Ballet Tech, the nonprofit group that brought ballet training to thousands of promising New York school children, has a new leader. The organization announced on Friday that the dancer Dionne D. Figgins will succeed its founder Eliot Feld as artistic director in August.
“We are delighted to have found in Dionne the ideal person to work with the staff, board of directors and the community of Ballet Tech to advance the fundamental ideas,” said Patricia Crown, chairwoman of the board of the Ballet Tech Foundation.
When the pandemic broke out, Figgins was preparing to appear in Miami in the musical “A Wonderful World” about Louis Armstrong. But when performances were canceled, she began teaching dance online at the Jones-Haywood School of Ballet in Washington. It was this experience that convinced her to move from the stage towards the studio and classroom.
“I was really inspired by the determination of my students,” she said. “I was inspired by how much they put into the room and it really made me realize that this is a room that I should be in all the time.”
Figgins began her career at the Dance Theater of Harlem, where she played leading roles in George Balanchine’s “Four Temperaments” and “Agon”, among others. She is also a Broadway actress and has appeared in several productions including “Motown: The Musical” and “Memphis”.
In 2012 she co-founded Broadway Serves with Dana Marie Ingraham and Kimberly Marable, a nonprofit dedicated to creating charitable opportunities for theater professionals.
Field, 78, shared his plans to retire last year, citing his desire to “pass the baton on to a new generation of leaders.” “I wish to wish my good hopes and goodwill to Dionne in completing the work that I have half done,” he said in a statement.
Part of this work is Feld’s goal of recruiting students from all of the city’s public elementary schools. Figgins said in an interview that “part of my mission is to get these other schools involved in what is happening at Ballet Tech so they at least know that this is an option.”
The educational initiative that resulted in Ballet Tech began in the late 1970s as an offshoot of Feld Ballet, the founder’s professional company. Public schoolchildren in grades 3 to 5 were invited to try it out and students who were gifted for dancing were able to continue their education in Feld’s studio near Union Square in Manhattan.
Ballet Tech, which founded its own public school for grades four through eight in 1996, estimates that in more than 40 years it has auditioned around 900,000 students and enrolled more than 20,000 in non-teaching classes.
