Ballet chair outlines vision

“WE have a lot of ambition but we also have to consolidate.”

Those words sum up the focus of Ingrid Puzey as she steers Western Australia’s state ballet company into a new era.

For most people, the big talking point at the WA Ballet this year has been the decision to not renew the contract of long-serving artistic director Aurelien Scannella.

For Ms Puzey, the focus is on the company’s four strategic pillars.

“We need to be realistic, we aren’t the Australian Ballet,” she said.

“We need those strategic pillars in place.”

She said this encompassed all aspects of the company’s operations.

“It’s about bringing rigour to the financial side, bringing rigour to how we think about international touring and focusing on people and culture and how we can have consistent improvement,” she said.

There would also be an increased focus on access and outreach, with a new foundation being established to support regional programs.

“We want to grow what we are doing outside of what you see on stage,” she said.

“We are going to do a lot more in schools.”

Ms Puzey also signalled a cultural shift at the company, driven by a board that is going through a major rebuild.

“What we are trying to do, in a big picture sense, is break down what has built up within West Australian Ballet over a long period of time, (that) is a silo thing,” she said.

“We want to stop this artistic versus executive.

“The artists are upstairs, the executives are downstairs, there is already that physical difference but also within departments.”

Ms Puzey said executive director Lauren Major was driving this change.

The company was also planning to hire a chief operating officer “so we go across departments rather than each individually reporting”.

“There is nothing surprising in that but for West Australian Ballet that is not something that I believe, and the rest of the board believes, has been done before effectively,” she said.

Big changes

Ms Puzey acknowledges the changes over the past year have not always been welcomed. In particular, she agreed Mr Scannella wanted to stay and achieve more.

“Yes, he did, and I think that is fair to say. “Yes, lots of people were surprised and lots of people didn’t like it but lots of people did.” The pivotal decision was taken four months ago, at a time when the board had only a handful of long-serving directors, led by Ms Puzey and Margit Mansfield.

The company’s deputy chair, John Palermo, has subsequently resigned from the board. Ms Puzey insists the process was “rigorous and lengthy”, saying the board had numerous conversations over a period of time.

The decision was taken as Mr Scannella’s contract came to an end, coinciding with 10 years as artistic director.

“We felt that was a good time to honour and celebrate his incredible impact on the company,” she said.

“It was time for a change in artistic vision and leadership.

“And it coincided with the change in arts policy and what the government was looking for.”

WA Ballet is planning a “big celebration” for Mr Scannella in October ahead of him finishing at the end of the year.

“I’m sure he will go to a bigger and more exciting position,” she said.

Asked if that revealed a lack of ambition by WA Ballet, Ms Puzey said it was realistic.

“He is ready to go to a big ballet company and we are just not a big ballet company.”

For context, WA Ballet has grown to have about 45 dancers, whereas the Australian Ballet has 70.

A key factor in the WA Ballet’s growth has been philanthriopic support, led by patron of private giving Alexandra Burt.

“Alex and Julian Burt and the Wright Burt Foundation have been incredible supporters,” Ms Puzey said.

“They are extremely important to us and very supportive of arts and culture in this state and they should be celebrated for that.”

Asked about chatter that the Burts had sought more detailed reporting from the ballet company, Ms Puzey said they continued to have a very close relationship.

“The way the Wright Burt Foundation manages their giving is totally structured, always has been.”

Board rebuild

Ms Puzey said one of her priorities was to rebuild the capability of the board.

The latest addition to the board will be the head of Wesfarmers’ Kleenheat business, Tanya Rybarczyk, who starts this month.

Other recruits this year include financial adviser Andrea Morgan and former Art Gallery of WA director Alan Dodge while Suzanne Ardagh started late last year.

“I want to find two more, I want the board to be 10,” Ms Puzey said.

The rebuild comes after multiple exits over the past 18 months, including Mr Palermo, who recently started as chair of the Royal Perth Hospital Medical Research Foundation.

Other exits include former Woodside executives Sherry Duhe (who was chair until June 2022) and Amy Nielsen (who transferred to Houston) plus Karratha-based Megan Wood-Hill.

Ms Duhe’s formal handover to Ms Puzey (in June last year) came nearly six months after she took up a new role in Melbourne, as chief financial officer at gold miner Newcrest.

It also came one day after the surprise exit of executive director Olivier David, who had been in the role for just 12 months.

As well as multiple people changes, WA Ballet has gone through a shift in corporate supporters.

Woodside Energy had been principal sponsor for the past decade – that was reflected in Woodside nominees chairing the board over this period.

Woodside is now one of three ‘lead partners’ alongside the Roy Hill Community Foundation and Wesfarmers Arts.

It has also shifted its focus, to become the lead investor in the new regional development fund.

Ms Puzey said the foundation was designed to deliver ongoing and sustainable development opportunities for regional WA.

“There has been a tendency, across the arts sector, to react to funding,” she said.

“We get funding from a particular corporate sponsor to go to a particular community.

“We want to change that.”

The fund will assist with the maintenance and growth of regional access and outreach activities and shape them around community needs.

Beneficiaries of the fund will be primarily young people in regional communities – with a distinct focus on education, wellbeing and talent pathway development.

Ms Puzey said the fund would not just focus on dancers.

It would also look to support people learning about back-stage production, lighting and so on.

“We want to allow those people to get experience with a ballet company,” she said.

Financials

WA Ballet posted a net loss of $762,000 for the year to December 2022 on total income of $14.4 million, making it WA’s eighth largest arts organisation.

That followed unusually strong profits in the two previous years of $2.5 million and $3.3 million respectively.

They were an aberration – looking at its net result over the past decade, it has incurred losses in seven of 10 years.

While it is not a profit-making venture, it does need to be financially sustainable.

Like many other arts companies, WA Ballet performed unusually well during COVID as it qualified for extra government support, including JobKeeper, and had reduced costs because of fewer performances.

Ms Puzey said the pandemic has had a lasting impact on audience behaviour.

“The propensity to buy tickets has changed,” she said, with people less likely to subscribe and purchases being much more spontaneous and last minute.

“That makes it much harder to plan.”

Ms Puzey said the FY22 result partly reflected the company’s commitment to two expensive productions, Swan Lake in conjunction with Barry Maguire and Goldberg Variations.

Goldberg excelled artistically but did not sell well.

With net assets of $20.4 million, the company remains in a strong financial position. Ms Puzey said her job was to look after the whole of the company.

“You can’t put Swan Lake on stage without a really good marketing team and a really good production team and a really good philanthropy team, it takes everybody,” she said.

Her role is to also meet the needs of different stakeholders.

“We want you to come into the theatre and be swept up in what you see but we don’t want it to be inaccessible,” she said.

“We want ballet to be everyone, we don’t want it to be this elite mystical art form.”

She agreed there was an inherent tension between the company’s different goals.

“It has been ever thus and will be ever more, that helps drive the creativity,” she said.

“It’s how you manage that to bring out the best in that tension.”