As soon as I walked into the ABT dancers lounge for intern orientation, I knew I was in a very special place. The newly renovated lounge was one of the most beautiful rooms I had ever seen, and it was filled with people whose passion about the arts and excitement to be a part of ABT was tangible. We spent the morning learning about our day to day duties and internship guidelines, but I left orientation completely unaware of just how amazing this internship experience would be.
Joining ABT in the summer as a patron services intern was a very intense and exciting experience; ABT’s longest season is an eight-week run at the Metropolitan Opera House from May to July, and so I started in the busiest time for patron ticketing. For the first few weeks of the internship, I spent the majority of my time creating and tracking ticket order forms for donors and preparing for the many special events that are hosted during the Spring Season. I also had the amazing opportunity to design several save the dates and invitations for various special events.
The aspect of this internship I most enjoyed was seeing all of the work we did at 890 come alive at the Met. For example, one of my favorite days of the internship came in the second week, when all of the development interns helped run the Golden Circle Luncheon, which is a lunch, auction, and dress rehearsal for 300 donors at the Met. We arrived at the stage door early in the morning to start implementing all of the plans created at 890. Throughout the day, the Grand Tier of the Met transformed into the development staff’s incredible vision of the event. I had the opportunity to create many of the designed materials for the event, and it was surreal to see them laid out at each place setting.
Over the coming weeks, I had many more chances to interact with the Met. One day I was assigned to get the autographs of every dancer as they came out of company class at the Met, so I had the opportunity to interact with a large percent of ABT’s dancers. On other days, development interns could sign up to work the Belmont room in the Met, which is a lounge for donors to purchase food at intermission. On the nights I chose to work in this room, I was able to speak with the donors whose ticket orders I filled out at 890, and I also received free tickets of my own to watch the show.
I also assisted at the AMEX champagne toast, which was an event held during the Friday Evening performance of Swan Lake. The event went late into the night, and by the time it was over, another intern and I were two of the last people in the building. While we were walking through the Met to collect our belongings, all of the lights in the building turned off. At first it was jarring to be in the Met when it was pitch-black and empty, but navigating through the depths of the Met to find our way out was quite the adventure, and it ended up being one of my favorite moments from the summer.
I am so grateful to have interned at ABT this summer – my experience was better than I could have ever imagined!
Claire Ganiban
Patron Services Intern
Summer 2019
abtinterns 
Leave a Reply