Artist:
Pittsburgh Ballet Theater
Genre: Theater
Background: Pittsburgh
Ballet Theater's innovative production,
Indigo in Motion, attracts new audiences
with a blend of Pittsburgh's jazz heritage
and classical ballet. "It elevated
our prestige in this community tremendously
and enabled us, perhaps more than any other
arts organization in the city, to take the
kind of risks we've been wanting to take,"
says Pittsburgh Ballet Theater Managing
Director, Steven Libman.
For more than a decade, PBT has developed
a repertoire of dances around themes, myths
and legends that have fascinated Americans-from
the 1987 production of "Great Gatsby,"
"Mighty Casey" in 1990, "Ballad
of You and Me" with Pete Seeger in
1993, to "Dracula," with the Houston
Ballet in 1999. In trying to bring such
themes closer to home, PBT managing director
Steven Libman kept bumping up against the
idea of jazz.
Despite the high recognition names that
would be both on stage and behind the scenes,
PBT knew it faced a challenge marketing
the mixed repertoire production, a genre
which is traditionally less popular than
a full-length story ballet. But with more
funds than ever committed to branding and
selling its new venture, the organization
used a variety of media and marketing techniques
to target the audiences it sought to interest-
traditional ballet goers, jazz enthusiasts,
men and African-Americans.
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