Susan Jaffe. David Howard. Evelyn Cisneros. Camille Penyak. Three of the greatest names in the history of American ballet, and one aspiring star, under the same roof, right here in sun-dried little PB to boot. The occasion is only days away, and at all of 15, Penyak is crowing about it like the veteran she is.
You would, too, if the other three were teaching you your moves. Among them, they have just about a century’s experience ” and starting July 30, they’ll pass that savvy along to Penyak and some 80 others from around the world in City Ballet’s 13th annual Summer Intensive 2007 training program, designed to give intermediate and advanced dance students the chance to study with some of the finest instructors on the West Coast.
If you’re in City Ballet’s Intensive, you’ve made it known you intend to continue your studies in earnest. Penyak, for instance, has been working with the Pacific Beach-based company since she was 5 and has been enrolled in Intensive since age 10. She’s not sure what the future holds, but for now, she’s content to take it a step at a time.
“This is what I’ve been doing for a really long time,” the Clairemont resident said. “All of our friends are here, and we all do want to get up to a certain level. Pretty much everybody who comes to the Intensive wants to be a dancer. The next step up is getting into [City Ballet].”
She could do worse. City Ballet, after all, is an enormously select company ” it’s one of a handful of groups commissioned to perform the works of George Balanchine and is acclaimed for its school and community outreach programs.
It’s that reputation, artistic director Steven Wistrich said, that’s garnered the attention of such high-caliber instructors.
“They know that we have a very high level of what we’re accomplishing here in San Diego,” Wistrich said. “They always tell me when they come that this is one of the highest-level intensives that they teach anywhere all summer. They teach at [New York’s] American Ballet [Theatre] Intensive and all over.”
The company has actually been attracting that level of teacher since the mid-1990s, when the famed Gelsey Kirkland taught a City Ballet intensive. This year’s crop of instructors touts the according credentials. Jaffe is a former prima ballerina with the American Ballet Theatre; Howard has performed with London’s Royal Ballet and enjoys the handle “teacher to the stars”; and Cisneros was a prima ballerina with the San Francisco Ballet.
That acclaim, Wistrich contended, is a reflection on San Diego dance and its coming of age.
Most major cities, he said, don’t host more than two performing companies (Chicago and Seattle, for example, have only one); San Diego has three. More and more, this city is a requested stop among national groups planning their tours. And then there’s DancePlace San Diego, Liberty Station’s new state-of-the-art venue for classes and space (the studios boast digital sound capacity and genre-specific floor surfaces).
Even so, Wistrich said, “America can only have so many ballet companies, as opposed to something like theater companies. I think the market is much bigger, probably, for that.”
Meantime, Penyak, who’s home-schooled through Clairemont’s Mt. Everest Academy, is ready to work. She’s always preferred the classical stuff, she said, adding that jazz and modern is “a little more difficult, because you have to teach yourself to move a different way.” If she does have any inclinations toward the latter, she’ll be indulging them under the ideal tutelage.
Summer Intensive 2007 runs from July 30 to Aug. 17 at City Ballet’s studio, 941 Garnet Ave., and will culminate in public performances, including Twilight in the Park at Balboa Park’s Spreckels Organ Pavilion on Aug. 16 at 6:15 p.m., and City Ballet at City Heights, at the company’s City Heights annex on Aug. 17 at 7 p.m.
For more information, call (858) 274-6058 or visit www.cityballet.org.