WEST Australian Ballet has taken an entrepreneurial approach to fostering its relationships with its sponsors by taking them behind the scenes.
The Behind the Scenes sessions allow the sponsors, their guests and potential sponsors to get up close to the company’s dancers as they prepare for the forthcoming season.
The dancers perform short excerpts of work from the coming season.
The program also gives the sponsors a chance to see some of the costumes that will be used in the productions and to talk to the choreographer and musical director.
WA Ballet executive director Louise Howden-Smith said the process allowed the company’s sponsors to become more informed about the productions it would be running in the new season.
"Its part of developing opportunities for our sponsors to leverage their sponsorship and business through us," she said.
"They get to see the dancers up close. See the athleticism it takes to be a dancer.
"It also allows them to be a better host when they bring guests to our productions.
"They have a better insight into the thinking behind the production.
"It also works well for the dancers because it helps them to get their nerves out of their system before the season starts."
The Behind the Scenes project has also drawn attention from the Curtin University School of Management.
One of its doctoral students is currently studying the Behind the Scenes concept to look at leadership, management, marketing and communication and the communication between senior management, artistic director and dancers.
School of Management head Richard Grainger said the school had been "captivated by the informal performance and communication with WA Ballet senior management, artistic director and dancers".
"We thought it was a wonderful example of industry-based tourism," he said.
Dr Grainger said industry-based tourism was an emerging trend that merged industry production of goods and services with mainstream tourism activities.
"That is, tourism clients are increasingly involved with production processes, which in turn raises numerous issues in relation to leadership, management, marketing and communication," he said.
"Our essential observation is that the senior management of WA Ballet are taking the ‘core product’ of dance and embarking on a process of product extension, value adding and client interaction through current and proposed initiatives such as international marketing, dance training, education, industry-based tourism and creative corporate and social networking to name just a few."
Ms Howden-Smith said Leadership Australia too was interested in sending some of its people along to study the Behind the Scenes concept.
WA Ballet is considered to be the most prolific ballet company in Australia.
It puts on a combination of both contemporary and classical ballets.
The company has also been a launching pad for up and coming choreographers.
Ms Howden-Smith said Gideon Obarzanek, who has brought his own company over to perform his production Black Grace, developed a production called Play Dead with the WA Ballet.
"That was picked up by the Netherlands Dance Theatre. The work was created by us and they wanted to stage it in Holland," she said.
The company also tours extensively throughout Western Australia bringing ballet to remote areas such as Kununurra, Port Hedland and Karratha and places closer to Perth such as Mandurah.
Ms Howden-Smith said WA Ballet did not only do performances in those towns.
"We also go to the schools and work with the children," she said.
WA Ballet is also the oldest company in the country, celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2002.
Those celebrations included performing with the Australian Ballet.
Ms Howden-Smith said the WA Ballet company won best ensemble that year.
This year the company’s first season begins on February 11 and runs through to February 28 – at the Quarry Amphitheatre.
In May, when its second season begins, WA Ballet will be conducting a world first – a production of Puccini’s opera La Boheme.
"Nobody in the world has ever created a ballet to that work," Ms Howden-Smith said.
"We’ve taken the words away and had the music rearranged by a composer in Melbourne. The WA Symphony Orchestra is doing the music for it. They’ll be producing a double CD.
"The production will be set in Paris in the 1930s."