Dear Supporters and Donors

This year, Bouand DanceCompany celebrates its sixth season, and what a roller coaster ride it’s been! Thanks to hard work and the support of fans like you, we’ve followed every scary “down” with an exhilarating “up.”

The high point of this season is yet to come, of course. It arrives in October, when we mount our fall performance series at PSU’s Lincoln Hall (a wonderfully refurbished Lincoln Hall, by the way). Tickets will go on sale in late September. But in the meantime, the work goes on, and the costs of running an arts organization continue. Even in the best of times, ticket sales cover only a portion of our expenses – it’s your support that really makes the art of dance possible.

So, as we ramp up our activity in preparation for October, I’m asking you to help us raise $7,500 with a generous contribution, before you head out on your summer holiday if at all possible. I can assure you that nearly every dollar you contribute will go directly to the stage, either in payment to dancers and choreographers, or to the costs of hiring the hall.

I can also promise you that the fall series – “Feral Landscapes” – will be a particularly exciting one. We’ll feature three works by three living choreographers, showcasing three different styles of dance – modern, ballet and contemporary.

Walter Kennedy’s edgy work “Fields of Play” has been performed to great acclaim in Europe, China, and elsewhere in the U.S., but never in Portland. This summer, he’ll be doing a new setting of the work on Bouand dancers.

In July, James Gnam, co-artistic director of the Plastic Orchid Factory company in Vancouver, B.C., will be setting a completely new work on Bouand. Once our audiences see his work, they’ll understand why he was named an Emerging Artist for Dance in Vancouver, and why he’s called one of the Northwest’s most watchable young choreographers.

And finally, we’ll present the new version of “Winter Mute,” my contemporary piece with video accompaniment. I’m adapting it expressly for BDC dancers, including OBT dancer Lucas Threefoot, who, as Martha Ullman West recently wrote in the Oregonian, “has truly come into his own as a dancer this season.” I definitely agree.

Again, thank you for your past support, and thank you in advance for helping us make the 2010 performance series the most successful in our short, but exciting, history.

Sincerely,

Alexandrous Ballard

Artistic Director