Septime Webre goes for programs that end in explanation points, drawing audiences looking for the Next Big Thing. But there’s something deceptive about this picture: It obscures the serious way he has been molding the Washington Ballet.
Mr. Webre arrived in Washington as the company’s artistic director 10 years ago, in his mid-30’s, fairly brash and determined to make a splash from the start.
Founded by Mary Day in 1976, the Washington Ballet soon drew national attention for its spate of original dances by the talented young choreographer Choo San Goh, who died untimely in 1987.
More than a decade later, enter Mr. Webre, who from the beginning had major changes in mind. First, and most striking, he became the face of the Washington Ballet. Pictures of him in strange, attention-getting leaps, adorn the company’s slickly produced brochures. He begins each program by vaulting onstage to welcome the audience, ending most performances with a front-of-curtain farewell.
He integrated the company with local artists, inviting the Cathedral Choral Society to perform on tiered risers in his “Carmina Burana,” and collaborating with Sweet Honey in the Rock for “Journey Home.”
His style is exuberantly personal. He grew up in a large family with Cuban roots, the seventh child — hence the name — and within a year of his arrival here took the troupe to perform in Cuba, a trip, he points out, that would not have been allowed a year later.
Mr. Webre was born after his family fled Cuba following Fidel Castro’s takeover, but the tales he heard of life there made a strong impression on him and led to a sentimental recapture of that era in his ballet “Juanita y Alicia,” the first work he choreographed in Washington and the last work on his 10th anniversary program in June.
“Juanita y Alicia” clearly has a sentimental importance for Mr. Webre. Its old-fashioned sepia backdrop with a picture of his familys earlier generations, the infectious Cuban rhythms and happy atmosphere are a labor of love for the director. Purely in dance terms it is graceful but not particularly distinguished.
Mr. Webre has quadrupled the company’s subscription audience and cultivated a band of dance fans who turn up at a series of informal programs (one is called “Beer and Ballet”) held in the company’s studios on Wisconsin Avenue in Northwest.
When George Balanchine’s “Rubies” was staged this year Mr. Webre brought in the legendary dancers who had created those roles — Edward Villella and Patricia McBride — to coach his company. He then presented these two visitors in one of the special talks he brings to Washington Ballet fans.
Mr. Webre’s outreach reflects his vivid approach to art — and life.
A natural showman, he gives his programs names like “The Lions Roar,” “Genius!,” “Bach-Beatles Project” and “Noche Latina!”
He developed the idea of presenting short pieces centered around a theme — “Shakespeare” one year, “Love Duets” another — by young up-and-coming choreographers. He called it “7 X 7” (seven dances, seven minutes long) and presented it informally in his spacious studio with theatrical lighting added. It proved a hit, and he’s repeated it with different themes and choreographers for five years.
For “Genius!” Mr. Webre chose ballets created by red-hot choreographers such as Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris and Christopher Wheeldon. Those three are bringing their work for a third time next year: this time “Genius 3!” featuring Miss Tharp’s “Push Comes to Shove.”
As director, Mr. Webre has made a point of exposing his dancers to different styles, offering them ballets that ranged from the early romantic “Giselle” to works by Mr. Balanchine — and next year, that 19th-century blockbuster “Don Quixote.”
In spring, Mr. Webre gave his dancers the chance to “tackle” (his favorite word for learning a new style) “La Sylphide” by the great 19th-century Danish choreographer, August Bournonville. To insure the authenticity of its scintillating, fleet-footed style he invited two Bournonville experts from Denmark to stage the work.
Mr. Webre’s outreach to the community has included setting up enrichment programs in Anacostia: Dance DC, a program integrating dance and the school curriculum for first- and second-graders, and a second program, Excel! for Dance DC students who wish to progress to formal ballet training. These are part of the Washington Ballet@theArc, which includes a 365-seat theater where “Nutcracker” is given every Christmas season.
Mr. Webre has expanded his goals for the Washington Ballet, adding a Studio Company (now composed of students from Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Japan, Romania, Canada, and one dancer from the United States) which acts as a feeder group for the main company.
Among these impressive accomplishments, one major crisis stands out: the angry rupture four years ago when the dancers, feeling overworked and vulnerable from Mr. Webre’s demanding rehearsal schedules, voted to join a union, the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA). In the brouhaha that followed, nobody looked good — not Mr. Webre, the dancers (well, perhaps the dancers), the board, the union or the lawyers for either side. When the dust settled, the dancers joined the union, most of the company’s run of its December cash cow, “Nutcracker,” was canceled, and the company had a $1 million deficit.
“The company is in a better place because the dancers are members of AGMA,” Mr. Webre says now. “The contract articulated so much that we don’t have to delve into things that have already been decided. I don’t think we would have gotten so far so fast,” he adds, “if we hadn’t gone through that very difficult process.”
Summing up his decade here, Mr. Webre says, “First I was trying to develop a new energy and style. … Then I set about raising the technical and artistic standards and developing a new ’Nutcracker.’ Now in the post-labor-dispute period, the company is at a true national level, performs important works from the canon, [and has] developed relationships with acknowledged masters working in the field today.”
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