Washington Ballet Nutcracker

This is the first time I have chance to play the Celeste part in the ballet. I had a wonderful time. Celeste is a hard instrument to play. The unevenness of the sound created a great challenge for me to deliver the sugarplum dance. However, I love the piece, love the various colors created by all the other instruments in the orchestra. Playing in the middle of an orchestra is definitely different from playing in front of the orchestra. I loved every minute of it. People are extremely nice also. Helpful, sweet, nice human beings. I am really grateful for the opportunity to be part of this. Thank you. Unfortunately, the Ballet Company is in trouble.

Here are my husband's words about this crisis:
I hope the management of the company really thinks and remembers why they were in the business in the first place. They are there to manage the product created by the artists, they are not there to manage the artists! I find the idea of some type of corporate hierarchical relationships extremely unhealthy in this case. In the corporate world that structure can work because both managers and their employees work on producing the same product. In the arts, there are artists who create the product, there are people who manage this product & relationship between the buyers of this product and artists. The only way you can have a well functioning system is when artists & manager work in partnership. That means that both sides have distinctly different set of skills and responsibilities. It also means that both sides should try to compliment each other instead of confront and abandon the idea of one party ruling over the other. Ignorant leadership is dangerous and that is exactly what would happen if one side would be in complete charge. If you make artists in charge of management, it would lead to a very substantial problems because very few artists have an expertise necessary in marketing, business development,...etc. However, if you have management which treats artists as a corporation employees or office workers, you run into problems of equal magnitude. Managing artistic resources is a very difficult task because the best possible product qualitatively is not always deliver by the biggest effort quantitively. For example, if you are a musician or a dancer, by spending 60 hours on a project in one week, you will not necessary produce better result than by spending 20 hours. The creative process demands artists to be in their best possible shape or form. That involves a very delicate balance between practicing enough, and resting enough, both physically and mentally.

So, these are my husband's thoughts. I agree 100%!