Subscribe
Community
The world at our feet
Friday, April 3, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by EMILY BARNES
Oscar Hawkins of Brandywine instructs a student during a class at the Ballet Arts Academy in Waldorf. A graduate of Kirov Ballet Academy in Washington, D.C., who has performed all over the world, Hawkins has been the academy's artistic director for almost a year.
|
E-Mail This Article
In the world of performing arts, clear lines are often drawn between community and professional productions.
Lisa Kay Morton of Waldorf, an actress, singer and vocal coach, has trained and managed professional singers and worked with both professional and community groups. She says a professional production's primary goal is to deliver a performance of the highest quality. A local production, in turn, aims to serve and engage the community; it balances a mix of amateur participants with a limited amount of time and resources and strives to turn out the best performance possible.
But what happens when a community organization receives a professional push?
At Ballet Arts Academy in Waldorf, the new artistic director, Oscar Hawkins, a renowned dancer who has come back home after performing all over the world, envisions himself working without limits. He senses the beginning of a new era.
Meanwhile, at Southern Maryland Higher Education Center in California, the all-volunteer COSMIC Symphony Orchestra has begun fresh rehearsals for its season finale in May. That means Vladimir Lande, the conductor who is also hired to work with professional orchestras all over the world, is making a weekly commute from Baltimore for COSMIC's three-hour practices.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and a graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music, Lande has been with COSMIC for almost six years now and has what he calls a hypothetical dream: One day the collectively humble, hard-working, union-free COSMIC will create a professional sound.
Reaching new heights
About six years ago, COSMIC's conductor left abruptly. A member of the group had been taking lessons from Lande and recommended him for the position.
Lande was intrigued by the idea but says the group was in rough shape. He got hooked in, however, by a certain energy he sensed while conducting the group. "Some of them come to rehearsals after a whole day of work," Lande said, "and to see how much effort they put into it is extraordinary."
Lande, a professional oboist, has conducted with the St. Petersburg Symphony, the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra and the orchestra at the National Gallery of Art.
He has high expectations and does not soften his criticism during practice. Members say they have had to increase their own commitment to their instruments and practice more frequently outside of rehearsal. Each year, they say, the emphasis prior to their December performance of "The Nutcracker" shifts a little further away from simply learning the material to honing its musicality and nuance.
In his own indefinable way, Lande has essentially charted a course for COSMIC and has instituted structure to a group which, about 11 years ago, was casually founded by a small group of local musicians. He admits, however, that a fine line exists between pushing too much and pushing too little.
"I think they're sounding better," Lande said. "I think COSMIC can reach new heights, and I'm excited about that."
He believes it is important to maintain a balance between local and out-of-town arts, and so he was pleased that, for "The Nutcracker," Southern Maryland's Ballet Caliente, a ballet school which emphasizes classical techniques, had a chance to perform "shoulder to shoulder" with Ukraine's Donetsk Ballet.
"Certainly it raised the level of the whole performance and helped young dancers understand how it is supposed to be done," he said.
COSMIC's season finale, Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story," will include opening selections by the group's flute choir, singers and a world premiere of American composer Sean Hickey's "Concerto for Solo Cello."
"[The finale is] always our showcase," said Laura Theofolis, the principal flutist and president of the board of directors. "We try to do something a little more popular."
Like plenty of other COSMIC members, Theofolis studied music in college but chose not to pursue it professionally. In that sense, COSMIC provides an outlet for Southern Maryland's adult musicians.
Nowadays, though, particularly with Lande in the mix, younger musicians who do have professional ambitions are using COSMIC as a training ground. It's one section of the orchestra where there's quite a bit of turnover, as high school participants often leave the area to attend college.
"I say it's my job to steer them in the right direction," Lande said.
Southern Maryland as hub for ballet
Oscar Hawkins' father, also named Oscar, was known by some as the unofficial mayor of Brandywine. He was an outdoorsman and a farmer who worked for a gravel company. He died two years ago, unexpectedly, at age 59.
Hawkins received the news in Las Vegas. He was performing with Cirque du Soleil and moved back to Brandywine to be with his family.
Hawkins, coincidentally, had felt the itch to return home for years prior to his father's death, and had been trying to make it happen — even though he had rarely been home since leaving Brandywine to attend the Duke Ellington School of the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
"For me, this is my land," he said. "My spirit, my self — it's here. ... I had this feeling in my heart that I had to be around my parents."
After six years of studying voice and drama at Duke Ellington, Hawkins' instructor asked him to take some dance training to prepare for a play.
A year later, Hawkins had taken so well to dance that he was offered a full scholarship to the Kirov Academy of Ballet (also in Washington, D.C.).
Hawkins was 17, old to begin a serious ballet career, but he had superior flexibility, a natural sense of rhythm and an indomitable work ethic. After winning a national dance competition, he got a role in a production with Washington National Opera in 1998, and for the next decade bounced around the world from one gig to the next.
A few years ago, in an effort to move closer to home, Hawkins had at last returned from Europe and was performing in the United States. "If there was a big company here I would have come back long ago," he said.
After his father died, however, Hawkins not only returned home but began to turn down job offers — until he received the perfect offer from Jayne Stefani-Keating, the founder and artistic director of the Ballet Arts Academy, or BAA, which began about three years ago. (Stefani-Keating and her husband have temporarily moved overseas.)
BAA trains exclusively in the classical Vaganova ballet method, and Hawkins said he knew after running a couple classes that he had come to the right place. "I wanted the environment to be serious," he said. "We're trying to start an academy." There is no hip-hop here or Jazzercise, and the students, who have come to the class with varying levels of experience, are extremely dedicated, he said.
With BAA's annual recital coming up April 4, a mix of levels two and three students, ranging in age from about 9 to 16, recently worked on the opening piece, a dance Hawkins has arranged to a Tchaikovsky's "Serenade in C Major."
Some students will also participate in April's "Ballet Project," which Hawkins has organized and will include dancers from the Houston ballet, El Teatro de Danzo Contemporanea de El Salvador and advanced students from the Kirov.
Students practice six days per week, and according to executive director and instructor Deborah Stanley, "divas" are not allowed. You can even be "buxom," just as long as you're willing to work hard.
Nonprofit BAA's three-month programs cost between $185 for a beginner and $350 for a level three. Students do not pay for costumes, as Stanley makes her own tutus and bodices.
BAA is housed in the Old Waldorf School which, as the name implies, is quite old. The wood floor is warped in one of the classrooms, and in the main practice area it bends with the dancer's leaps. It's not the most state-of-the-art setup.
The natural light tumbling down from the windows, on the other hand, makes for a rather majestic setup.
Hawkins directed the class, running across the mat to stop and start the CD player. "I'm really tough," he said. "I'm a tough teacher."
On the other hand, he's not a screamer, either. When a student messed up, he broke into a big smile before correcting them. He is tough in the sense that, in practice, there is never a loose moment, as if no other world exists except for that of classical ballet.
The students' faces were placid. The only time they broke out of it was when Hawkins demonstrated part of his routine, causing them to beam.
For the most part, though, students rarely even spoke. If they were not involved in a routine, they watched intently on the side and stretched or practiced moves.
Stanley's son, Robert Stanley, 12, is often teased for pursuing ballet. In his mind, however, if he wanted an easy sport, he might have chosen football.
What's it like working with Hawkins?
"It's hard," Stanley said.
"But it's fun," said 15-year-old Alex Walters. Stanley, Walters and Bradley Dean are the only boys in the group. All three are home schooled.
Hawkins' colleagues, meanwhile, tell him he has gone from being the ballet student who started too late to a rising star who has bowed out of the spotlight too early. He is 36, young for a ballet teacher.
And although he doesn't think his performing days are over, Hawkins, who sustained himself for a decade with temporary jobs, seems to view the opportunity to run Ballet Arts Academy as the first one he can form a life around. Would he go elsewhere, though, if a better opportunity arose?
"No," he says, resoundingly. "I'm home. … I'm trying to bring back what I got – the experiences I had and the cultures — here," he said.
If you ask BAA student s where they might study ballet if BAA did not exist, most of them just shrug their shoulders.
In their minds it's either BAA or Kirov; it's either Waldorf or Washington, D.C. And in Hawkins' opinion, it's now just a matter of time before Southern Maryland becomes, of all things, a hub for ballet.
If you go
The Ballet Arts Academy will have its annual recital at 8 p.m. April 4 at North Point High School and will also participate in "The Ballet Project" at 8 p.m. April 19 at the College of Southern Maryland, La Plata campus. Tickets are $5. COSMIC Symphony Orchestra's season finale, "Made in America," will be held at 7 p.m. May 16 at Great Mills High School and at 4 p.m. May 17 at Huntingtown High School.
