THE ARTS
Ballet School Turns to Legislature for Help
Youth Academy, in Debt After Moving to Silver Spring Facility, Seeks $200,000 From State
Students dance in the Maryland Youth Ballet's Silver Spring facility. Two recent moves have left the academy financially strapped.
(Courtesy Of Maryland Youth Ballet)
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Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Maryland Youth Ballet has groomed talented youngsters to join the ranks of the nation's elite dancers. It has built a sterling reputation for teaching ballerinas, both able-bodied and disabled. And the venerable academy regularly stages classics such as "The Nutcracker," "Swan Lake" and "Sleeping Beauty."
During its 37 years in Montgomery County, the ballet school has never sought funds from the legislature. "We didn't even know what a bond bill was," said Charles Barnett, the school's president.
Until this year.
The saga started two years ago, when the school was kicked out of its longtime studio in downtown Bethesda so a developer could demolish the building and build a high-rise condominium. The ballet school quickly moved to a nearby office building, but it was not big enough for a school that teaches 1,200 dancers each week.
So a few months later, the academy opened a studio in the arts district in Silver Spring's revitalized downtown. The cost of two moves within a year put the school in the red.
Barnett said it was close to having "little girls in tutus out on the street."
"We were at death's doorstep," he said. "We were dangling on the ropes, swinging back and forth, begging for help."
This year, the school applied to the General Assembly for a bond bill. It asked for $200,000 from the state's capital budget to help pay its outstanding bills from the move to Silver Spring.
"If there was ever a time for them to answer our SOS, this is the moment," Barnett said.
The legislature could decide tomorrow whether to fund the Maryland Youth Ballet, which is among more than 150 community facilities and programs seeking state aid this year.
Under preliminary versions of the budget, the school will receive the $200,000 it requested, with the Senate and House each providing $100,000 from separate funds. Through bonds, the General Assembly can award money to local projects at its discretion.
"The Maryland Youth Ballet has brought such a sense of grace and uplift to downtown Silver Spring, and there are hundreds and hundreds of young people whose lives are being changed by that group," said Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Montgomery), the lead sponsor of the bond bill.
