On Pointe

Andrea Hill shares art as City Ballet founder and artistic director

“Ballet is not about getting a trophy, it’s about sharing art,” says ANDREA HILL.

The now-artistic director for CITY BALLET, Hill got her first taste of the bond between audience and performer when she appeared on stage in Boston Ballet’s The Nutcracker at the green age of five. She was hooked.

Little did she know she’d be choreographing her own version of The Nutcracker many years later in Pennsylvania, incorporating real stories of the region into the classical tale, even bringing an Amish buggy on stage.

But before she began building what is a significant repertoire of choreographed productions, Hill danced professionally with a handful of impressive dance companies, including the Dallas Metropolitan Ballet, and was asked to a company class for The National Ballet of Canada.

It’s hard to imagine being dedicated to something so early in life, but for most ballerinas who make it as a professional dancer, it’s a given. Those who commit to this path have a drive that is unparalleled. You have to be willing to go against a lot of natural instincts. When you’re tired, in pain, and become disgusted at the thought of taking one more pointe class, you must commit to working overtime on your pointe technique.

It’s what makes performances by the top ballet companies impressive. Their dancers move on the stage with such impeccable precision, they appear surreal. But too much pressure and ego can lead to a dancer’s downfall. It goes against the very foundation of ballet, which originated as an art form with the sole purpose of entertaining audiences of noblemen and women.

You hear the story a lot about ballerinas and eating disorders. It’s easy to put it in the category of a cliché but it is, in fact, often an unfortunate consequence. Hill herself struggled with an eating disorder that led to brittle bones, a back injury, and ultimately an end to her professional dancing career.

It’s the challenge of every ballerina to, against all odds, remain true to themselves and continue to channel what drew them to performance art in the first place.

It’s with this in mind that Hill and her husband, a composer and classical musician, decided to build a dance studio/school in Pennsylvania. They wanted the school to first and foremost be a supportive atmosphere and then to focus on classical ballet training.

They soon realized the huge need for a school like that in the area, and it grew into a 7,000-square-foot space that attracted some big name dancers as teachers and eventually encompassed many types of dance.

Hill also began to realize her knack for teaching and choreographing. Many of Hill’s students went on to dance alongside some of the best. She talks in particular about one of her former students, Arron Scott, who found her school because he wanted to be an actor and was told his first requirement was to learn ballet. He made it clear he was not there to be a dancer. After watching a video performance of La Bayadère in one of Hill’s classes, he had a new goal: he would one day take on the role of the character, the Golden Idol. He told her, “I want to dance that one day” and she assured him that if he truly wanted it, he would.

Hill takes her role as a teacher seriously and holds herself responsible of making sure her students have all the “tools” they need to dance at the highest level if they choose to. Perhaps what makes Hill such a good teacher is that she knows the significance of proper training personally.

She spent her early years learning ballet incorrectly and had to start from scratch, forgetting what she had worked so hard to learn to retrain again at the age of twelve. But she also knows the dangers of going too far and so seeks balance in her teaching between nudging her students to go further and encouraging them to admire themselves as they are.

For Hill, the day her former student, Scott, performed on stage at the Met as the Golden Idol was one of her proudest moments. In fact, Hill is soon scheduled to travel to New York to see Scott (now a soloist with American Ballet Theatre) performing the role of Mercutio in Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet at The Metropolitan Opera.

Hill is proud of the school she had built in Pennsylvania, but when her husband got a job with the St. Mark Catholic Church in Wilmington, they made the move south.

It wasn’t long before she found a similar niche here. They opened City Ballet in 2011. It’s a much smaller space than what they had in Pennsylvania, but Hill says the slow growth is intentional and the goal is to remain true to classical ballet training down to the details such as counting in French. She believes this kind of training is especially beneficial to young people, teaching them respect and discipline – two qualities that she says can be hard to come by elsewhere. Hill insists that it’s a lifestyle.

I came in to speak with Hill in the middle of the first week of the summer intensive program at City Ballet of Wilmington. Hill says it’s the hardest hump for the students to get over, so today she was just trying to be supportive of them.

The young dancers filed out of class sweaty and seeming simultaneously exhausted and excited. There was no shoving to get out of the door or loud gossiping with their friends. It was simply what seemed to be a calm and organized system of getting out snacks and taking off shoes. I heard one girl say to her mother, “I’m definitely learning a lot in here.”

City Ballet puts on three story ballets per year. The performances aim to be as close to professional as possible. Each is entirely staged, includes a full orchestra and is choreographed by Hill.

This season she is bringing back one of her favorites and adding a historical twist. In December they will put on A Carolina Nutcracker. The story takes place after the Civil War and is based on the Bellamy family of Wilmington, with the performance to be held at the Wilson Center.

The point of productions like this for Hill is that her students really get what it is like to create a special experience for an audience. She says the satisfaction comes when a dancer “lets go of themselves and thinks about what they’re sharing.”

To view more of photographer Chris Brehmer’s work, go to www.chrisbrehmerphotography.com