Dancers, Company Agree on Contract

One issue covered in a side letter, according to people familiar with the provisions, concerns job guarantees. What the letter provides, in addition to job guarantees for all of the current 20 dancers for 2006-07 season, is that no less than 80 percent of those dancers will be rehired for the 2007-08 season.

By all accounts, a breakthrough was reached in the negotiations on Friday when Schaffer and Gary Eder of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service led a meeting among the artistic staff and the dancers, where no notes were taken and concerns got a thorough airing.

At this meeting, said dancer Luis Torres, "it felt like we were doing boot camp for couples counseling." During earlier negotiations, he said, speaking openly was often difficult. "We were involved in legal talk that nobody really understood. Once we got to our own lingo, we were able to understand each other."

That meeting served to "humanize" the conflict, said Schaffer. "What [the meeting] allowed was to finally remember how much both sides truly care about the company, and that what both of them were doing in their own way was protecting the future of the company."

Schaffer has mediated two separate contract agreements with the San Francisco Ballet as well as with various symphony and opera groups. Dancers and management finally reached agreement here, he said, "because both sides wanted it. They just needed a little assistance in finding out a way to get it."

A benefit concert that the dancers are organizing to raise money for themselves to defray costs of unemployment will go on as scheduled Thursday through next Sunday, with the ballet providing costumes and toe shoes for the dancers, said Webre.

It will not be easy to return to the rehearsal studio and face an artistic director with whom they have had very public disagreements, said several dancers who would not be quoted by name because they are not permitted to speak to the media.

"I don't think the work is done," noted one of them. "Until you live with [the contract] and work with it every day, you can't say one way or another whether it's the right contract or the wrong contract." However, this dancer added, "Our best way to show our respect for the contract is to get back in the studio."