Metropolitan Classical Ballet Recent Reviews

Opinion Editorial
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Star Telegram

Scratch the name "Arlington Ballet" from the Metroplex cultural inventory. The dance company recently changed its name to Metropolitan Classical Ballet.

The title change reflects expanded ambitions -- justifiably so, given the company's continuing achievements and recognition.

Keep in mind that the ballet company started in Arlington, working first with borrowed space and then next to a Howdy Doody convenience store in a strip shopping center. The ambition voiced by those early founders must have sounded ludicrous -- to create a world-class ballet company out in the 'burbs.

The snickers must have rippled from New York and Paris to Moscow, not to mention eliciting a few chuckles in Fort Worth and Dallas.

World-class ballet has to have world-class performers, of course -- which, unbelievably, the Arlington Ballet did because it had a niche: the Russian connection. It became a conduit in particular for the most famed of Russian dancers to show their skills, performing for the most part in a sold-out Texas Hall at the University of Texas at Arlington.

When it comes to ballet, the top-tier Russians are hard to beat. The quality of performances has continued to blossom, until one could argue that the company is the premier ballet performance organization in Texas, and maybe one of the best in the country.

And so now it's dropping the Arlington in the name and also switching its home theater from Texas Hall to an admittedly more classy Bass Performance Hall, though its headquarters will remain -- at least for the time being -- in Arlington.

In many ways, this is a reversal of the way major cultural entities develop. They tend first to be nurtured in major metropolitan cities and then attract suburban constituents.

That this level of cultural endeavor was conceived and nourished in a city once described in an arts review in this newspaper as a "cultural wasteland" clearly reveals something about artistic potential no matter what the address. It won't be an anomaly.

Does Arlington resent the name change? It does not. Like a child with great potential, the Arlington Ballet -- using the name one last time -- has grown up and moved on.

The first performance as Metropolitan Classical Ballet will be Saturday at Bass Hall, and a big portion of a proud and applauding Arlington is expected to be there for the opening curtain.