Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
The first show Gen Horiuchi choreographed for Saint Louis Ballet was The Nutcracker. It was the winter of 2000, and he’d just been hired to replace the late Ludmila Dokoudovsky, an adherent of the Ballets Russes school and the classic tutu repertoire.
When the company’s board extended the position of artistic director to him, enrollment had fallen below 50. Horiuchi, a native of Tokyo, was a principal dancer with the New York Ballet, and had been to St. Louis once as a guest artist for Saint Louis Ballet. Rather than seeing this struggling little Missouri ballet company as a step down, Horiuchi decided it was an opportunity. But one, of course, that would require a bit of work on his part. Especially this first production.
“We performed at Westport Playhouse, which was kind of like a convention center at the time,” Horiuchi says. “We had absolutely no scenery. It was just kind of like a projection, like slides, like a Christmas-tree projection on the wall. I started with maybe 12 or 13 professional dancers, meaning I pay them to dance for the production. And I had like only 30 students.”
The next year, the company bought the Milwaukee Ballet’s old Nutcracker sets and moved to the Florissant Civic Center. Then it was at Washington University’s Edison Theatre for five years. And in June 2009, it jumped to the Touhill Center for the Performing Arts, christening its move with a full-on production of Cinderella. This month, the company performs its second Nutcracker on the Touhill stage. In contrast to the year of slides, it now has three casts, 25 professional ballerinas, and 90 student dancers.
That, of course, is only a portion of the ballet’s 300 regular students, “from little babies to high school and college level,” plus another
50 adult students, from beginners to former professionals, who “come and go.” This summer, the school got a new studio, new dressing rooms, costume-storage space, and even two small music rooms for the study of piano and violin. (Horiuchi himself plays piano, and believes studying music makes for better dancers.) The ballet now exports dancers to companies all over the map, and Horiuchi says he does his best to support students who want to study at other companies in the summer.
On the flip side, the company is mostly nonlocal dancers (“I have one male dancer from Slovakia, three girls from Japan, pretty much all over from coast to coast,” says Horiuchi). Asked when the ballet will tour, Horiuchi sticks to his signature methodical approach. “I take traveling seriously,” he says. “I don’t want to travel just for the sake of traveling, or for extra performances.”
Horiuchi expanded the season instead—this year will be the first with four productions, including Romeo and Juliet in June. (In 2000, the only production was that slide-projected Nutcracker.) “This is something we’ve never done before—a serious romantic ballet—so we’re really excited,” Horiuchi says. “It’s a very dramatic piece, and will definitely take us to the next level, not only with the strong technique of dance, but it also requires lots of acting.”
Horiuchi’s determined to build the company here for other reasons. During his first year, he discovered—in a grocery-store checkout line, of all places—that his biggest challenge would not be sourcing Nutcracker sets, but managing St. Louis’ collective low self-esteem.
“The cashier says, ‘Oh, what company are you working for?’ And I said, ‘Saint Louis Ballet.’ And he says, ‘Oh, locally based?’ And I say yes. And he says, ‘Ah! That’s horrible. I’m not going to go see it.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean? I’m not from here, but I’m trying to build a company here.’ And he said, ‘Ah, anything from St. Louis is horrible.’ I guess he was trying to be nice to me by saying that—
I guess it is a kind of humbleness. I think it is just the nature of St. Louis; if there is a company coming from New York City, people go see that instead of a St. Louis–based company.”
Asked whether he thinks that has shifted during his decade here, Horiuchi isn’t sure, though he feels strongly about the quality of what his company is presenting on-stage.
“We present first-class ballet productions,” he says. “So I am hoping it is changing.”
The Nutcracker runs December 17 through 23 at Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center, 1 University Dr., UM–St. Louis, 314-516-4949, touhill.org. Tickets are $25 to $47. Performances are 7 p.m. Fri, 2 & 7 p.m. Sat, Sun & Wed, 7 p.m. Thu. For more information, go to stlouisballet.org or facebook.com/stlouisballet.
