constituents expect. In The leadership challenge (4th ed., pp. 1-41). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
performances and events will offer personal experiences for the board members and their friends that they can call upon when making strategic recommendations for the company. Open board meetings will also allow the dancers, as valuable members of the organization, to express their thoughts and opinions on what is working and what needs to change. Furthermore, we expect that events such as these will lead to the development of valuable relationships across the executive structure, between the dancers, and all the way up to the board members. These relationships carry out into the greater Raleigh and North Carolina communities, and help project a unified vision about who Carolina Ballet is, what they are working on, and who they are striving to become.
Financial Strategy
In order to incorporate the desired changes to Carolina Ballet, the organization’s financial strategies and budget must be prioritized and increased. Without enough money, the resources required to continue putting on performances with high quality costumes and sets will not exist.
Increasing the current six million dollar budget will also allow for an increase in community engagement events and a higher salary for the dancers, who are currently earning an average of twenty five thousand dollars a year3. When identifying strategies to increase revenue, we looked at the financial records of ballet companies across the United States of similar size and compared them with Carolina Ballet’s fiscal reports. According to these financial records, in the past five years, Carolina Ballet has experienced a monetary deficit totaling around two million dollars4.
Unfortunately, its five-year deficit is much greater than its five-year profit amount which totals
3 “Average Carolina Ballet Salary.” PayScale, www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Carolina_Ballet/Salary.
4 “Carolina Ballet.” GuideStar Profile, www.guidestar.org/profile/56-1445383. less than a hundred thousand dollars. In comparison to other companies, this number is increasingly alarming. Colorado Ballet, a company which currently employs thirty-one dancers, has a five-year profit of over six million dollars, and has not experienced a financial deficit in the past five years5. Other than the fact that Colorado Ballet has existed for forty years longer than
Carolina Ballet and performs three shows less per season, the two companies are relatively similar; they both have around the same number of employees and are located in the similarly sized capital cities of their respective states which share comparable demographics6. Where does
this large disparity in revenue
stem from?
Carolina Ballet, like
Colorado Ballet, and every
other dance company in the
world, primarily gathers its
revenue from four income
streams: ticket sales,
government grants,
individual contributions and
fundraising, and corporate
philanthropy. A breakdown
of Carolina Ballet and
5 “Colorado Ballet Company.” GuideStar Profile, www.guidestar.org/profile/84-6038137.
6 “Raleigh, North Carolina Population 2019.” World Population Review, worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/raleigh-population/.
“Richmond, Virginia Population 2019.” Richmond, Virginia Population 2019 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs), worldpopulationreview.com/us- cities/richmond-population/.
Colorado Ballet’s revenues provides insight into which of the four aforementioned income streams should be focused on moving forward. While Carolina Ballet historically raises an average of a million dollars more from contributions, fundraising, and corporate philanthropy,
Colorado Ballet makes around three million dollars more from yearly ticket sales. Additionally,
Colorado Ballet’s government grant amounts to a half million dollars more yearly than Carolina
Ballet. From this information, it becomes clear that Carolina Ballet should prioritize increasing its government support and ticket sale numbers.
Currently, Carolina Ballet receives grants from the City of Raleigh Arts Commission,
North Carolina Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, the Shubert Foundation, Jerome
Robbins Foundation and the John William Pope Foundation7. As the organization begins to branch out and increase the breadth of its community engagement, it should begin to look into applying for grants from the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, specifically the grants designed for Artist Fellowship, as well as the grants provided by Arts in
Education, and State Arts Resources. The Artist Fellowship grant supports individual artists with up to ten thousand dollars. There is a potential for this grant to support special programming, such as the female artists Carolina Ballet is bringing in for their upcoming
Women’s Choreographic Initiative. The Arts in Communities grant provide monetary support of around ten thousand dollars to organizations like Carolina Ballet which have programs focused on bringing the arts to pre-12 classrooms. Finally, the State Arts Resources grant awards fiscally responsible and developed arts organizations with up to a hundred thousand dollars to sustain their future artistic endeavors8. Carolina Ballet should also look into grants from well-established
7 “Government Partners.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/support/government-partners/.
8 “Grants.” NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, www.ncdcr.gov/resources/grants?field_grant_topic_tid=3468&field_grant_audience_tid=3391&combine=. foundations like the National Dance Project Production Grant. The National Dance Project
Production Grant awards twenty new works annually with over fifty thousand dollars for production and developmental support9. If successful in the grant application process, Carolina
Ballet has the potential to increase its government grant income stream by almost two hundred thousand dollars.
In regards to increasing revenue from ticket sales, there is not much logistically that can be done. Carolina Ballet, like all performing arts venues, sells three kinds of ticketing deals: tiered pricing, subscription packages, and special rates. The tiered prices are for one-time purchases and depend on the location within the theatre an audience member would like to sit; seats closer to the stage cost more than those farther away. Carolina Ballet does a great job at offering a variety of subscription packages that include three to seven performances and cost around a hundred to five hundred dollars. Special perks of purchasing a subscription package include a twenty-five percent discount for each performance and the ability to save ten percent on any additional tickets bought throughout the season. Special rate discounts are also offered for large groups, high school and college students, as well as military personnel. Groups of ten or more get a twenty-five percent discount, military personnel get a twenty percent discount upon presenting a valid ID, and identified college students can get tickets for twenty dollars. High school students with valid ID may attend performances, excluding The Nutcracker, for free10. A potential small change to this ticketing policy would be to begin charging high school students for entry. The price can be discounted heavily, like it is for college students, but charging any amount of money will result in a greater sale revenue. The high school students attending
9 “National Dance Project Production Grant.” NEFA, www.nefa.org/grants/find-grant/national-dance-project-production-grant.
10 “Special Rates.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/season-tickets/tickets/special-rates/. classical ballet shows are likely not doing so because the performances are free; rather, it because they genuinely enjoy the production. Therefore, we do not project that imposing a ticketing fee will decrease performance attendance.
Another potential way to increase ticketing revenue would be to decrease the amount of performances put on each year. Currently, each season consists of eight separate performances.
Not only is this number larger than most ballet companies of similar size, but it also makes the production cost of each season more expensive than it would be with fewer show changes. For the upcoming 2019-2020 performance season, three of the eight performances only have shows for only four days total11. Such a quick turnaround period does not allow enough time for major newspaper and news organizations to publish reviews on the performances and peak the interest of local readers. Therefore, it may be beneficial to decrease the amount of performances displayed each season and instead extend the number of days that each show is performed in the theatre. More about this change will be discussed in the section entitled “Season Curation.”
Despite not being a main area of concern when comparing Colorado Ballet and Carolina
Ballet finances, revenue streams from fundraising and corporate giving should also be increased.
This can be accomplished by approaching such income sources more strategically. Currently,
Carolina Ballet’s main methods for fundraising include dancer sponsorships and vehicle donations. Dancer sponsorships include pointe shoe scholarships for females and pas de deux scholarships for males, both starting at five thousand dollars12. Donors can specifically select which dancers they want to contribute money to. For female dancers, this money specifically goes towards covering the cost of the number of pointe shoes needed per dancer every season.
11 “2019-2020 Season.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/2019-2020-season/.
12 “Dancer Sponsorships | Choreographing Our Future.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/support/dancer-sponsorships/.
Pointe shoes are incredibly expensive, costing a hundred dollars a pair, and not durable; each of the twenty-one female company dancers go through around sixty pairs per season, costing
Carolina Ballet over a hundred thousand dollars a year in total. Since pointe shoes are such a costly and necessary expenditure for the company, this fundraising strategy is smart; however, it can be improved by lowering the minimum to a hundred dollars to cover the cost of one pair of pointe shoes. By decreasing the minimum amount needed to participate in such a sponsorship,
Carolina Ballet increases the number of supporters able to financially contribute; those who cannot afford to donate five thousand dollars will have the opportunity to feel connected to individual dancers through a smaller donation amount.
A good supplement to the dancer sponsorships would be an annual Meet the Dancers event open to the public so that potential donors can meet the dancers face to face and establish strong connections with them. One of the best ways to increase fundraising is to consider it instead as “friendraising”; by establishing direct and personal relationships with potential donors, organizations greatly increase their chances of being contributed to13.
The Vehicle Donation strategy should also be reconsidered. Supporters can currently donate their used cars and have them picked up for free by Charitable Adult Rides and Services, an organization Carolina Ballet partners with, for tax benefits and to “provide meaningful support” to the ballet14. It is unclear as to what this meaningful support to the company is. Are the donated cars kept by Carolina Ballet and if so, what are the vehicles used for? An idea to revamp this initiative is to initiate a partnership with a used car dealership like Raleigh Pre-
Owned. Carolina Ballet can ask Raleigh Pre-Owned to provide yearly support for the company
13 Wolf, T. (2015, Oct. 15). Four keys to cultivating a donor. GuideStar: Blog. Retrieved from https://trust.guidestar.org/blog/four-keys-to- cultivating-a-donor
14 “Vehicle Donation | Choreographing Our Future.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/support/donate-vehicle/. and in return, incentivize supporters to donate their vehicles to the organization. This idea would be beneficial to all three parties involved: Carolina Ballet increases its income within corporate philanthropy, Raleigh Pre-Owned gets a tax benefit for contributing to the non-profit, and donors receive tax benefits.
Carolina Ballet does a good job with fun fundraising tactics. Its current project for their performances of Swan Lake is a Diamond Necklace Raffle15. The necklace is eighteen karat gold and is valued at a little under seven thousand dollars. It is made in Raleigh-based Bailey’s Fine
Jewelry and will be worn by the principal dancer performing the role of Odile on opening night.
Those interested in the necklace may purchase one of the eight hundred available raffle tickets for twenty-five dollars and a winner will be randomly drawn on June 5, 2019. As the event has not yet concluded, it is impossible to say how successful this fundraiser event will be, but it has the ability to raise the company twenty thousand dollars. It would be a good idea to incorporate such a creative fundraiser into other upcoming performances in the 2019-2020 season as such the performance of Rubies.
Carolina Ballet also receives a lot of monetary support from other Raleigh-based industries. These yearly donations vary in size from over a hundred thousand dollars to a thousand dollars and include a diverse array of businesses, including Duke Health, Robertson
Immigration Law Firm, PNC Foundation and Britt Dental Center16. Interestingly, none of the corporations listed are restaurants. Yet, the restaurant industry receives great economic support from local performances, often generating up to seventy-five billion dollars in revenue for the
15 “Special Events.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/the-latest/special-events/.
16 “Corporate Giving.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/support/corporate-giving/. industry17. Moving forward, a strategy to consider would be to establish a partnership between local restaurants and Carolina Ballet. This partnership would consist of yearly contributions to
Carolina Ballet from the restaurants and in return, Carolina Ballet would send out emails to ticket-holders for upcoming performances about potential restaurants to consider when determining where to eat both before and after the show. This strategy would increase the amount of revenue generated by corporate philanthropy through expansion of Carolina Ballet’s reach within the local organizations of Raleigh.
Along with monetary supporters, Carolina ballet also has in-kind partners with other local organizations. The current organizations that have such a relationship with Carolina Ballet include Capitol Broadcasting Company, O2 Fitness, and Ernst OrthoSport Physical Therapy.
These businesses contribute services totaling anywhere from a thousand to a hundred thousand dollars for free to Carolina Ballet and their employees, and consequently, they receive tax benefits. While these types of relationships are important to maintain, especially considering that one of Artistic Director Zalman Raffael’s hopes for the future is to maintain the feeling that the
“company is a part of the community,” the financial benefit that these relationships provide to
Carolina Ballet may not be as large as desired18. A suggestion for increasing the revenue generated from this strategy would be to urge these companies to donate the money that they are offering in free services. The free services provided by wellness business centers like O2 Fitness and OrthoSport Physical Therapy seem redundant considering Carolina Ballet has its own gym and resident Physical Therapist.
17 “National Findings.” Americans for the Arts, 15 Jan. 2015, www.americansforthearts.org/by-program/reports-and-data/research-studies- publications/arts-economic-prosperity-iv/national-findings.
18 Suprenant, Jillian, and Emma Crossman. “Phone Call with Zalman Raffael.” 26 Mar. 2019.
Carolina Ballet would also benefit from increasing its transparency regarding finances.
Unlike most other ballet company websites, which include annual financial reports displayed directly on the website, Carolina Ballet’s finances are hidden and difficult to find. Currently, the website only displays the names of the foundations and corporations that donate to the company.
Additionally, its Corporate In-Kind Partners page has not been updated since 2013. Moving forward, Carolina Ballet’s website designer should ensure that the donations page is kept up to date and that company logos are included on it, as most people recognize organizations more readily based on their logos rather than their names. They should also consider adding financial reports to the website so that they are easily accessible to potential donors looking to see if
Carolina Ballet is a fiscally responsible company that they would consider supporting financially.
Season Curation
A performing arts organization’s season is just as much a work of art as each of the other individual performances they produce. It has the ability to make people care about the work an organization is producing and create a context for art and performance.19 The power that the curator has to guide the connections between the audience and performers, as well as determine the energy in the theatre, is immense. They must take great consideration when developing the connection between the artist and the audience and we believe that this is something Carolina ballet has done well. However there is progress to be made that can deepen these connections and build even larger audiences.
19 Foster, K. J. (2006). Performing arts presenting: From theory to practice (pp. 27-44, 51-65, 73-80). Washington, DC: Association of Performing Arts Presenters.
We recommend Carolina Ballet build out a three year plan. Each year their seasons should be comprised of a total of six performances that fall into three different categories:
“money-makers”, special collaborative performances, and The Nutcracker. Two to three of the performances should be the “money-makers”; these are the productions that have a reputation within the dance community and that the audience knows and loves such as Romeo and Juliet,
Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and Rubies. These performances, as evidenced by the above pie chart from the 2017-2018 annual financial report of Cincinnati Ballet, a company of similar size and prestige, often bring in large revenue streams and already have committed audience members20. Special collaborative performances give the artistic staff, as well as the dancers, the opportunity to bring exciting artists and choreographers to the community and challenge the audience to experience new artistic endeavors. These events may include a halloween performance of Frankenstein or Dracula, a womens choreographic collaboration, and / or collaborations with the Dance Theatre of Harlem or Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.
These performances have the potential to engage new audience members and invite a new sector within the North Carolina community to enter the dance performance space. The diversity within the season should be reflective of the diversity within the community. The Nutcracker tradition is one that brings everyone to the theatre; it brings back memories and presents an
20 Annual Report 2017-2018. Cincinnati Ballet, p. 12, www.cballet.org/annual-reports/. opportunity for people to celebrate the holiday season. This is an annual tradition that is appreciated by audiences and brings in steady revenue each year.
We want to touch a little deeper on the opportunity for Carolina Ballet to incorporate special performance experiences into their repertoire and what these may look like. An important aspect of expanding Carolina Ballet’s mission is to provide more opportunities for populations not immediately drawn to the arts to be intrigued by the performance events and feel welcome in the theatre space. Carolina Ballet is very fortunate to be located in Raleigh, North
Carolina. The company’s location places it in close proximity to many different groups including students, young adults, and racially and ethnically diverse communities.
Research, as evidenced by the displayed chart, shows that these communities are some of the least likely to attend performing arts events, specifically ballet performances21. Special performance events can be used as a way to engage these populations and break down social and cultural barriers that may have previously discouraged populations from engaging with the arts. These events may include free outdoor performances at Joseph M.
Bryan Jr. Amphitheatre at North Carolina Museum of Art so that families with young children can enjoy dance together. Colleges and Universities often have great performances spaces; this
21 A Decade of Arts Engagement: Findings from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, 2002–2012. National Endowment for the Arts, 2015, www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/2012-sppa-jan2015-rev.pdf. presents an opportunity for Carolina Ballet to visit campuses and make ballet more accessible to students. This exposure also has the ability to capture students’ attention and inspire them to become regular audience members at Carolina Ballet performances. Additionally, partnerships with other dance companies that are celebrating diversity and challenging historical expectations about dance and ballet, such as Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, will show the North Carolina community that the organization is striving to challenge dance history and expand their reach. We believe that these are all opportunities for Carolina Ballet to strengthen their connection with the Raleigh and North Carolina communities, as well as perform beautiful and important work. Carolina Ballet has previously experienced incredible success when expanding the venus at which they perform. In 2013, Carolina Ballet brought their performance of The Nutcracker to Durham Performing Arts Center, “It was such a hit there – nearly 3,000 people came to the three performances, and ... 90 percent of them were new to
Carolina Ballet.22” The success of this expansion proves that audiences beyond Raleigh are looking to attend performances. Bringing Carolina Ballet to new theatres has the great potential to grow their audience throughout the state.
Marketing and Community Engagement
One of our other main areas of focus was marketing and community engagement. We recommend several ways in which Carolina Ballet can improve in these areas. First, we designed a new logo for the company. This new logo is black and white, incredibly streamlined and elegant. Unlike the current logo, the new logo does not include the director’s name. By removing this aspect of the design, we allow Carolina Ballet to stand alone; the previous strategy of
22 Roberts, Liza. “Carolina Ballet at 15: Constantly Creating.” WALTER, 31 Jan. 2013, www.waltermagazine.com/people/carolina-ballet-at-15- constantly-creating/. incorporating the name in the logo overemphasizes the importance of the artistic director. The old logo seems to convey that the company itself does not have enough prestige to be recognize and respected without Robert Weiss’s name. Our new design decision follows the pattern of other more well-known and well-established ballet companies like American Ballet Theatre and
New York City Ballet. By removing the artistic director name from the logo, we also eliminate the potential problems that could arise when leadership in the organization changes as it will do this year.
Our second strategy is to launch a video marketing campaign. Since dance is a visual art form, we feel that this is the optimal method of showcasing Carolina Ballet’s talent. We will include diversity in both choreography and the body of dancers, highlighting that ballet is an art form for everyone to appreciate, not something exclusive. Social media marketing is a critical part of marketing, and we recommend streamlining Carolina Ballet’s Instagram feed and
Facebook page by adopting a clean theme where the photos are cohesive; we would also launch the video marketing campaign on these platforms. Finally, Carolina Ballet should invest in bus advertisements, as these are seen by local community members and will provide them with greater exposure.
We examined Carolina Ballet’s current community engagement efforts in order to assess what they can improve upon. Currently, Carolina Ballet engages with the community in several ways. “Dancers in Schools” brings dancers to schools all across North Carolina 23. It is a one hour program introducing students to the world of professional ballet. Two company dancers discuss their lives as professional dancers, demonstrating and leading students in basic ballet positions and movements. The program is interdisciplinary, connecting dance with science, math, physical education, and social studies. It has reached over sixty thousand students in third
23 https://www.carolinaballet.com/community/education-outreach/dancers-in-schools through fifth grade. Carolina Ballet’s other program, “Moving Bodies”, is an eight week movement curriculum designed for the pre-K classroom24. It is an engaging, hands-on artist-in- residency program that provides meaningful creative movement experiences to at-risk students.
It helps students gain important motor skills, literacy, math, and social-emotional learning skills.
Each lesson focuses on a specific movement concept and includes a BrainDance warm up, one or more focus activities, and a cool down exercise. Additionally, several lessons incorporate books and enable students to “dance the story” and engage with books in a new way.
Carolina Ballet also has residencies and master classes where teaching artists go to schools to lead an arts integration residency that connects creative movement with the core academic curriculum. In the master classes, one of the company dancers exposes dance students to Carolina’s ballet. Student matinees take place on weekday mornings each season for school groups to attend. Finally, teacher professional development workshops provide educators with new and innovative strategies for using the arts in their instruction25.Teachers gain knowledge about integrating movement, theater, and music into their lessons, and leave with lesson plans and materials that they can utilize in the classroom right away.
The existing community outreach programs Carolina Ballet has are successful and should be continued, yet there are still areas to develop and pursue. Carolina Ballet should introduce a women’s movement. This would be a multi-year initiative to support the creation, exploration and staging of new works by female choreographers for Carolina Ballet. The Carolina Women’s
Movement will support at least three female choreographers each season to create new works for the company. Second, Carolina Ballet should improve their diversity and inclusion efforts. In
2013, ABT launched the Project Plié initiative to further expand its diversity and inclusion
24 https://www.carolinaballet.com/community/education-outreach/moving-bodies 25 https://www.carolinaballet.com/community/education-outreach/residenciesmaster-classes efforts and bring greater awareness to the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the classical ballet community26. Carolina should adopt this model and identify promising young dancers, dance teachers, and emerging arts administrators of color to participate in high-quality training programs. Another suggestion is the introduction of pre-performance workshops where children are guided through a ballet warm-up and taught a short piece of choreography based on a work they will see during the performance.
Conclusion
After conducting thorough research with regards to Carolina Ballet’s mission, background, business model, budget, audience and more, we hope that the organization will adopt our strategic recommendations as outlined throughout this paper, so that they can remain at the forefront of the arts in North Carolina, as well as improve their global reputation.
26 “Project Plié.” American Ballet Theatre, www.abt.org/community/diversity-inclusion/project-plie/.
Works Cited
“About.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/company/about/. Kouzes, J.M., and Posner, B.Z. (2007). What leaders do and what constituents expect. In The leadership challenge (4th ed., pp. 1-41). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. “Average Carolina Ballet Salary.” PayScale, www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Carolina_Ballet/Salary. “Carolina Ballet.” GuideStar Profile, www.guidestar.org/profile/56-1445383. “Colorado Ballet Company.” GuideStar Profile, www.guidestar.org/profile/84-6038137. “Raleigh, North Carolina Population 2019.” World Population Review, worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/raleigh-population/. “Richmond, Virginia Population 2019.” Richmond, Virginia Population 2019 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs), worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/richmond-population/. “Government Partners.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/support/government-partners/. Grants.” NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, www.ncdcr.gov/resources/grants?field_grant_topic_tid=3468&field_grant_audience_tid=3391& combine=. “National Dance Project Production Grant.” NEFA, www.nefa.org/grants/find-grant/national- dance-project-production-grant. “Special Rates.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/season-tickets/tickets/special-rates/. “2019-2020 Season.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/2019-2020-season/. “Dancer Sponsorships | Choreographing Our Future.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/support/dancer-sponsorships/. Wolf, T. (2015, Oct. 15). Four keys to cultivating a donor. GuideStar: Blog. Retrieved from https://trust.guidestar.org/blog/four-keys-to-cultivating-a-donor Vehicle Donation | Choreographing Our Future.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/support/donate-vehicle/. “Special Events.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/the-latest/special-events/. “Corporate Giving.” Carolina Ballet, www.carolinaballet.com/support/corporate-giving/. “National Findings.” Americans for the Arts, 15 Jan. 2015, www.americansforthearts.org/by- program/reports-and-data/research-studies-publications/arts-economic-prosperity-iv/national- findings. Suprenant, Jillian, and Emma Crossman. “Phone Call with Zalman Raffael.” 26 Mar. 2019 Foster, K. J. (2006). Performing arts presenting: From theory to practice (pp. 27-44, 51-65, 73- 80). Washington, DC: Association of Performing Arts Presenters. Annual Report 2017-2018. Cincinnati Ballet, p. 12, www.cballet.org/annual-reports/. A Decade of Arts Engagement: Findings from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, 2002–2012. National Endowment for the Arts, 2015, www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/2012-sppa- jan2015-rev.pdf. Roberts, Liza. “Carolina Ballet at 15: Constantly Creating.” WALTER, 31 Jan. 2013, www.waltermagazine.com/people/carolina-ballet-at-15-constantly-creating/. https://www.carolinaballet.com/community/education-outreach/dancers-in-schools https://www.carolinaballet.com/community/education-outreach/moving-bodies https://www.carolinaballet.com/community/education-outreach/residenciesmaster-classes “Project Plié.” American Ballet Theatre, www.abt.org/community/diversity-inclusion/project- plie/.