Feature Stories

An Eye Toward Education

Integral to the success of San Francisco Ballet are its School and the Center for Dance Education. Both foster understanding of the value of the art of ballet in general and specifically, about how the Company contributes to that art. However, the two educational wings of the organization are separate and have different goals. The School’s mission is to train professional dancers; the Center for Dance Education’s goal is “to serve children, youth, and families by promoting cultural understanding and involvement” through dance.

Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson believes that “the School is very, very important to the Company. It gives us a connection to the community—people send their children here, which hopefully also broadens the audience base. Many, many dancers have also come through the School into the Company; some may have been there for only a year or two, and some a lot longer than that. I recruit from there. Of course, what you get from the School is young people, which is great, but most of the time you’re not going to get a soloist or principal dancer.” While artistic directors of some companies take dancers almost exclusively from their schools, ensuring a certain consistency of training, Tomasson recruits internationally for more experienced dancers. “They bring something of their own that enhances the Company, and yet we somehow manage to dance in a very cohesive way,” he says. “So I recruit from both, and hopefully build up people who have come from the School. It’s a very important part for us.”

San Francisco Ballet School trains approximately 320 students annually in its year-round program and 250 in its summer program. The faculty has always been international, which means that students are exposed to a variety of training styles that prepare them to handle a diverse repertory. Still, whether a teacher was trained in Paris, Havana, or New York, according to Associate Artistic Director Gloria Govrin, “they all teach classical ballet.” As director of the School, Tomasson makes the major decisions, but he leaves the day-to-day operations to Govrin and Administrative Manager Jim Sohm. Although Govrin says Tomasson has become more involved in the School in the last two years, Sohm emphasizes that “he lets people do their jobs. He gives input, and he’s there, but he’s like a producer—he brings all these elements together and something rather special emerges from it.”

Philosophically, the School went through some changes after Tomasson came aboard. “This school has always trained professional dancers,” says Sohm. “But it was a community-type school, with adult classes and a very large children’s program. That’s one kind of school, and it has great value. But Helgi wanted to see another kind. He had a vision of it being modeled like the School of American Ballet—a real professional-track program. Helgi told me many years ago, ‘I want the kind of school where artistic directors come here to look for dancers.’ ”

He got it. Each year, most of the School’s graduating students get jobs with professional companies. In addition to their home company, SF Ballet School graduates have populated the ranks of Boston Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Ballet West, Houston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Miami City Ballet, and Cincinnati Ballet, among others. Tomasson’s ideal finished dancer, according to Sohm, is “someone who can do a broad, diverse range of styles and who has—it sounds trite, but it’s a very real thing—that joy of dance. He needs to see that. We can’t create that in a student, but we can cultivate it.”

Govrin credits the School’s success to Tomasson’s philosophy that in a professional school, “it’s immoral to keep people here who we feel don’t have a possibility of a professional career. Helgi made it very clear to me that he didn’t want me to keep people here just for the tuition, because they have to give up a lot. Everyone has to find what they’re destined to do, and if your whole life is here and you’re not that good a dancer, you haven’t left room for anything else, which I think is unfortunate.”

Govrin has seen a rise in the level of talent in the School since she first started in 1999. “I think part of that is the training, and a lot of it has to do with the reputation of the Company,” she says. As the Company’s profile rises because of all the touring it’s done, it attracts more talented kids to the School. Then getting student housing, which would never have happened without Helgi’s approval, made it a lot easier to keep talented students here.”

One of those talented students was Principal Dancer Gonzalo Garcia, who first came to the School in 1994. He remembers being so impressed with the male teachers that summer, particularly Jorge Esquivel (who’s also a principal character dancer), that he returned as a full-time student. “Jorge has been a very big person for me in my career. He is so visual, and he has so much energy—but he’s poised, because he was such a huge artist and star [in the National Ballet of Cuba]. The way he shows an exercise makes you watch. You copy a lot of things when you are young—you don’t understand why or how to do things, but you try to copy them. And Jorge was a very good example of that for me. And I worked with Ricardo Bustamante [now a ballet master with the Company], who was very good—he also has such a presence and way of moving that’s so different from Jorge.”

Another major change Tomasson has made is the implementation of the School’s new Trainee Program, now in its pilot year. Led by Trainee Coordinator Leslie Young, a soloist with the Company who retired at the end of the 2004 season, it’s designed to ease the transition from student to professional. The 12 students, selected by Tomasson, supplement their School classes with rehearsals and performances of Company repertory works, outreach activities with the Center for Dance Education, and workshops in nutrition, body conditioning, Pilates, and theatrical makeup. Young says, “I want to take the technique they’ve learned and help them apply it. There are differences between learning classroom exercises versus learning choreography. Helgi said he’d love to have pieces created for them, and that’s another learning process I’d like them to be part of.” She laughs, adding, “I’m part mother—I take their pictures every day!”

Young’s new role is another example of how Tomasson shapes careers. She was preparing to move to London to study Benesh notation when Tomasson offered her this job, and she’s happy with her decision to stay. “Helgi has always had more confidence in me than I’ve had in myself, and he’s committed when he makes a decision. So that’s what I thought when he offered me this position—he’s always known what I can do, and my experience has been that he’s been right.”

Tomasson plays a less active role in the Center for Dance Education, but his values and high standards drive it just the same. Its programs, led by Education Manager Charles Chip McNeal and Ballet Education Coordinator Evelyn Cisneros-Legate, bring dance to the lives of thousands of Bay Area schoolchildren and families through in-school residencies, performance opportunities, community matinees (supplemented by study guides and classroom visits by ballet education docents), and community workshops.

The Center has had a huge impact on Bay Area communities since its inception three years ago—Cisneros-Legate says her programs have grown more than 100 percent—but now its reach is even longer. In the last few years outreach has become an integral part of the Company’s tours, bringing increased awareness and appreciation for the art form—and San Francisco Ballet—to schools and communities in those locations. Cisneros-Legate explains, “Usually before the Company comes, we’ll do outreach and education in as many arenas as possible—everything from teaching master classes for the local companies to going into performing arts high schools, colleges, and communities.” What the Center offers varies with each venue. “Because it’s a collaborative effort, we fit into what the theater already has in place and how they see education in their community. We rely on their expertise about their community,” says Cisneros-Legate. On the recent London tour, she taught master classes and did pre-performance interviews, including one with Tomasson.

Although Cisneros-Legate believes that outreach has an impact on the box office, she emphasizes that what it offers goes far beyond increased ticket sales. “The parents of kids from the communities we serve don’t necessarily have the means to bring them to a performance, but at least the kids have had that experience,” she points out. “And the parents can learn from what they’ve brought home, what they can see in the study guide. I think we’re making an impact. In L.A., some boys stayed afterward and begged me to teach them one more step. They were so enthusiastic, and it really touches you when you can see that they understand and enjoy it.” Whether or not these children become dancers or dancegoers, through this experience the art of dance will have touched their lives.


The transformation of San Francisco Ballet has far exceeded the aspirations the Board had in 1985. In bringing his unflagging mix of energy, determination, passion, integrity, and humanitarianism to the Company, Tomasson has also transformed the lives of many of those associated with it. “What Helgi’s managed to do over 20 years is to create a company that has continued to grow and strive for excellence on every level—artistically, musically, creatively,” says Ashley Wheater, ballet master and assistant to the artistic director. “That is a huge, huge job, and Helgi has done it brilliantly. He has kept the art form creative at the highest level.”

Tomasson’s most important accomplishment, in his opinion? “Having survived 20 years!” he laughs. “My wife, Marlene, has helped me so much—I couldn’t have done it without her. It’s a continuous challenge—you become a victim of your own success, in a way. The better you get, the greater the expectations, not only from myself to do better, but from out there.” He gestures to indicate the world. “How can I keep that up?”

But what Tomasson plans to do—for the next 20 years, hopefully—is exactly that: keep it up. Those who’ve watched the transformation of San Francisco Ballet know that means continuing the standards of excellence he’s set for the Company; continuing to challenge himself, his dancers, and his audiences; continuing to take risks and look for ways to raise his company to even greater heights. It’s as simple as this: Helgi Tomasson is a man whose greatest joy is preserving and developing the art of dance, and that’s exactly what he’ll continue to do. “The art of dance—the art of dance—is the most important thing,” he says. “I’m here right now; there will be someone else one day, and dancers will come and go—but the art of dance has to survive, the art of dance has to move forward.”

Cheryl Ossola is a freelance arts writer and editor, and a contributing editor for Dance Magazine.