Bend Don’t Break: Peter Franc, Executive Director of Ballet Bend

In this episode of Bend Don’t Break, Aaron Switzer sits down with Peter Franc, executive director of Ballet Bend, to talk about his journey from a young dancer in Atlanta to performing and leading at the highest levels of professional ballet. Peter shares how his early training, international career, and time with Oregon Ballet Theatre shaped both his artistic perspective and his approach to leadership in the arts.

Together, Aaron and Peter explore what it takes to build a cultural organization from the ground up and why Bend is ready for a broader arts scene. They discuss the vision behind Ballet Bend, the balance between classical and contemporary performance, and the role the arts can play in a growing community. It is a thoughtful conversation about creativity, discipline, and the opportunity to shape the future of Central Oregon’s cultural identity.

Transcript

Intro 0:00

Welcome to the Bend Don't Break Podcast. We are powered by the Source, Bend's locally owned media company and weekly newspaper. This podcast is our eddy in the rushing waters of local journalism. We are glad that you're taking some of your time to listen to us chat with the people who shape our local community. Support us through our member program at Benstorts.com. Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Remax Key Properties, a family-owned, full-service real estate brokerage specializing in residential, luxury, commercial, new construction, and ranch and land properties. Their new state-of-the-art facility at 42 Greenwood Avenue is a modern collaborative space and the new home of the Bin Don't Break Podcast Recording Studio.

Aaron 0:44

I'm Aaron Switzer, publisher of The Source and producer of this podcast with my ally in studio, Megan Burton, co-producer. We have with us today Peter Frank. He is the executive director, artistic director of Ballet Bend. Peter leads Ballet Bend's artistic vision and seasoned programming, serving as the primary liaison for visiting companies and overseas production planning, residency, residency style engagement, fundraising, marketing coordination, and budget management. He is an accomplished dance leader with experience performing, teaching, choreographing, and programming at the highest professional levels. Choreographying.

Peter 1:27

Choreographing. Yeah, you're like one Y away.

Aaron 1:30

It's a apologies. Trained through elite programs including Joffrey Ballet Summer Training and Houston Ballet Academy. He performed as a soloist with Houston Ballet, later touring with Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, and was a principal dancer with Oregon Ballet Theater. He has created award-winning choreography, served as an interim artistic director at Oregon Ballet Theater, programming three seasons, including 18 world company premieres, nine by female choreographers. I got that one right?

Peter 2:01

Yeah, well done.

Aaron 2:03

And supporting subscriber growth and strong ticket sales post-pandemic. Peter Frank, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me, Aaron. Good to see you again. Peter, you're currently living in Portland.

Peter 2:14

Currently, yes.

Aaron 2:15

Yeah, and but the goal is to relocate here.

Peter 2:19

Yes, indeed.

Aaron 2:20

And get ballet bend off the off the tarmac.

Peter 2:24

That's right. Yeah. My my wife and two kids are are in Portland. We bought there in 2015. Yeah. When I moved to join Oregon Ballet Theater. Yeah. Um, but now I've just been doing the commute. I'm over here about once every two weeks. Okay. For three, four days at a time. Wow. Um, so yeah, it's a beautiful drive. My wife and I, we fell in love living in Colorado and Aspen. So being here kind of reminds us of that backdrop to our early story.

Aaron 2:48

Tell before we dive too far into ballet bend, and and I it should be noted that that is probably one of the funnest names to say. It just feels good in your mouth, you know. It does.

Peter 2:59

You can say it over and over again. Once I found it, I didn't want to overthink it. I was like that's it.

unknown 3:04

Yeah.

Aaron 3:04

I it sounds French if if you're if you're uh not listening too closely.

Peter 3:09

Well, that's good because ballet originates from France. All the vocabulary is French, so that's good.

Aaron 3:14

The um how did you originally get started in dance?

Peter 3:20

Like most um teenagers or young young boys in America in the in the early 90s, um, bringing your You saw flash dance.

Aaron 3:29

Yeah.

Peter 3:30

No, bringing your your boys to uh ballet class was not not the thing to do. I was like most most kids, I like to be active, play a lot of sports, be outside, climbing around. All those things are still true. Um but we had a very uh musical family. There was always music on, we appreciated the arts. So when I was in sixth grade, I took into acting camp. It's like two weeks, I was gonna play at the end, and I really enjoyed it. And one of the teachers recommended, you know, you should try to take a dance class. If you're gonna be a performer, put another tool in your tool toolkit there. So I was hell bent against ballet. I was not doing ballet, but I had seen enough music videos and shows um that I saw jazz dancing. So okay, I'll I'll try jazz. Um, so we found a jazz class, went to the jazz class. There was a couple of the guys there, so I feel like a total loner. Um and the guy to girl ratio was also something that seemed like it could work in my favor. So I was like, all right, I'll try this. Um I did that for a couple months, and then there was a teacher who came to the class and she saw me and she invited me to come and take her ballet class and partner one of her girls and be in her ballet piece. Yeah. She offered me.

Aaron 4:35

This is this is when she said, I got some bad news. You're good at this.

Peter 4:40

She didn't say that. She offered me $20 a week to come and do it. So I was like, that's a lot of money for a sixth or seventh grader. And I was like, okay, I'll try that. And I fell in love with it pretty quickly after that, just the way that she taught. Um, I had also never been so physically stumped, just as far as a challenge, the amount of coordination. Yeah. And it was this unique combination of like half athlete and half artist, right? Everything I was doing was in concert with the music, right? Expressing something, right? That acting component. Yeah. There's a feeling there, but there's also an athletic pursuit. So it's this really cool marriage of things. So it took pretty quickly.

Aaron 5:17

Yeah. And how old were you when you finished your tutelage under this this ballet instructor?

Peter 5:23

Under this instructor, she the next year started her own serious dance school because this was kind of a rinky dink place I was at. So she started her own place. I I could identify that she was she was the real deal. So I went and I was with her until I was 16 and then we moved from Atlanta to Louisville, Kentucky, and then my training had to change.

Aaron 5:41

But have we talked about that? I'm from Atlanta too, or both. I don't know if we put that together.

Peter 5:45

No.

Aaron 5:46

I uh I I grew up in Atlanta as well.

Peter 5:48

Yeah, what part? Right on. I grew up in Alpharet. I went to Milton High School, Northwestern, near Roswell.

Aaron 5:53

Yeah, I was Shambley Tucker, not that not that far away.

Peter 5:56

Yeah. No, that's that's where it feels like I grew up.

Aaron 5:58

I was eight to sixteen years old, so all the definitely not a lot of ballet, uh ballet encouragement, I think, in Atlanta.

Peter 6:06

No, not where I was, not at the time. And I got I got bullied a lot, um, to be honest, right? Going through puberty. I'm an easy target when they find out that I go to dance class. And I luckily had very supportive parents. They knew I kind of marched the beat of my own drum, and we had a lot of you know, heart to hearts and just basically had to understand that mean kids aren't really gonna matter in the long run, right? Easier said than done. But um, by the time I was 15, I started uh knowing it was pretty serious. So I got I got a lot of good feedback from teachers. I I would go away for the summer and train for six weeks at different intensive programs, which you talked about.

Aaron 6:44

That's cool.

Peter 6:44

Um, and that's how I got to check in with the larger community outside of my small community in Georgia. You understand that there is uh actually a big world out there, you know, and this is how hard I need to push if I'm gonna fulfill my potential and make it happen.

Aaron 6:57

Yeah, that's um that's something that is badly needed when you're growing up in an Atlanta suburb. Find out that there's a larger world out there.

Peter 7:06

Yeah, it took a long time. Yeah, to not be scared to have a shirt on that said dance on it and bullied, you know, it took took some time. Yeah. I remember there was a Super Bowl commercial, I don't know, maybe four or five years ago, and I think it was Eli Manning and another player, and they were rehearsing a lift. They wanted to do this touchdown celebration, and it they were doing the lift from oh my gosh, dirty dancing at the end. And they were in their tights and you know, it was it was fun, it was it was fine and it was normal for that to be in a commercial, right? It was funny, but they weren't um making they weren't laughing at it. Right. And the fact that that was normal enough to put in a commercial and for them to do as football players. Yeah. I remember I got a little bit choked up and I was just happy to see like this is mainstream, this is progress in some way compared to where I felt like I was.

Aaron 7:52

That's great. Are you um so from there did you head to Houston?

Peter 7:57

Yeah, so I went to Houston every summer, starting when I was uh 14 years old and um trained with the academy there. They have a wonderful men's program, really wonderful company. Yeah, they had invited me to stay and train year-round with the with the academy because it's a wonderful way to feed into the company, have the best students, um, and then train them to be in the company there. My parents um didn't allow me to do that. Uh, family was important, so yeah. They're like, no, we're letting you go for the summer, but you can keep coming home and walk the dog, and we have siblings, and you have the rest of your life to be an adult. Um, so I didn't fight them too hard on that. Yeah. Um I was close with the family. So every summer I did that, and then once I graduated from high school, I was at Louisville um at the time. Um, then I finally went to Houston. Spend one more year training, what would have been my freshman year of college in the sort of second company. It's just the top tier of the school and work with the company a little bit just to continue fine-tuning my skills. Yeah. Because once you get into a company, you're spending your day working on rep and different ballets, different roles, different pieces. So the technique that you carry into that career, you know, it's it's only so high. And then you start your focus on different stuff. So I wanted to make sure I was dialed and strong, and that way I'd be able to climb higher once I got got a job.

Aaron 9:15

I feel like my perception of ballet and what it takes to succeed in ballet is probably molded by all the movies I've seen with ballet people in it where it's just cutthroat, you know, hard, you know, like I think a black swan, you know, is the worst example. But you know, like like other things about Russian dancers. And is it like that? Is I mean, how hard is it? What what is there camaraderie? What's it like to try to break through from being a young dancer to somebody who's gonna be a professional like you are?

Peter 9:54

Yeah, that's an awesome question. Yeah, we could do hours on this. Um everything you see in the movies is amplified. Yeah. So there's some truth within a lot of the a lot of the stuff, but it's it's you know, they do like to lean into some of the sometimes lazy stereotypes. Right. Um, there is a level of competition, um, but I found that most of the competition was people who were competing with themselves. I was competitive because I wanted to succeed, not because I wanted to be mean or have other people not succeed. Yeah, so you have to be driven to work as as hard as you're going to work um to make it happen. Now, there is also the pressure and the nerves of a big role. You finally get into the point to the point where you get cast in something, but then you realize like I I gotta deliver here, and you know, there's a lot of uh detail that goes into making sure that um, you know, you're up to snuff there. And a lot of people don't realize that when you're in a company, you bring in different stagers or different choreographers from all over the world because you're gonna do nine different productions a year, but they they bring in their own team of people who kind of audition the company. So they take a look at the company, they they teach material, they they figure out who's gonna be cast right, who should be in what what types of group, who excels. So you're constantly being re-evaluated by these guest coaches and choreographers and pulled into how those yeah, how they see this production or the new piece looking. So you're constantly that's auditioning against your colleagues on in these new experiences. And sometimes egos, you know, if somebody's ranked higher than you and they think they should have the part or you're young and you get it ahead of them, yeah. You know, some people deal with that better than others, um, but they're just kind of you gotta have a tough skin, and that's kind of their problem, and you kind of um roll with it. But usually it's um it's a sense of we're all here to succeed, and yeah it kind of builds a sense of it's all fair. Yeah. If if you and we could all recognize, hey, you're really good at this, this person's really good at that, and I can see that you're doing well, so you you respect game when you see it. Yeah, um, so it's kind of uh you know, all's fair, and you know, we all kind of get it.

Aaron 12:14

I mean, we you take that for granted with athletics. I think ballet gets put in its own. I again I'm going to movies, gets put into its own class because there's the arts associated with it. So it's yeah, you know, I mean, I think anybody familiar with making a team or you know, trying out for multiple teams is familiar with like, well, I gotta perform, but it's never portrayed that way with dancers, I don't think, because there's that artistic aspect and supposedly everybody's more vulnerable and it's it's not gonna be quite the same.

Peter 12:45

And so you're you're exactly right because even though you might audition for a lead role, still a lot of the work is group work or partners or trios, or you know, so you're still working together and need to be able to communicate and trust. And even if you're not working with somebody in this piece, you might be really intimately connected with them in another piece. Yeah, so it behooves you to have a wonderful team element and vibe. Um, I would say center stage is a movie that came out when I was younger, I think late 90s. That's kind of not too far off. Um, the movie Turning Point is probably the most accurate movie from the 70s with Pershnikov. Um, yeah, so I mean I enjoy all of them, but I would say Turning Point would be the one I'd recommend. No good. Well, you know, sinners to start to get a little holler. And then Black Swan was really holler.

Aaron 13:35

Oh, I love that movie.

Peter 13:37

I love Malik.

Aaron 13:38

Yeah, yeah, I did too. Yeah, dude. It all was but it was it was crazy.

Peter 13:42

It it it um it put dance and the conversation on the map in some way. So you know, there's no such thing as bad press, I guess.

Aaron 13:50

Go going back to what you were saying about those traveling companies, because that's fascinating to me, is like it's a constant process of of being evaluated. It's not like uh that is different than sport, where okay, you you coach come, you know, you make the team, you're you're you're on the team, you got your coach, you got a philosophy that you're following, you you get the playbook, you or you know what's going on. But if if you're working at uh Houston Ballet and they're and you have this, I mean, that's got to be mentally pretty draining or pretty tough.

Peter 14:23

Well, it's constant feedback. Yeah. So it's just a a lot of getting feedback. Even when you these these groups come in, these groups of stagers or choreographers, they pick you to be in this piece. They pick you because of your qualities, right? But then you spend the next four to six to eight weeks fine-tuning and getting your body conditioned to this specific style or to the specific role. It might be a lot of jumping, might be a lot of partnering, might be a lot of cardio, and they know specifically how to condition you and to talk to you about it. Right. But you're just trying it and getting feedback. This style's not right, you're not deep enough in your legs, this needs to be higher, yada yada. So you're even even the week of the show, you know, you're on stage, you're getting used to the lights and stuff, but they're still in the house and they come up on stage, and these are the notes. I mean, you just like notes, notes, notes, right? So that by showtime you're you're close, but it's not like, hey, we cast it, great job. We're just gonna run it in high five each other. Like it's just you're working and you're figuring out mechanics, and you might be working with a partner um that has different dimensions and different strengths, and different mechanics work for you that don't work for the other couple, and there might be some space for different versions of things to happen. Like, well, I'm a lefty. Do you mind if I alter this a little bit? And sometimes I say yes or no.

Aaron 15:32

And I'm definitely having a mental breakdown. I can just definitely as soon as that next choreographer works in, I'm like, I just went through this with this last guy.

Peter 15:43

Yeah, and you're working sometimes on multiple programs. Sometimes you're doing a mixed bill, or we're going to the theater, we're performing this full length of O'Neagin, but we're also doing this triple bill with these new choreographers. So you're adapting to point shoes on and off, or am I wearing tights, or am I getting down and dirty? So yeah, but that variety, and to be honest, those conversations in the studio and problem solving with people that you're close with. Um, and mostly we're all friends, really, like all drama and funny stuff aside, we're all very, very close. That conversation and figuring out how to make it happen and that vulnerability you share and the trust that you build, that was my favorite thing about being a dancer. I mean, shows were fun, but just that experience was very unique.

Aaron 16:25

So then um so from there you're going to Oregon Ballet. What brings you to Oregon? Yeah, so is it the Oregon Ballet?

Peter 16:32

Yeah, so from Houston Ballet, I had a couple injuries. I was 25, 26. I'm starting to have some overuse stuff, and it kind of alerted me to the fact that um there's a shelf life like any athlete. Um, I wanted to experience a different culture, different type of company mission, different type of growth. So I really love the contemporary ballet stuff, which takes classical mechanics and technique and bodies, but you give license to the choreographers to explore different physical directions and unique staging and just kind of more, I don't know, thought-provoking or physical, provocative ideas. Yeah. So I wanted to do something different rather than just go to another big ballet company with the same recipe. So I went to Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, they're a touring company. So we toured there um them about three, four months a year. That's fun. Did a lot of contemporary new work. Um, that was really great.

Aaron 17:24

Was that touring US or were you outside the US with them?

Peter 17:27

International and national. Okay. Yeah. So Italy, Russia, Spain, Canada, all over the US. Yeah. Wolf Trap and Kennedy Centers. It's awesome. Yeah, that's incredible. So I did that, but then I did start to miss the classical demands, just as far as for some, you know, classical is easier for some and contemporaries more easy for others. Um, but something about the amount of focus it took to recreate the classical ballet execution on stage was just a level of demand that I for some reason was obsessed with mastering, even though no matter what. How old were you at the time? When I was in that company.

Aaron 18:06

Yeah, when you were starting, when you really wanted to get back to classical. Back to classical.

Peter 18:10

I think it was 28 or 29. But even if you're in a contemporary company, right? And even contemporary companies that we're going to be presenting with ballet band, even if that product you see on stage is not classical, classical, they're still taking ballet class every day. That's how you condition your body. You get all the mechanics and conditioning right. Um, yeah, so I was late 20s. And I and I also, because I got started in dance, because of acting, it was the literal art of storytelling, like being Romeo for three acts and really getting into a novel or a character and understanding their history and being in that for a long period of time, I wanted to get back to. So Oregon Ballet Theater had a good mix of classical and contemporary, and was also a community that my wife and I, we had always been been interested in living in before we even met each other. That was kind of always on our radar.

Aaron 18:58

So is she a dancer as well? She was, yeah. Okay.

Peter 19:01

Yeah, she was more of a contemporary dancer and she was with Aspen Santa Fe Ballet her whole career.

Aaron 19:07

Um, so did you guys tour together internationally? We did. Okay. Yeah, for those three years. Well, you uh we're getting into a love story here.

Peter 19:14

There's a love story bait on there for sure. Yeah. Um, it's funny, we were a small company, the company was about 11 or 12 dancers, so I felt more like we were in a band than we were in a company. It's kind of a Fleetwood Mac. So there's plenty of fun stories and um stuff there.

Aaron 19:31

Yeah.

Peter 19:31

And then we went long distance. She stayed in Aspen when I moved to Portland because she was more contemporary. We only again, you only have so much time um in your career to to make the most of it.

Aaron 19:42

That's why I asked about the age because you're starting to get it to like 29, 30, you're gonna start seeing some of those injuries and yeah, and I knew I had maybe one last stretch in me, late 20s, coming into 30.

Peter 19:54

So I I was lucky enough to get a principal contract when I moved to Oregon Ballet Theater with the new director. Um, good rep. And um, that's where I spent the the last six years of my active dancing years.

Aaron 20:06

Great. So with all of um with all that you've been involved with, ballet bend, how does how does Bend work into the equation? Because I'm pretty sure we don't have a touring ballet company here.

Peter 20:19

No, professional dance uh and ballet is is limited. All right, there's a lot of dance schools. Yeah, but as far as uh professional and definitely presenting and bringing in professional stuff from all over the globe. Um don't think there's anything here like that. Right. How this came to be is when I retired from Oregon Ballet Theater as a dancer, I was asked to serve as artistic director um from 2021 to 2023. Um and during that time, leading the organization, my favorite thing, I mean, amongst many things, um, was choosing work to put on the company and to share with the community. Yeah. And it's kind of like sharing your favorite movie or your favorite music and just making a choice of something that you think people are going to resonate with. And when you're sitting in the audience and you're feeling the investment of the audience and the investment of the company and everybody backstage, and there's these moments of everything coming together and the stillness and the emotion and just these brief but sure moments that live forever. Um, when those happen, those are extremely rewarding to so to be able to foster uh an environment to make that that possible is what I really appreciated. And in 2022, when I was there, we brought OBT2, the second company. Okay. Just to get them performing again during the pandemic, get them on stage. We performed at the tower. We had again no marketing budget. We just put up two posters, let's get them, let's get these kids dancing. And we showed up to two sold-out shows completely. Yeah. And I I spoke before the show and sat in the audience, and uh just the energy was so appreciative. And as a a champion of the arts and somebody who wants to present dance to feel a community receive it with such appreciation and enthusiasm was was everything you want. And that's when I realized this place can support their own cultural coolness and um and there's really not too much here. Right. So that's when it it came on my radar. This is a place I love that loves a thing that I love. And in my time at OBT, the kind of weight of the not the weight but the size of the organization was so demanding and required such a large team. Yeah. That if I could focus on just presenting the work and having other companies perform it at an extremely high level, that would allow us to have a greater variety of work, a really high level of kind of cultural sharing opportunities and allow us to be more sustainable and get a lot more done with a much smaller team. So I just think there's a lot of benefits there.

Aaron 22:46

So what is uh on your trajectory of ballet bend becoming what you hope it would be where are you? I mean what is where is ballet bend?

Peter 22:56

We established 18 months ago uh so I've been donating a lot of that time the last 18 months um especially all of 2025 yeah um building a board um building support getting a 501c3 um doing all the market research um starting to talk to companies and just putting all the building blocks in place for uh 2026 season yeah um to start so we had a very big year website development board development uh we've got our 501c3 stuff we have um money starting to move marketing team grant writers so 2026 uh we're focusing on our shows and then we're gonna be starting our um first season this september so all right finally the performances and um the thing I've been talking about for so long is finally gonna start happening. We're gonna start performing at the tower this fall in our first season we're gonna have four different programs. So we have a show in September, a show in October then a show in February and a show in April 27. And we usually will have hopefully about six to eight shows a year. Our first season just start with four right just collect some data make sure everything is what we think it is. Right. But I didn't want to bite off too small of a piece because I want people to have something to look forward to once we get that momentum going. I just want it to happen.

Aaron 24:16

So seems like you're being very methodical in your approach I wouldn't say this is impulsive.

Peter 24:21

No it's been very non-impulsive yeah no incredible I've been trying to approach it strategically and I have a lot to thank my my board and my mentors and my experience for helping me do this thoughtfully. What's the first performance going to be we are going to be presenting three different companies um usually we'll bring in contemporary or classical it's gonna be the full range. Okay. Ballet Bend is going to present the full range of like classical to contemporary ballet to contemporary ballet is kind of a conversation starter um you know a kind of place to um like a reference point. Like if you were going to sh tell somebody about a movie they'd never heard of you would use a movie they had heard of to kind of explain it. So that's where ballet starts and all of these different styles they all stand on the shoulders of ballet and ballet technique and practice ballet class pretty much every day. There is a place for celebrating classical ballet in its finest forms. I still love it. That was my first love but I also think there's a really wide ocean of rad, physical thoughtful adventurous bold yeah and athletic temporary work um that I think can appeal to modern audiences well. So the first program is very important to curate something that demonstrates all three lanes that we might be going in. So we're gonna have San Francisco Ballet perform something classical going to have Charlotte ballet perform this incredible piece um it's contemporary ballet by a South African choreographer it's called From Africa with love. That's gonna be the closer and then we're gonna have um Portland's um contemporary company Open Space Dance they're gonna perform one of their new works by um choreographer Noelle Kaiser that's really really physical the way that she uses this mass of bodies um it's uh it's really really cool and it kind of demonstrates where dance can go um tomorrow so that way when people leave they'll understand okay ballet bend is curating excellence but we can expect the unexpected but it will be uh of high quality when you're reaching out to these um ballet companies are they like bend what bend um well no I mean we're I mean I know Ben I know Ben's on the map for mountain biking but not for ballet. Well when they greet out I'm not saying hey this is Ben I'm saying hey this is Peter from such and such so that um I knew that yeah yeah so that helps a little bit of just it wasn't yeah and then um yeah and then I learned so many people better but but people are but people are excited to be appreciated uh appreciated and yeah excited to have someone reach out and make an inquiry so yeah yeah and I tell them a little bit it's not hard to Google and um well it's great. Yeah so it it um there's there's a few limitations at the tower theater it's not the biggest stage so yeah when I talk to these companies about what to perform um we can't just do anything we have to think about okay how about might this be slightly self-contained some of the big sets or moving parts might not um be something that we can do so we can still blow people's minds. I'm not worried about that the tower has been great yeah um but just trying to be thoughtful about how we use the space right I don't want to try to pack too much into a space um right you wouldn't put a professional figure skater on a rink that's too small to do something so want to make sure you don't want to tell people they can't jump no where there'll be plenty of jumping plenty of plenty of stuff but sometimes like these people can jump off the stage. I mean they could they could do two bounds no we can go up in the tower but we can't have like 40 people on stage on like a whole forest right um no but there's still a way to to do a lot of stuff so yeah we're just getting creative and working with a network of people that and the dance world is small at a certain point even if I don't know somebody directly I'm about one person away from being able to get to them and having a good conversation.

Aaron 28:11

Are you looking at for yourself are you going to join any of these troops? Are you going to dance?

Peter 28:16

Am I gonna dance? I mean unless there's a whole barrage of injuries last second probably not um but I do choreograph yeah and that's one of my passions so I don't want to start off by putting my work um yeah first that's not what this is about um but I have created some fun stuff yeah there will be an opportunity to be creative um and work with dancers to make things fit a program. Yeah so I think there will be a bit of me um but I think my uh my ideas or my taste and the sort of characteristics of the dance I like to present I think should speak to people. After this podcast people are going to want to see you dance and there's listen if the demand the price is around if they're price we can always talk about it.

Aaron 28:58

Give me an email I'm sure yeah I saw you at the gym a couple months ago I'm I'm trying to keep fit yeah yeah that's right if somebody needs it we can talk right uh we are at the end of our our time Peter so um anything that we didn't touch on you'd like people to know where can they find out more about uh ballet bend?

Peter 29:16

Yeah perfect go to balletbend.org that's where you can find information about our board how to contribute how to be a part of things how to uh order tickets tickets I think this is released next week so we're working right now to get tickets live um so by the time this releases on just go to the website you can leave your email address if you want to be kept up to date with uh newsletters and all correspondence so it's kind of all there I got my email address if you want to reach out to me directly and everybody in Bend including yourself has been so receptive so supportive and working with this community and helping you know be part of its story has just been a privilege.

Aaron 29:53

So I mean and one of the cool things about living in Bend is you know these are the I mean we we gripe about the growth and the housing and the traffic and stuff but you know with it comes things like hey man there might be a ballet uh a professional ballet courtier and that's incredible that's one of the things that makes uh makes these exciting times yeah and I've listened growth is inevitable yeah um so it's how we grow and what kind of color and direction we add to it um you know we can we can make it make it what we want yeah very cool well peter thanks for being here thank you very much we'll see you later this has been the Ben Don't Break podcast if you like what you heard go to the website bensource.com and uh become a member uh donate so we can keep talking about things like ballet and we had opera before you we become a a classical fine art podcast who knew who knew thanks thank you you've been listening to the Ben Don't Break podcast powered by the Source Weekly to read hear and see more of what we do go to bensource.com