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November 30, 2016
Fort Wayne Ballet marks 60 years of artistry Elements added to decades of traditions for 58th ‘Nutcracker’ performance By Whitney Wright wwright@kpcmedia.com
The Fort Wayne Ballet’s 60-year presence has provided the city with decades of artistic entertainment, making Fort Wayne a spot for nationally-recognized ballet schooling and performance. The ballet academy and company have performed many ballets over the years, including “Sleeping Beauty,” “Giselle,” “Swan Lake,” “Coppelia,” “Peter and the Wolf,” “Cinderella” and “The Nutcracker.” Beginning first as an academy, the ballet grew to include a regional professional ballet company with dancers moving to Fort Wayne from all over the world to work as an official dancer. The Fort Wayne Ballet began in the 1950s, when Fort Wayne was thriving
as an industrial hub with a myriad of city amenities. Community members felt the area was missing an important part of a proper metropolis — a ballet academy. By 1956, a local group’s organization and fundraising came together to provide the city with its first true ballet academy, on Broadway. Fort Wayne Ballet quickly grew and moved to Penn Avenue in 1969, sharing a building with Arts United. The Fort Wayne Ballet is now in its fifth season at its Main Street location at the Auer Center for Arts and Culture. From the academy grew the company. The ballet company started as a location professional dancers would visit for a few weeks out of the year. Now, it has its own group of professional dancers who live and perform in the area yearround. The dancers come
from across the country — California, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Florida — and, currently, one ballerina is from Argentina. Many of the professional dancers are also former Fort Wayne Ballet academy dancers who went through the University of Saint Francis’ dance program, said Karen Gibbons-Brown, executive and artistic director of the Fort Wayne Ballet. Over the past 60 years, many traditions developed for the Fort Wayne Ballet, and its growth and success allow it the opportunity to collaborate with other regional organizations. The company works with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and Fort Wayne Children’s Choir, providing the rare experience of viewing a ballet with a live symphony and choir.
PHOTO BY TRACY SEAMAN
The Fort Wayne Ballet rehearses for its 58th “The Nutcracker” season. To view a video featuring the upcoming performances, visit infortwayne.com.
It also collaborates with sports team in Fort Wayne for National Dance Week, when trading cards of the Fort Wayne Ballet professional dancers and other Fort Wayne athletes are created. One of the more unique traditions the Fort Wayne
Ballet has is its partnership with the Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control for the “Muttcracker,” a spin on “The Nutcracker.” All of the animals incorporated into the show are available for adoption and can be met during intermission in the lobby. Since
the Fort Wayne Ballet started its “Muttcracker,” 70 animals have received new homes, and 10 dance companies in the United States started their own “Muttcracker” shows. One of the company’s See BALLET, Page 19
Surviving the holiday season
For the homeless in Allen County, making it through the winter is a challenge The holiday season is a time of joy for some, stress for others and a little bit of both for most. However, for roughly 1,500 people in Allen County, it is a matter of freezing or not freezing, and holiday cheer is often put on the back burner or completely forgotten. Homelessness does not have any biases and affects every race, age and gender. According to the “Report to the Community: The State of Homelessness in Fort Wayne,” at a point-intime count in 2015 — or a count of sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons in a single night — 393 homeless individ-
uals were counted. The same report also estimated that in Allen County, 1,530 people were identified as homeless that same year. Twenty-nine percent of those individuals were male while 72 percent were female; the largest homeless age group was those between 19-29 years old, followed by persons 30-39 years old. Multiple organizations in Fort Wayne assist the homeless, both through emergency shelters and transitional housing. Emergency shelter is especially important as the temperatures drop, with frostbite a very genuine concern. Many shelters receive double or triple the requests for
temporary housing in the winter compared with the summer. “In the spring and summer, we get about nine to 12 calls a day from women needing temporary housing. In the winter months, it increases to about 15 to 19. It’s the desperation of thinking about freezing,” said Patti Jimerson, director of Victory House, an organization that provides emergency shelter and transitional housing for women who don’t have children. At Vincent Village, an organization that helps homeless families, 50 families were on a waiting list in November and See HOMELESS, Page A20
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