Turning Point When Mikko Nissinen took over as artistic director of the Boston Ballet, the company was losing money and artistic credibility. Now, at the start of its 50th anniversary season, the company stands as one of the largest and most innovative in the country. But saving the ballet from itself wasn’t easy. BY ZAK JASON PHOTOGRAPHS BY NAME NAME TKTKTKTKTTK BOSTONMAGAZINE.COM 63 earnest this month, includes American tistic director, and held the position un- and world premieres in Boston, and also til 1983. Williams cultivated a modest performances at Washington’s Kennedy range of classics and Balanchine neo- Center and at Lincoln Center’s Koch classics—although Balanchine, an oc- Theater in New York next summer. casional artistic adviser, often poached When Nissinen, who is 51, took over Williams’s best dancers for his ballet in the company in 2001, a schedule of New York. this magnitude seemed unimaginable. Violette Verdy, Boston Ballet’s second Amid fumbled searches for a director, director, was hired from France as co- the Boston Ballet had turned to gaudy director in 1980, became head director and ill-choreographed story ballets, and in 1983, and promptly quit in 1984. On other than a single performance in New her way out, she lambasted the board of York, hadn’t performed outside Mas- trustees, telling the Globe that its mem- sachusetts in a decade. And little won- bers had their “own little, local, parochi- der. The Globe concluded that the 1999 al, cozy plans ... They do not come to the Backstage at the Boston Opera House, season’s repertory “was so dismal you studio or rehearsals. They do not care five minutes before the curtains were wonder why any presenter would want about dance.” Next up was Bruce Marks, to rise on a Friday in May, Mikko Nis- to import the Boston troupe.” Along the who began his tenure in 1985 with a sinen, dressed in an all-black suit, way, the company lost talent, clout, its press conference in which he laid out his Bemerged to check on his dancers. This home of 32 years—the Wang Theater— goal of “taking the underdog company of was a rare pre-performance sighting and fell $8 million into debt. And after all time, the faceless Boston Ballet, and of the artistic director of the Boston a dancer’s death, it was beset with scan- giving it a face.” Marks expanded the Ballet. On many nights, just before the dal. Yet today the company stands as the repertoire, commissioning contempo- show begins, Nissinen will sneak into a fourth-largest ballet in the country— rary works by the likes of Twyla Tharp box, or the orchestra, or the back of the and Mark Morris, and in 1991 the com- balcony, unbeknownst to the perform- Recent scenes from the pany opened a Graham Gund–designed, ers. the company is celebrating its half- 60,000-square-foot, seven-studio, century birthday this year, and a week Boston Ballet include: roughly $7.5 million headquarters on earlier had premiered its new produc- dancers crawling on Clarendon Street in the South End. tion, Chroma. Each performance since Marks left in 1997, and almost imme- had provoked standing ovations that bulbble wrap; choreog- diately afterward the company tumbled sounded more like what you’d expect at raphy set to the Rolling to its artistic nadir. During the three- a Bruins game than a ballet audience. year tenure of Anna-Marie Holmes, Nonetheless, his dancers knew better Stones; plastic dolls in Marks’s successor, the company staged than to rest on their laurels. Even as the transparent caskets some of the most universally panned patrons on the other side of the curtain performances—primarily story bal- were asked to silence their cell phones, hanging from the stage’s lets—in its history. “You go away feel- the dancers John Lam and Isaac Akiba ing you’ve seen a lot—just not a lot of were reviewing video from the previous ceiling; and, notoriously, dancing,” the Globe wrote of Holmes’s night’s performance—the moment when topless ballerinas. An American in Paris. Another review they drag Jeffrey Cirio across the stage concluded that “the ballet is trying hard in skin-tone, crotch-length nightgowns. free of long-term debt, with 58 dancers to sell tickets through works with high Now two minutes to curtain, Nissinen, and a $31 million annual budget. In the name recognition, no matter how crude his face bathed in electric-blue bat- past six years it has toured 16 cities and the choreography.” A letter to the editor ten lighting, approached 17 ballerinas five countries and staged 13 world pre- scolded a critic whose review was titled dressed in diaphanous azure tulle skirts mieres. In returning the Boston Ballet “A lifeless Dracula” for being “too kind.” for the evening’s opening piece, the Bal- to health, Nissinen, with his modernist- At one point, the prominent choreogra- anchine classic Serenade. He said some- yet-populist vision, has helped undo pher Mark Morris withdrew one of his thing that made them laugh, and then Boston’s long-standing reputation as a ballets mid-production, claiming that walked to his seat to witness his work. conservative arts town. Nissinen and Boston’s dancers weren’t up to his stan- This was one of the last performanc- the international talent he has recruited dards. es before the Boston Ballet began its have begun to create what all the world’s Then, in June 1997, an internal trag- packed 50th-anniversary season. And ballet companies are desperately after edy nearly sank the company. Corps de Nissinen had already set out an ambi- today: an identity. ballet dancer Heidi Guenther, who suf- tious schedule. The company was set to fered from an eating disorder, suddenly perform at the London Coliseum with the boston ballet was born in 1963, died. When the media learned that the Royal Philharmonic in July, before the product of a grant from the Ford Holmes had previously requested that returning to stage the annual Night of Foundation. From the beginning, the Guenther lose five pounds, publications Stars, which this year was presented company struggled to establish itself. as varied as People and the New York for free on the Common in September. The Melrose native E. Virginia Williams Times ran headlines similar to the one in The season itself, which kicks off in was named the company’s founding ar- the Phoenix: “Was Boston Ballet respon- 64 BOSTON | MONTH 2012 Mikko Nissinen adjusts his dancers’ form. He’s as meticu- lous with them as he is with his bonsai. BOSTONMAGAZINE.COM 65 sible for the death of Heidi Guenther?” Detail oriented: Nis- nights at the South End headquarters— gesting oral sex; a pair sinen tends toward An autopsy ultimately determined that budget planning, performance reviews, of nude mannequins modern pieces like Guenther had most likely died of a ge- and rehearsals for an expansive reper- in transparent cas- William Forsythe’s netic heart condition, bt the stigma lin- toire in London—he looked sluggish. He kets hanging from the The Second Detail. gered, and Holmes ultimately left the said he was going to take a homeopathic stage’s ceiling; and, ballet in 2000. medicine after dinner to fend off a cold. notoriously, topless ballerinas. I asked Maina Gielgud, the veteran director of Then he asked the waitress to prepare if any of these were merely attention- the Australian Ballet, replaced Holmes three courses of the chef’s choice. “The seeking stunts. “I would never stage a ony to resign just five months later—be- more adventurous, the better,” he told gimmick,” he said, a ring of poached oc- fore even setting up her office. Gielgud, her. topus clutched in his chopsticks. “I only cited disputes with the administration, The more adventurous, the better: as select what I feel is art.” whom she said had never presented her precise a dictum as any for Nissinen’s The first-born child (he has a younger After Nissinen took over, several dancers quit the company. One told the Globe, “I wasn’t going to stay around and be miserable trying to find out what he wants.” with a final budget. The company spent ballet. Recent scenes from the Boston brother, Antti) of a ceramicist mother the next year trudging through an inter- Ballet include a pianist plinking a hor- and painter father, Nissinen grew up national search before at last landing on ror score on a baby grand with 9-foot- middle class in Helsinki, encouraged Mikko Nissinen, then a young artistic tall legs as a dancer pirouettes beneath; by his parents and his grandfather, a director who had grown up in Finland orangutan-esque arm-swinging by per- clarinetist, to pursue the arts. In 1973, and made his reputation as a principal formers in front of a white sign read- at age 11, he joined the Finnish Ballet’s dancer at the San Francisco Ballet. ing, simply, “The”; dancers crawling on first all-boys class. Soon he befriended bubble wrap; choreography set to the a 12-year-old classmate named Jorma i met nissinen recently in the Back Rolling Stones, an orchestral remolding Elo. With money scrounged from roles Bay at one of his favorite sushi restau- of the White Stripes, and the barking of as extras, the boys traveled to Copenha- rants. He was wearing his usual all-black a demonic dog; pas de deux beginning in gen to see Baryshnikov perform live. “It ensemble, and after a long week of late the fetal position on the stage floor, sug- was a transformative experience,” Nis- 66 BOSTON | MONTH 2012 PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN DOE sinen told me.