As summers go, this one wasn't exactly Emily Molnar's most relaxing. On July 1, she officially became interim artistic director of Ballet British Columbia. She walked into the job not knowing whether the company was going to receive the grant money it needed to stay afloat, pay for dancers – or even pay her own salary.
Later that month, she spent three weeks at Alberta Ballet, creating a previously commissioned work. She was also in communication with a small company in Toronto, where she was building another piece. Back in Vancouver, she had to program some sort of content for her financially beleaguered company and put together a program for Ignite , an already-announced late-September fundraiser. And she decided Ignite needed a new, original work. So she spent the rest of her summer creating one.
Emily Molnar, Ballet BC's artistic director, during an audition for dancers in Vancouver.
It sounds daunting, but Molnar doesn't let it show. “I think that to the outside eye, it is a challenging position that we're in. But it's also incredibly exciting because there's a newness about what we're doing that doesn't happen all the time,” Molnar said during a break from rehearsing her new work Dedica at the Dance Centre in Vancouver earlier this month.
Challenging doesn't begin to describe it. In the months leading up to Molnar's appointment, Ballet BC laid off the entire company – administrative staff, dancers and artistic director John Alleyne – teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, restructured financially, rehired some people, parted ways with Alleyne and cancelled plans for a 2009-2010 subscription series – during a year when the city and its culture are meant to be in the spotlight with the upcoming Olympic Games.
And in the early weeks of Molnar's tenure, she learned the company had lost out on $107,000 in expected funding from the province: $50,000 from provincial gaming grants and $57,000 from the B.C. Arts Council (funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Vancouver did materialize, however).
“We're pinching pennies, of course,” says Molnar. But she believes this interim year gives the company a chance to evaluate its expenses and decide what it can live without. In the meantime, a new permanent executive director has been named: Jay Rankin joins the company Nov. 1 from Toronto Dance Theatre, where he has been managing director.
There has to be someone who has the desire to look at what the future of the company is. So to me, that's not interim.
Molnar, 36, is originally from Regina, but moved to Toronto when she was 10 to attend the National Ballet School. She was a member of the National Ballet of Canada, a soloist with the Frankfurt Ballet and a principal dancer at Ballet BC. Based in Vancouver, she has worked most recently as an independent choreographer, and also has an affiliation with Vancouver's Arts Umbrella.
She has a long association with Alleyne: He was her teacher in Toronto and she danced in many of his ballets both at the National and later at Ballet BC.
“I've known John since I was 12,” she says. “John was a huge inspiration and a huge mentor for me throughout my upbringing, so … there will always be a part of him in the company as long as I'm here.”
Officially, Molnar is only in the position until June 30, 2010. And while she says she believes it made sense to hire an interim artistic director for this transitional year, she is making no secret of her desire to remain in the position permanently.
