We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mary Schnepf. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mary below.
Mary, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
Dance is full of risks, both on and off stage, but I found the challenge of accepting the role as Artistic Director for the Greater Niagara Ballet Company one of the biggest risks I have taken in the span of my career so far. The offer was made to back in September 2021, near the end of lockdowns but while things were still uncertain with the pandemic – and it was unexpected.
The Greater Niagara Ballet Company was founded in 1967 and its founder was also its Artistic Director for over 50 years. Like everyone else in the performing arts, we had no live season in 2020 and the Company’s future was somewhat uncertain. The Company Board decided to put on “The Nutcracker” in December 2021, and the Assistant Director at the time was slated to fully take over. I had agreed to start as a rehearsal assistant after dancing in the show for many years. I was comfortable in that role as it seemed a safe place to start learning the ropes of what it takes to stage a large ballet production.
Then, two weeks before auditions, I received a phone call from the Board while taking an aerial silks class. I let it go to voice mail and waited to check it when I got home. In short, the Assistant Director was no longer able to take over and the role of Artistic Director was offered to me. I was flooded with panic, but that call was what changed the direction of my dance career.
I worked (and still work) a nine-to-five job in an unrelated field and also had just finished grad school with my MFA in Dance. Additionally, I was teaching dance at two local colleges for the first time while applying for full time faculty positions. Although I had run a small contemporary ballet company, Ballet ex Machina, in Buffalo, NY for a few years, it had been a small company with about 5-6 adults. The Greater Niagara Ballet Company, and “The Nutcracker” in particular, involved a cast of about 100, many of whom are children.
The rational part of brain wanted to turn it down. Things had picked up almost too fast for me after the pandemic. I had worked from home, had very few dance responsibilities from January 2020 until August 2021, and had gotten used to the concept of free time after completing my MFA thesis in May 2020. But by August 2021, I was back in the office working full-time, teaching 3 times a week at the colleges, teaching aerial dance at a local studio and starting to freelance perform again. The additional time commitment from directing would be massive with a wide learning curve to deal with. In addition, the Company was shaky in terms of finances (no revenue stream during the pandemic but still had to pay the bills) and with dancers. The majority of the Company dancers at the time resided in Canada and, in Fall 2021, there were still border restrictions. Most of the Principal Dancers also resided in Canada. There was no way to guess how many dancers from the U.S. side would show up to auditions or if there would even be enough to perform the show. There seemed to be a very good chance that things would not work out, one way or another.
At the same time, I knew that opportunities like this in Western New York were practically non-existent. It would either not happen again or would take years, possibly decades, for another artistic director position to open up. I knew I could not do it alone, but I knew one person who would be perfect to direct with me. She had directed her own company in Buffalo and specialized in creating brand new ballets geared for children dancers and for young audiences. She’s also a fantastic human being and we had gone way back from dancing together for years in another contemporary company. We rented space out in the same building, but after the building had been sold during lockdowns, neither of us had found adequate space to start again. I asked, and the Board allowed me to bring her in and that we could co-direct the company. I had no idea if she’d be interested, but I was relived when she agreed.
Having an experienced co-director to split the job made the risk more manageable. She took on most of the scenes that involved dancers 12 and under and I took on the scenes with the older dancers – and it worked. That was the easy part. So many adjustments had to made with the transition in artistic leadership. Many liked our changes, but many didn’t and there was some back-and-forth on creative decisions, as well as things like rehearsal schedules, communications, advertising, social media, planning, etc. It took about 2 and a half years for the transition period to feel complete (and some days, it feels like I’m still in it) and to move on to the next phase which is growing the company.
After 2 years, my co-director had to step back from the job for family obligations but still dances with the Company which I am grateful for. The last part of this particular risk was taking over fully as Artistic Director in Fall 2023 but we were able to hire an excellent Assistant Director and the transition has gone exceedingly well. The company has grown by about 50% since that first year, ticket sales have increased substantially, and we even opened up a school inside the Company which is growing quickly. I’m lucky to have such wonderful people on the Board, teaching and artistic staff and happy to have had this risk worth every second.
Mary, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I dance, and I dance a lot! I started dancing with the Greater Niagara Ballet Company in Niagara Falls, NY, where I grew up, while it was still the Niagara Civic Ballet. I had taken a ballet class at another studio but quit after one year to play baseball instead. I can’t remember why exactly I went back to ballet after 3 years, but I had a friend who was in the Nutcracker at the time and felt like I wanted to try it. I’ve been dancing ever since.
I had many other interests, though. I liked playing sports and swam competitively in grade school and middle school (no swim team at my high school, so I had to give it up). My mother was an art teacher (retired now but is still a working watercolor artist) and my brother and sister played guitar and drums respectively, and I found myself more interested in music and the visual arts starting around high school. I kept dancing and, since I attended a local college in Buffalo, I continued to dance with the Company during those years. Combining several of my interests at the time, I decided to pursue a degree in theater design focusing on both set and costume design. I enrolled in ballet classes in either my freshman or sophomore year and was considering switching colleges to be a dance major, but I dislocated my knee which made that impossible and went back to design.
Perhaps in part due to lack of opportunities (Buffalo at the time was still in economic decline and much different than it is today with its recent economic boom), I couldn’t find much design work and found an office job instead. I was freelancing as a dancer, but still wanted to pursue a creative job and decided to join a unique interdisciplinary graduate program at the University at Buffalo in Film & Performance. The program focused on writing, but I also learned the basics of film directing and production. I was able to live in New York City for a short time and was a Script Intern at Late Night with Conan O’Brien at NBC. I loved every minute of it but had the unfortunate timing of graduating about the same time as a nation-wide writer’s strike. I came back to Buffalo somewhat disheartened. I went back to the office, joined a band and started ballet again. Around that time, a new professional contemporary dance company moved into town, and I soon joined Configuration Dance Theater. This was monumental for me. I had not tried joining a professional company before. I am not very tall and, although I think things are changing in the field, I was not tall enough to even audition for most professional companies. I think it was my great experience with CDT that propelled me to switch my priorities towards dance.
In 2014, I started Ballet ex Machina, which was a tiny contemporary group that I put together to participate in Buffalo’s Infringement Festival and was my first choreographic experience. In a way, almost all my other interested intersected in this project: I had to design and build costumes, create a logo, film and edit performances, work with musicians – even my office skills came in handy. Overall, it was a lot of work but it showed me that I was capable of directing.
The theater I was able to use for the Infringement Festival was also being used by Buffalo Aerial Dance who was just starting out in the area. Buffalo did not have aerial dance at the time, after some prodding, I decided to try it out. I was off and on for a year or two, but started taking classes regularly and eventually joined the performance group. I now am a Level 2 Silks instructor at Buffalo Aerial Dance and still perform regularly with them. It is an amazing team!
Around the same time, I decided to go back to school once again, this time in Dance, so that a faculty job would be feasible. Film wasn’t going anywhere for me, which is good in a way since I think my heart always was more in dance than anything else. Teaching dance in higher education would allow me to focus full time on what I loved the most, and I very much enjoyed teaching ballet so it seemed like a good move.
Grad School was tough but rewarding. I started in Fall 2018 at the University at Buffalo and, with my film training, found my niche in screen dance, or dance for the camera (which used to be niche before the pandemic when it exploded!). I was the first person at the University to put on a screendance piece with the program’s resident company, Zodiaque. The graduate program also required that I take non-ballet studio classes which I enjoyed immensely. I wanted to explore different movement styles further, so I started taking tap classes and then moved on to Irish Dance at the one local studio that offered classes for adults. Several years later, I joined the Rince na Tiarna Adult Irish Dance Team.
I had unfortunate timing again with my degree and was not able to fully complete the three-part choreographic aspect of my thesis as I graduated in Spring 2020 during the first few months of the pandemic. Still, I was able to find work once classes started to be in person again, and I am currently a part-time assistant professor of the Humanities at Erie Community College.
I am very proud of my work as Artistic Director with the Greater Niagara Ballet Company. All of my other artistic and work experiences help me in so many ways. I’ve been able to take from both my good and bad experiences as a freelancer and try to learn and implement good practices every step of the way. Not every decision works out the way I think it will, but I’m learning! I am also proud of the Company school and our scholarship program which fully funds about a third of our students. We are located in The Niagara Arts & Cultural Center which is starting to really take off. The Company is putting on several shows a year and interest is growing. Sometimes I step back and wonder how all this happened but I know that I couldn’t have done it alone. I have so many people to thank that it is far too long to list, but I will mention my wonderful husband who is incredibly supportive (also an artist – he teaches ceramics) as well as an amazing family who have supported me the entire time.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I am always amazed at what the Company dancers can achieve in what always seems like too short a rehearsal period. We have some freelance dancers, but we also have a lot of younger dancers from local studios and college dance programs. Seeing everything come together and work as a team for a performance and witnessing dancers give it their all never seems to lose its magic. Every time, I am almost overwhelmed with pride for they have accomplished.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I’d really love to see the arts grow in the Niagara Falls community and to make dance more accessible in the city. Our scholarship program is part of this goal, and I plan to expand that program as much as possible so that we can provide more opportunities for children to participate in classes and performances who currently have limited or no access to dance programming.
There is much research that shows that the arts can help an area thrive economically. With so many new and amazing things happening at our home base,The Niagara Arts & Cultural Center, I think the Greater Niagara Ballet Company can be a part of a resurgence of arts activity in the area. Although I live in nearby Buffalo, Niagara Falls has a small but fantastic community of both visual and performing artists and there are many opportunities for collaboration. There is a sense of something happening on the horizon for the area and I can’t think of anything better than giving back to my hometown.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.greaterniagaraballetcompany.org
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/balletexmachina
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreaterNiagaraBalletCo/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-c-schnepf/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/greater-niagara-ballet-niagara-falls
- Other: https://marycschnepf.com
Image Credits
Jim Bush, Mary Schnepf, Mark Yerger, Kevin Hibbard, Glenn Murray, Stefan Ludwig, Brie Eloise