Hi, dance friends. I’m Margaret Fuhrer, editor and producer of The Dance Edit newsletter and podcast.
This holiday week, we have a special treat for you all: We are re-airing our interview with Susan Jaffe, a conversation that first aired over the summer as part of our old subscription-based series, The Dance Edit Extra.
If you are a ballet person, Susan really needs no introduction: She was a star dancer at American Ballet Theatre for more than two decades. Since retiring in 2002, she has held leadership positions at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where she was dean of dance for several years, and most recently at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, where she served as artistic director for two years. And just a few weeks ago, at the beginning of December, Susan began a very high-profile new job: She became artistic director of ABT, succeeding longtime leader Kevin McKenzie.
Since Susan is now officially implementing her forward-thinking vision at ABT, we thought this would be a good time to revisit our previous conversation with her. As you’ll hear, it is full of wisdom and insight and just good sense about what ballet needs to do, and how it needs to change, to thrive in the future. Here she is.
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Margaret Fuhrer:
Susan, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on today.
Susan Jaffe:
Thank you for having me.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I wanted to start by actually going back in time for a moment, because of course you had this remarkable performing career with ABT. While you were dancing, did you have aspirations to directorship? Was being an artistic director something that you thought about?
Susan Jaffe:
Not really. Not as I was dancing. Every once in a while, somebody would come up to me and say, “You know, you’d be a really good director one day.” And I remember thinking, what an odd comment. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking along those lines, and it never occurred to me that I would be a director. And so, no. I think once I retired, I thought maybe that could be a good thing; something fun, something where you’re really giving back. But not until I retired did I think about that.
Margaret Fuhrer:
After you retired from performance, then you stuck around at ABT for a while—teaching at JKO School, you were advisor to the chairman of the board, you were a director of repertoire. How does that long-time affiliation with this organization—how does it prepare you for this kind of leadership role at the company, and how does it not prepare you?
Susan Jaffe:
Well, of course I’ve seen it from all ends: from the student side, company member, teacher, somewhat on the administration. And then also coming back as a rehearsal director. What is in my favor, of having been there all that time, is I understand the culture. I understand the ballets, the big repertory that Ballet Theatre does. I’ve danced almost all of it, not necessarily in the corps de ballet, but as a principal and soloist. And I understand the schedule, the hectic kind of schedule that we have, but also just the overall culture and feeling of the company. And so, I think that really is very helpful, walking into it as the artistic director.
On the other hand, of course, I’ve never personally directed anything that large. I was the dean of the university—dean of dance at University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where I had 14 faculty, and I had 230 students. But that wasn’t anything as large as a ballet company. And just to say that that job there really helped me to walk into this job here at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and pretty much know what to do. It’s all the same administrative duties. Actually, it’s less, administratively, for me here. There are more meetings, but there’s less physical work that you have to do on the admin side.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Oh, that’s interesting.
Susan Jaffe:
So, that really helped me to understand how to be an artistic director. By going into ABT now, it’s more than twice the size of this company. So, that’s something that’s going to be brand new for me. But I am working with Kevin once a week. We’re meeting every week, so that he gives me all the background to what’s going on and where are some of the points that are working really well, what are some of the points that perhaps could improve. And so, he’s been incredibly helpful in working with me.
Margaret Fuhrer:
When you did leave the nest, and you were at UNCSA and now at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre—I don’t mean to lump those two jobs together, because as you’ve said, they were very different—but how did they change your perspective on the ballet world and the larger dance world more broadly?
Susan Jaffe:
Going into UNCSA, where I was in charge of a ballet division and a contemporary division, I was exposed to so many more contemporary choreographers that I had not been exposed to before. And also, looking at their composition classes and how they… They’re very choreography-heavy at UNCSA. And so, that really opened my eyes to a whole array of movement that I really developed a taste for. And also, what it really takes to train a student from… not from the bottom up, but we had 14-year-olds; 14 through college. And what kind of organization it needed and consistency and training and things like that. It really helped me, number one, understand consistency of training, and number two, open my eyes to more modern and contemporary work.
So, when I came to Pittsburgh, I thought that the public would enjoy more modern and contemporary works. Which, I now have seasons where I have a mixture of very, very classical, and then some contemporary work, and then a season where there’s just only contemporary works. We did it this past March, and I remember biting my nails thinking, I wonder if people are going to like this. Because they’re very used to tutus and family-friendly tutu ballets. And people loved it. Absolutely loved it.
Because I think—as an artist, we’re really here to bring the audiences into a wider view of dance. We’re the artists. And artists are teachers. And we’re the ones exposing our audiences to new things. And sometimes it’s very risky when we, for example, hire a new choreographer that maybe doesn’t work out. But of course you have to continue to take risks and do things in order to get the gold. And this reminds me of a quote that Balanchine said to Robbins. He said, “The point is to create. And every once in a while, you make a good one.” You know?
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah.
Susan Jaffe:
Anyway, I was very happy to discover that people really, really liked contemporary ballet here in Pittsburgh, where I thought it was just more conservative. A few weeks ago, we did a performance where pretty much all of it was contemporary ballet. It was an open air—in our Open Air series. And we did have some classical things, but everybody who came up to me afterwards said, “Oh, I just really love those contemporary pieces.” So for me, that’s where the juice is.
You want to, of course, preserve the classics. Classics are amazing. We couldn’t live without Swan Lake and Giselle and Sleeping Beauty and things like that. But there’s also room to expand. And that’s where you have the newer choreographers, and now luckily more diverse choreographers in the big ballet companies. So, I think it’s a very exciting time for dance. It’s a very exciting time for ballet. And I’m just happy to be a part of it. And I’m very grateful to my exposure to that kind of work at UNCSA.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, I know, it’s interesting. I feel like, in the ballet world in particular, there’s a lot of anxiety about what audiences will be okay with. Like, “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know if they’ll get this.” And sometimes I think we just don’t give people enough credit.
Susan Jaffe:
Yes. And I also believe in not just saying, “Here, here’s a new piece,” but to actually give people background information on it and to get them to see it more deeply. And of course, every time we see something more deeply, we have a much deeper appreciation of it. And so, I really want to do probably podcasts about each piece. And I have this vision in my head or this image in my head of people in the audience sitting there before the curtain goes up. And nobody’s talking. They’re on their headphones, listening to the 10-minute snippet about what they’re about to see in the background. [laughter] And with dramaturgs, with historians, with people who have done the work. So it’s not just, “Oh, this is a fun piece to see,” but a deep background about these works and why they’re so important. And even new works, what you want to see.
There are places where we do need to be mindful and remake, in some of the older ballets where they could be… it could have cultural misappropriation, or it could have something that’s offensive. And those things, I think, do need to be remade. Not remade. Adjusted. Let’s put it that way. And that’s where you’re thinking about, okay, there’s somebody sitting in the audience, and I want to make sure that this work is seen and appreciated and not offending somebody.
But again, education is such a big thing. I just saw Alexei Ratmansky’s new, full-length Of Love and Rage. I saw it three times. I thought it was amazing. And the synopsis, of course, was very helpful. And then I got to speak to the designer—the set designer, the costume designer. And at first glance, this ballet could be problematic, as far as the woman, the heroine isn’t treated very well. She’s lusted after by a lot of men. It’s a very historical, obviously. It was created in 400 BCE. So it was a novel. It was one of the first novels ever created.
The designer, Jean-Marc Puissant, worked with curators and museums, worked with scholars. And worked on this, I think, for four years. And so, the sets, the costumes were actually accurate. And they, of course, adjusted also the story so that it was something that could be taken in without offending people. And it ended up being a glorious ballet and got rave reviews.
And so, people can see things that aren’t all roses and champagne. We need to be able to see who we are as humans. And we’re not all love and roses. We’ve got a dark side to us as well. And these stories are very important and deep enough and show us who we are as well. So, I think it’s important to be able to tell stories, but make sure that you’ve done all the research and that also people have backgrounds on it, so that it’s taken in the right way, basically.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Watching Of Love and Rage, I remember thinking that, too—that there are 15 different levels on which you can engage with this work. And sometimes, yeah, it seems like part of the process in ballet is simply encouraging audiences to go a little deeper and guiding them along that path so that they can become better educated. Can you talk a little more about—podcasts are an interesting idea. How else do you think a company can help audiences engage with its repertoire in an informed way?
Susan Jaffe:
Well, of course there’s a lot of stuff you can do on your website. Written material, podcasts. You can have actual lectures. We do the ABT at the Guggenheim series, things like that. You can do that. I was also thinking that, for example, when we go on tour, that it would be wonderful to go into the universities and have our education department and even our studio company going in before we get there, a couple of weeks before, and work with them and do lecture series for, not only the students, but for public as well, so that people could get a deeper dive into what they’re about to see.
And so, those are some of the ideas that I’d like to… Of course, I was thinking, it’d be good to film. But those of course are far more cumbersome. You’ve got to find the filmmaker and the lighting and the this and the that. I’m sure we’ll do some of that. But I do think the podcasts would just be an easy way to make sure that we’re actually able to do the educational part of our programming.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I kind of got ahead of myself in my list of questions here, so I’m going to back up a little bit. Can you talk about your path back to ABT? Because there are a lot of people who wanted this job. But I think there are also some people who did not want this job. It is one of the most difficult jobs in ballet. What was that decision-making process like for you?
Susan Jaffe:
It depends upon how you look at it. You can look at it one way and say, “It’s very difficult to run a ballet company in today’s world.” Stage hands are becoming more expensive. Everything is more expensive, and ticket revenues are not climbing in equal parts to the expense. So, there’s that. And there’s also the… what’s the word? The stressor of making sure you’re bringing in repertory that is vital for the public and giving them a wide array of things to see, and just being responsible about that. So, you can say that that’s all really hard. And it is.
When I retired, I felt so grateful for having the career that I had. And it’s hard to feel grateful while you’re in the middle of it, and you’re trying your hardest and everything. But when I finally backed away from it, I felt so grateful. And my only response was to give back. To give back to the art form.
Initially I thought, oh, I’m going to do something completely different. And maybe I’m going to go into acting, or I’m going to do something else. And ballet kept pulling me back. It kept pulling me back into its world.
I didn’t even think I wanted to teach. And then, I was asked to teach, from the director of the new JKO School, it was John Meehan. And he said, “Oh, come on. Just try it.” And I said, “No, no, no. I don’t want to do that.” He said, “Come on, just try it. And if you don’t like it, in three months, you can quit.” So, I just did it because he said, okay, in three months I can quit. And I ended up loving it. And I ended up really feeling like I was good at it. And then I found that I was good at coaching. And it was nothing that I said, “Oh, I want to be a coach. I want to be a teacher.” It was just something… I was pulled back. I was pulled back to do that.
And so, my feeling about ballet is that I am in service to ballet. And I was very fortunate to have worked with the amazing people that I got to work with. The Baryshnikovs, Kolpakovas, the Makarovas, the Twyla Tharps, the Jiří Kyliáns. And I got to dance all over the world and work with all of those people. And so, I really feel that I have the education to be able to do this. And I certainly feel like I have the passion.
And it still makes me joyful to watch a ballet. Now, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten a little bit more sentimental. Sometimes, I’ll just watch something as sweet as Napoli—I saw the children last week here do Napoli, and I got welled up. And in those moments, I think to myself, I’m so lucky to be in a profession that brings joy and beauty to the world. And it is a privilege to be able to do that.
And so, going into ABT, I recognize that it’s not all going to be sweetness and sunshine. But it never was. Not even as a dancer. Life isn’t that way. And we have to take our ups and our downs with equanimity and continue to move on, move forward in a way that is positive and life-affirming. And so, I just feel very excited to be able to have the opportunity to do that.
Margaret Fuhrer:
One of the things that ABT does, that has been at the root of the joy that it has spread in the world, is storytelling. It’s become the home of the story ballet, in the many different meanings of that term over time. I’m especially interested in how you think about that legacy, about the company as the American home of the story ballet. How do you envision that form’s place in ballet repertory today? And you’ve already started talking about this, but can you talk a little more about what types of stories and storytellers you’re interested in?
Susan Jaffe:
You mean, as far as new repertory?
Margaret Fuhrer:
I was thinking new, but let’s talk about all of it, because the legacy, there’s a deep well to pull from there.
Susan Jaffe:
Absolutely. And I do think there’s some full-length ballets that have been danced in Europe for years, that we haven’t been able to dance. And so, I’d like to bring those as well. And, well, we’re very fortunate because next year, when I’m at the helm, we’re going to do Christopher Wheeldon’s new ballet that was just premiered in London, Like Water for Chocolate. And I’m very excited to be able to see these new ballets, like the Alexei Ratmansky’s Of Love and Rage. To me, to see a new work with the technique of today, which is mind-boggling… Honestly, I look at the dancers today, and I think, I could never have done that. Technique just gets better and better and better and better. And that ballet, Of Love and Rage, is so difficult.
Margaret Fuhrer:
It’s so hard! So hard.
Susan Jaffe:
For everybody, but particularly for the corps de ballet men; I’ve never seen anything as difficult. And they were just flying. The men were just flying at ABT. And so, to me, that’s very exciting because it increases our technique. Because the more challenged we are, the better we get.
And new ballets, new stories. I will be looking out there for stories from all kinds of people. And if I think that it’s the right thing for the company, I will certainly want to commission those things. And I also want to bring more female choreographers as well, doing full-length. I know Jane Eyre was performed by ABT, Cathy Marston’s piece. And there are other women out there as well, who are telling full-length story ballets. And I would also like to bring them into the mix, as well as diverse choreographers and diverse stories.
So, I’m really looking forward to it. It’s going to be a slow process because you can’t make huge sweeping changes all at once. And you’ve got to be very mindful and very methodical about how to get these new works into the repertory. So, I have to remind myself to be patient. But I will keep plotting to make sure that new works are created at Ballet Theatre.
Margaret Fuhrer:
And you mentioned already, in this interview, that there are some classic ballets that have been criticized for cultural insensitivity, that you might like to update. Top of list, what do you think needs editing? And then, also, why is it important to update these works rather than discarding them?
Susan Jaffe:
Yeah, I think it is important to not discard, to suddenly say, “I don’t want to look at a work because I’m now offended by it.” I’m looking at a ballet like La Bayadère, and I certainly have read the written material from Rajan Zed at the Hindu… I think it’s called the Hindu Institute. And he talks about, it’s an orientalist mishmash, with the costuming and things. And I would really like to work with scholars, curators, designers, to first of all, make sure that… And this is still in its nascent stages. So let’s just say, I’m just thinking about how this could go. That it could still be a story from India—like, for example, Of Love and Rage is a Grecian story—but that it is through the eyes and stories of the Indian culture and Hindu culture as well. And that costumes need to be accurate. And anything that has a religious connotation needs to be adjusted and changed and things like that.
So, I would really like to save that ballet. I think the second act is just genius. When I was a principal at ABT, and I wasn’t on that night, and Bayadère was being performed, I would run, not walk, I would run to see that second act. And I do think it needs to be preserved. I don’t see that we should throw the whole thing in the trash.
Corsaire is more problematic, because the entire thing is about enslaved women being bought. And I think that, perhaps, and I don’t know, that some of the choreography could be saved, but that the story needs a lot more adjustment. So, I don’t know how that’s going to work. I’m not going to focus on that first. Maybe I will, maybe not. We’ll see. We’ll see how all that goes.
And then of course, ballets like The Nutcracker will need to be—make sure that there is no cultural appropriation. I look at something like The Nutcracker, and I think, well, part of that story was that they went around the world, to find the Krakatuk. And that’s why those cultural dances are in the second act. That’s why they’re there. Do you discard it completely? Or do you work with scholars to do that? Or do you decide, “Okay, we’re in the Land of the Sweets, and we’re not in any particular culture; we’re making up cultures?” Just like Cirque du Soleil—they have their own culture in there. I haven’t decided how all that’s done. I’ll be working with people and talking and seeing how it needs to be adjusted or not.
And also, it could just be education. Once again, there are so many stories, books, movies, plays that could be problematic. But do we just burn everything and say, “Oh, we’re not bad anymore, and we’re not going to look at that”? Or do we embrace our imperfections as humanity and look at these stories as not only historical things, but teaching us something about who we were and where we are today and all of those things? I don’t believe in canceling things out. I believe in moving forward with them.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. And in addressing those imperfections, there are all these opportunities for creativity too. The way that those are reworked for a 21st century audience—there could be really, really interesting things that come out of that.
Another way that I think a lot of people conceive of ABT is as “the dancer company.” A teacher of mine, who I will not name for her protection, I think once said that, “You go to City Ballet for the repertory, and you go to ABT for the dancers.” How do you feel about that legacy?
Susan Jaffe:
I also go to City Ballet to see the dancers. Just to say. And I love the repertory, and I love their dancers. They’re amazing, New York City Ballet. So unfortunately, I don’t agree your teacher. But I do think that there are amazing dancers in ABT. And it’s fun to see them. And you see this at City Ballet as well. You see them in the corps, and then you see them in a soloist role.
I think, when somebody is doing a principal role and they’re telling a story, you feel so close to that dancer because you’re really seeing their soul interpreting these roles. So, in a way, I guess that’s what maybe your teacher was saying, that you go to see the dancers because you’re really seeing them working with character and interpreting and things like that. But I do think there are great dancers in both companies.
Margaret Fuhrer:
How would you describe an ABT dancer? What qualities are quintessentially ABT, if there is such a thing? And what things do you in particular value in a dance artist?
Susan Jaffe:
I think Ballet Theatre dancers are extremely versatile. And they have to go from something extremely contemporary and really off-balance and fast and wild to interpreting a role in Romeo and Juliet. So, I personally felt that it was very hard to develop technique and artistry. You have to focus on both of them because, of course, an empty performance, nobody wants to see. You don’t want to see somebody play acting Juliet, for example. You really want to see the story. And that takes a lot of work. It’s not just a surface thing where you’re in the studio and somebody says, “Well, you’re in love with Romeo,” and you suddenly know how to be in love. You have to do all the background stories, the dramaturgical background story, to really understand these roles as a deep part of our humanity and therefore be able to portray them, in a way.
For example, I did a lot of work with a dramaturg. And here’s an example. When I did Lizzie Borden, which was Agnes de Mille’s ballet Fall River Legend, I studied the trials. I studied the culture of that time, to really try to understand, what would make somebody living in New England, a young girl, kill her parents with an axe? It takes a lot of research to be able to do all that. And I think the Ballet Theatre dancers do that. Most of them, they do that.
But they really have the extreme, the most wide array of repertory. And so, that to me is a Ballet Theatre dancer. And of course, the technique absolutely has to be top, top quality. And I’ve been watching them rehearse, and they’re all… they’re on fire. These dancers are on fire. And it’s just so fun to be in a room and to see that much energy and that much desire to grow and get better and improve and accomplish. So, yeah, that’s a Ballet Theatre dancer.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I’m going to zoom out a little bit, because you are, of course, a part of this new wave of women who are coming into artistic directorships in ballet. We’ve got, just this past year, Hope Muir at National Ballet of Canada and Tarara Rojo at SFB and Jodie Gates at Cincinnati Ballet. And you’re joining Wendy at City Ballet and Lourdes at Miami.
It feels significant. It feels like a real shift. From your perspective, how do you think these new female voices in leadership will change ballet? Or how are they already changing ballet?
Susan Jaffe:
Well, I do think the culture is so different now than it was when I was a dancer. I think women are innately just more nurturing, perhaps. I say that, but I also think, for example, Kevin McKenzie is very nurturing, as a male. And I think women in general are culturally more used to taking care of everybody. And it’s a little bit different than how a male…and that’s not to say that women aren’t demanding. The way I like to coach is I love to love my dancers into working hard. You know? And I want to help them to love to work hard, so that they see the fruits of their labor. But it is sort of cultural that women are more nurturing and take better care, maybe, of the internal side of the dancer.
But I have to say that I’m on this coalition called the Artistic Director’s Coalition. And there are a lot of male artistic directors in there right now. And everybody is really taking a very deep dive into the health, the mental health of their dancers, because that’s really prevalent these days, is mental health. And also discussions on inclusion. And everybody is really mindful and wanting to make sure that their companies are inclusive and a safe place to be.
So, I guess people also can see that women are good leaders. You know? I think before, women were not seen as leaders or not seen as strong leaders. They were seen as demure and soft and taking things in, instead of being the one to bring things out. And they’re seeing more and more that women can do that. And I am one of those. I think being a dean really trained me how to do that. And you see, all those women, they’re all very strong. Tamara, Hope, Jodie, Wendy Lourdes—they’re great leaders. So I just feel very fortunate to be able to be a part of that new wave of female artistic directors.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I’ll end with a huge two-part question. First part, what about today’s ballet landscape worries you? And then second part, what about it makes you most hopeful for the future of the art form?
Susan Jaffe:
Well, I do think that there are areas that ballet has to take a good, hard look at. And I think that there are areas that are just scrutinized too harshly. For example, just because an art form was created in a white European culture doesn’t mean that all of it excludes people. And I think there’s just been a lot of discussion around that. I don’t think ballet should be canceled. And I do think there’s been a lot of strong voices that have not been favorable to ballet. And I disagree.
I do think there need to be adjustments. And obviously, for example, absolutely more inclusive. Bringing in more diverse dancers is absolutely important. I think it’s already started, that trend. It started with PNB’s engagement programs, ABT’s Project Plié. These programs have been going on a long time. And as a result of that, we are seeing more diverse dancers. Does there need to be more? Absolutely. And so, I think it’s going in a good direction, bringing in more diversity.
I don’t think it should be criticized so harshly because I do think that ballet world has already taken steps before the last few years. But I do think it needs to continue. So, that’s one thing that I think is difficult for the ballet world today.
What’s exciting about the ballet world today is part of the same. There’s more diversity. And also in choreographic voices, which is really fun. And just the new choreography, as I said. We’ve been talking about the Ratmanskys and the Wheeldons, and some of the new voices coming in with storytelling, I think is really, really exciting.
And so, yeah, it’s certainly—there’s a lot of yin and yang going on in the ballet world. And it just needs to be taken, steps that are mindful, as we move forward. I do think ballet should live on. I think it’s an important art form.
Margaret Fuhrer:
That seems like a good note to end on.
Susan Jaffe:
Yeah.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Thank you so much for making the time, because I know your schedule is bananas, so I appreciate it. And I know I’m not alone in feeling really, really eager to see how ABT evolves under your leadership.
Susan Jaffe:
Thank you so much.
Margaret Fuhrer:
A great big merde for all of it.
Susan Jaffe:
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
[pause]
Thanks again to Susan, and thanks to all of you for listening to this special re-broadcast. We’ll be back next week with another episode, an all-new episode, to kick off 2023. Happy new year, everyone.