Philadelphia Ballet Breaking Ground On North Broad Street Expansion

From a vantage point looking northeast from Broad Street, a rendering of Philadelphia Ballet's newly expanded dance center as it will appear when finished. A dance studio is shown in the glass box atop the structure. Varenhorst Architects

Philadelphia Ballet is finally getting a long-delayed front door on the burgeoning northern leg of the Avenue of the Arts.

The company expects to hold a groundbreaking next month on an expansion of its North Broad Street headquarters that will more than triple its current space with a suite of dance studios, offices, a new black box theater, and other public areas. The $34 million project builds onto the ballet’s current low-slung building to create a five-story facade on Broad Street with glassed-in studios visible on the top floor.

A rendering of "Studio F" on the top floor of Philadelphia Ballet's future addition to its North Broad Street headquarters. Varenhorst Architects

Completion of the 43,000-square-foot addition, expected in spring 2024, caps a plan the ballet envisioned when the company acquired its site on Broad near Callowhill Street in 2007.

The expansion of facilities at the city’s major dance organization will put it on par with those of peer companies across the country, says Philadelphia Ballet executive director Shelly Power.

“We are bursting at the seams,” said Power of current facilities. Square footage will go from 15,000 to 58,000, with the number of studios nearly doubling to seven and a half.

“At least we’ll be with the national average,” says Power. “We’re the last [major] company to really have a building that lets us grow a school, do community engagement, to have a black box.”

A space in the Philadelphia Ballet's expanded facility can be used either as a small black box theater or a rehearsal studio. Varenhorst Architects

The expansion promises to add to the already blossoming street life of this stretch of Broad north of City Hall. Plans call for the ballet’s facade to be fronted with streetscape furniture and a video billboard to catch the eyes of passersby.

“We could be showing what’s going on in the studio, we could be showing a clip of Swan Lake,” says Power. “I think it’s just going to enhance North Broad.”

The building project is part of a larger plan to return the company to growth mode after a difficult period. The pandemic forced the cancellation of The Nutcracker, the ballet’s reliable cash cow, in 2020. Fund-raising for the expansion proved tougher than expected.

The building project and related strategic plan are, in many ways, a validation of recommendations made in 2013 by arts consultant Michael Kaiser, who was brought in to diagnose the company’s organizational ills.

“You don’t get healthy by shrinking,” Kaiser advised at the time. “I said to them, ‘Think big.’ "

Now, the ballet is. The strategic plan calls for increasing the number of productions and boosting the number of dancers in the company. This season there are 50 dancers, up from 43 in 2021-22 and on the way to a goal of 54. The company also expects to vastly increase the number of students in its school.

“I expect it to double if not triple,” says Power. “We expect to get up around 500.”

A gathering space is shown in a rendering of Philadelphia Ballet's expanded dance center on North Broad Street just south of Callowhill Street. Varenhorst Architects

Since 2017, the design of the facilities expansion has evolved to rebalance the public function of the building with dancer-only spaces. A public gathering area will host events like dancer meet-and-greets and book readings. An artists’ wall is expected to host exhibitions. Parents will be able to have coffee there while waiting for students to come from classes and rehearsals.

“This is quite different than the plans they were looking at in past iterations mainly because they were so focused on the dancers,” said Power. “But we really expanded because we wanted to focus on the community and become a hub for the area where people could come and see things, experience things and be a part of it.”

“It’s going to change the dynamics of the whole company,” said Philadelphia Ballet Peter Dobrin artistic director Angel Corella, citing the prospect of closer contact between the public and dancers. He also said improved facilities would strengthen the company’s ability to attract and retain dancers.

“Our dancers are getting offers all the time,” he said.

With the company's former name still on the current building in the background, Philadelphia Ballet artistic director Angel Corella and executive director Shelly Power stand on the site of the North Broad Street addition.Read more CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

In addition to the new black box theater and rehearsal studios, the project will provide administrative offices, physical therapy facilities for dancers, and a cyber school classroom.

The $34 million budget — 60% of which is already raised from private donors and state government — will also cover renovations of the existing building, which opened in 2012.

The addition has not yet been named for a donor, Power said.

Nearly all of the spaces in the new building will be multipurpose. Chief among them is the first-floor black box theater designed to be reconfigured in 30 minutes from theater to a rehearsal space of a size the ballet does not currently have.

“It’s bigger than the Academy [of Music] stage. [Now], when they’re doing Swan Lake, literally, they’re in the hallway waiting to run in as a corps. Here, they can fit the whole company in, they can actually have people seated watching the rehearsal. And then it turns into a performance space.”

Looking toward North Broad Street across the site where the Philadelphia Ballet's expanded facilities will be built. CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

Power also sees the space’s potential for building relationships with donors and audiences.

“You can have free performances, you can have young kids come in for a 45-minute show, and then you get to be right on top of the dancers.”

When dancers call children up from the audience and demonstrate live by saying, “Let’s lift you, let’s turn you,” that’s real engagement, says Power.

“That’s where you win your fans for the future.”

Source: https://www.inquirer.com/, Peter Dobrin