♪ opening music ♪ Benjamin Dunlap> Coppelia is not just a romantic ballet.

It's a ballet about romance, about romanticism.

William Starrett> There are a lot of beautiful moments.

It's a beautiful ballet.

[Narrator] South Carolina Educational Television and the Columbia City Ballet Company present Cappelia.

First performed in Paris in 1870, this three act work has been a favorite of ballet lovers, both young and old, ever since.

In this performance, the role of the village girl Swanhilda, will be danced by Karen Gibbons-Brown.

Swanhilda's lover, Franz, will be danced by guest artist William Starrett, well known to audiences of the Joffrey Ballet and Ballet West in Salt Lake City.

They will be joined by Wally Rodriguez as the mysterious Doctor Coppelius and the dancers of the Columbia City Ballet Company.

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It's a ballet about romance, about romanticism.

And Franz is the ultimate romantic.

He wants the not impossible.

He wants the ideal to become real.

So it's easy for him to fall in love with a doll.

After all, he's just in love with the love itself.

Well, I portray him as very young.

I try to bring that aspect out, particularly because he has such strange things he has to do, you know, to be in love with two different girls and not really tell the difference for the doll and a real girl.

I just don't understand why they want to get married in the first place.

They're supposed to want to get married and he's always two-timing her and she's always getting mean, mad and stomping around and, he's fickle, and she gets mad because he's fickle.

I don't know.

But, in the end of the second act, she forgive him.

I don't know why, but she does.

[laughs] I guess because the ballet.

Take it up one more time.

Okay.

Coming down.

Usually when you have a role, you're either sweet or you're like the good fairy, or you're mean, or you're just, you know, one kind of person.

But, since Swanhilda is a person and she has to carry the whole ballet pretty much, you have to be a little bit of everything.

She's supposed to be adorable.

Cute sometimes, sort of looking for trouble.

She's like the leader of the village.

Not in her character, but in the heart in the ballet.

She has to be very versatile because of the dances in the second act.

You can't just be adorable the whole time.

You have to be more versatile with, like, a Spanish dance and a mechanical dance, which is really hard for a dancer, the Scottish dance.

And by that time you dead.

William Starrett> For me in this version, I keep trying to challenge my myself.

I change the variations a lot.

My versions are difficult, but, I need that to kind of keep pushing myself.

The coda is difficult because, I run with her a lot when she's on my shoulder, and it's like, double weight.

And when you run on, you have to really pull the concentration together.

And that coda is the finale is the end of the ballet.

It keeps going.

The villagers dance a little bit, but it's mainly us.

And when we're not dancing, we're going in the wind.

So, the finale, the whole end of it's difficult.

It takes a lot of energy, but, it's good music, so it's fun.

Now let's try to fold it a little neater this time.

Benjamin Dunlap> Just as film was the most vital and interesting art form of the 60s.

I think dance has become, in some ways the most vital of the arts in our time.

The audience has exploded.

As everyone knows, more people go to ballet performances than to pro football games now and I want to understand why, from the inside.

Interviewer> Have you trained for this?

Benjamin Dunlap> Yeah, actually I have.

I've been taking classes for months now.

You wouldn't guess it from my performance, but I'm beginning to learn something from the inside.

And one of the things that's intrigued me a lot, as a professor of literature is, how subtle and complex the ballet presentation can be.

I think, Wally Rodriguez and Karen Gibbons-Brown do such subtle things with their parts, and there is a kind of, complication of Chinese box-like reality when Karen pretends she's a doll coming to life.

It's, several levels of reality layered over each other.

I think the one truly magic moment in the whole ballet comes, after it's revealed that Coppelia has not come to life at all, after the lifeless doll is put in the arms of, Dr. Coppelius, and he rocks her in his arms and says, "Oh my girl, my girl, she's dead," goes over his shoulder, and at that moment, not wound up now by anybody, the dolls move forward to commiserate with a kind of mechanical sympathy.

That's real magic!

I mean, that's extraordinary!

Just makes my hair stand on end.

Dr. Coppelius is not an evil man.

He's being portrayed or he's being described to many people as an evil person.

He's not.

Dr. Coppelius is a mysterious person, which is, there's a world of difference between mysterious and evil.

He's mysterious because no one understands what he's doing.

Only he does.

And he doesn't know for sure exactly what he's doing.

He makes dolls, and one in particular, who he dearly loves, he tries to bring to life, and that is his ambition is to bring, Coppelia to life.

Swanhilda has been caught in his workshop and terrified of being caught by this mysterious person, she changes places with his doll and goes through all the antics that he wants to perform.

But the beauty of it is when he feels that his doll is coming to life.

His life ambition has come to an end and he's totally in love with his own creation.

Benjamin Dunlap> In some ways, I think Franz and Coppelius are a lot alike.

Both of them want the ideal to become real, and it's possible that Coppelius is nothing but an old and disenchanted Franz and maybe Franz After Swanhilda's turned into a shrew would wish he had the doll instead.

[laughs] [audience noise] ♪ orchestra music ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience laughs] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applause] [silence] [silence] [silence] ♪ orchestra music ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applause] ♪ orchestra music ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applause] [silence] [Narrator] The Columbia City Ballet was formed in 1960, and rather remarkably, some of the original members are still with the company.

Recognizing the benefit of such continuity and personnel, the company decided to allow young area dancers the chance literally to grow up in the organization.

In 1969, the Columbia City Ballet Apprentice Company was formed.

It's open to all qualified dancers through open auditions.

The auditions are held twice a season, and notices are sent out to all the dancing schools and all the studios in the area.

And kids come, they audition, they tryout, they get in the company.

If they're accepted in the Apprentice Company, they can usually count on doing roles that require children in the major company productions.

[Narrator] The company prides itself on the quality of its young dancers.

Some have even gone on to professional careers with larger companies.

John Whitehead> And they want to dance, they enjoy the dancing, and it's a very disciplined, very structured type of thing.

Most of them have been taking dancing since they're 7 or 8 years old, so they know what's expected of them.

[Narrator] The company's successful and enthusiastic technical support comes from volunteers.

John Whitehead> We've been very fortunate, I think since the company started, we've had a very strong nucleus of people who want to become involved and they just appear and say, I would like to do sound, for example.

[Narrator] The Columbia City Ballet is a member of the Association of American Dance Companies and is South Carolina's only company whose choreographic records are kept in the National Dance Collection at New York's Lincoln Center.

John Whitehead> Since the company's foundation, we've had a policy of educational development for children six and under.

They've always been admitted free to any production as guests of the company.

And we feel that in doing that, we're building the ballet audiences of the future and really the arts conscious and our arts development audiences of the future.

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