By Claudia Flores
“Our focus is to create dancers, not so much like a hobby or an after-school activity, it’s serious business, especially for those who want to progress and have a career in dance in the future,” said Marta Katz, founder and director of El Paso Ballet Theater (EPBT).
Katz, who danced professionally for the “Compañia Nacional de la Danza” in Mexico City, said the company started due to her need of enrolling her daughter in a ballet school that suited her needs as a former professional dancer.
This led Katz to open “El Paso Ballet Youth” in 2007, with the goal of providing the community with a more professional ballet training.
The company’s first major production was the Christmas classic, “The Nutcracker.” Five years later after getting recognition from the community, Katz found the company was not getting the expected audience results.
“El Paso is a very difficult community for classical ballet. I think people that love the arts have the means to go out and see a premier at major companies, and some other they’re not into classical ballet,” Katz continued. “We were having a very hard time even though we acquired great choreographers and dancers, people still wouldn’t show up. Then I started to hear that people thought El Paso Youth Ballet was a company for little or young kids, so we decided to change the name.”
According to Katz, El Paso previously had two ballet companies, “El Paso Ballet” and “Ballet El Paso,” both companies filed for bankruptcy in the 70s and 80s.
“I didn’t want people to think we copied their name or to think there was another attempt at a professional company, so we changed it to El Paso Ballet Theatre, and things started to change,” Katz said. “A lot of times is the way you present yourself or it’s just that we grew into that maturity and people have noticed.”
Twelve years later, the company continues to grow and provide aspiring dancers with the opportunity of a semi-professional training.
“We are a semi- professional company. Professional companies are distinguished by having a roaster of paid dancers and have yearly seasons, whether its fall or spring,” Katz said. “We have a small number of paid dancers and we actually have a season that we do, so we do qualify for that tittle.”
The training provided by EPBT allows dancers to audition every year into major summer intensive dance programs and international competitions such as the Youth American Grand Prix (YAGP), one of the most prestigious ballet competitions worldwide.
“Our students are admitted into summer intensive all over the united states because they have a very high technique level and because of the focus this school creates,” Katz said. “We give them all the tools they need so when they graduate and attend a professional company they can audition and make it (into a company).”
EPBT offers different trainings depending on the need of the students. For those pursuing a career in dance, it takes six days a week for an hour-and-a-half training following rehearsals that last up to two hours.
“Classical dance is learned through muscle memory and the repetition of the exercises, vocabulary and the correct positions, so the more constant you are the more you’re going to improve.” Katz said.
For EPBT hiring international dancers and choreographers plays a huge role for future productions and growth for dancers in the company.
“We call it our summer intensive and we get teacher and principal dancers from Ukraine, Russia, Mexico, the U.S. and Cuba to train our dancers,” Katz said. “One of our principal dancers, Lesly Lopez, is also a coach for the YAGP and she studied at Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, an incredible school. She has incredible training and I believe she’s done probably six to seven nutcrackers with us,” Katz said.
With a new decade ahead, Katz said “one of her goals is to make EPBT achieve a professional company status.”
“Hopefully we’ll get there. I’m hoping we can have a small group of very professional dancers highly trained and the rest of the corps members taken from the students that we train here, and that would be a great education for our own students,” Katz continues. “I think a city the size of El Paso deserves a ballet company. We have the symphony, and the opera, which are magnificent, but not every child wants to be a musician, some of them really want to dance, so we should have an option for them too.”
For the 2020 spring season EPBT will present Gisselle, contemporary work “To El Paso with Love” annual Gala and Snow White.
For more information about EPBT and more events visit elpasoballettheatre.com