Alexi Ramov, Artistic Director of the Scranton Ballet, attended the first Regional Festival in Atlanta, GA in 1956. Ramov enjoyed the event so much that he carried the seed of Dorothy Alexander’s Regional Festival idea back home to Pennsylvania where he and Barbara Weisberger, Artistic Director of the Wilkes-Barre Ballet Theater, planted it, nurtured it, and watched it flower into the first Northeast Festival.
On May 22-23, 1959, the Scranton Ballet and Wilkes-Barre Ballet Theater co-hosted the very first Regional Dance Festival in the Northeast. P.W. Manchester served as the first adjudicator. Participating companies included the Holiday Theatre of Newark, Classical Ballet Concert Group of Ottawa, Detroit City Ballet, Cleveland Civic Ballet, First New England Jr. Ballet, New England Civic Ballet, Bethlehem Ballet, and Severo Ballet of Detroit. Also appearing were the Dayton Civic Ballet, Philadelphia Ballet Guild, Toledo Ballet, and Erie Civic Ballet. Honored guest artists included Prima Ballerina Alexandra Danilova and one of the founders of Modern Dance, Ted Shawn. “Mr. Capezio”, Ben Sommers, also attended.
In 1960, George Balanchine attended the second Northeast Festival in Erie, PA. He was moved by the enthusiasm of the twenty companies in attendance and by the interest in ballet generated by the Festival itself. In 1961, Balanchine accompanied Diana Adams, the Festival Adjudicator, viewing the companies in attendance both in class and in performance. Lincoln Kirstein attended the third Northeast Festival, this time held in Dayton, Ohio.
In the summer of 1961, Josephine Schwartz, Director of the Dayton Civic Ballet, took the lead in organizing the first Craft of Choreography Conference (now RDA’s National Choreography Intensive) at Keystone College, just outside of Scranton, PA. Ms. Schwarz brought a major asset of modern dance to the Choreography Conference: an emphasis on the making of dance. Up to this time most dance faculty had primarily been staging and adapting existing works. The Choreography Conference fostered more original choreography.
In 1973, the National Association for Regional Ballet (NARB) was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in New York, joining the five Regional Dance organizations across the country. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded NARB its first major grant, and a New York office was opened with Doris Hering as the first executive director. With the regional dance movement taking flight throughout the country, highlights for the Northeast Region included: the 100th Regional Festival, which took place in May 1983 in Poughkeepsie, NY hosted by Mid-Hudson Ballet, and in 2007, the second ever National Festival for over 2,000 attendees, which took place in Pittsburgh, PA.
