Reconnecting at ABT

An internship with ABT is the most fulfilling internship one can get. It has to be the best intern program in arts management. I have been lucky enough to intern with other companies, and they do not hold a candle to ABT’s program. Dennis Walters, the director of the intern program, has created a unique curriculum that gives one the opportunity to understand how an arts organization functions beyond the department in which one works; with weekly lectures and workshops.  He also teaches fundamentals of resumes and interview skills. These workshops had more useful practical information on how to acquire a job than any class I have ever taken in college. 

To give a little background, I am attending SUNY Empire State College studying Dance-Arts Management, and I have been a professional ballet dancer for over twenty years. I retired six years ago from dancing with the Metropolitan Opera. I am a graduate of the National Ballet School in Canada. I have danced professionally with the National Ballet of Canada, San Francisco Ballet, Les Ballet de Monte Carlo, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Pittsburg Ballet Theatre. The last ten years I have been teaching at two schools in New York. I also had been supernumerary with ABT when I was a child, and I even got an opportunity to dance with the company at 16 in ABT’s Nutcracker. 

To work at ABT as an intern has been fulfilling because of all the places I wanted to dance in my career, it has always been ABT. Interning it has allowed me to see people I have not seen in 10 or 20 years. One of my two favorite moments interning with ABT was reconnecting with Kate Lydon; we danced together at SFB. However, we had met years before in NYC with mutual friends at Cafe La Fortuna as students. I was down from Canada, and she was at ABT’s school, and we took photos of that night 20 plus years ago, and I just found the photos last summer.  My second favorite moment was telling Cynthia Harvey that we had already met and we performed together… supering when I was a child in ABT’s Cinderella. 

ABT is the one ballet company that I have always dreamt of working for, and I have loved interning with American Ballet Theatre.

Ian Thatcher

NTC Intern

Spring 2018