A Conversation with Jeffrey Bentley of the Kansas City Ballet

Date: November 20, 2006

Author: Kauffman Center

When Jeffrey Bentley, executive director of the Kansas City Ballet, was eight years old, his mother took him to see the New York Ballet perform George Balanchine’s ballet “Apollo.” Jacques d’Amboise danced the role of Apollo and “mystical” was the only work Bentley could come up with to describe his experience.

“I seriously can’t tell you why an eight-year-old from Paterson, New Jersey came away so smitten, so committed to learning this art form.  But that’s precisely when I started training for the ballet. There was magic to the experience.” 

And now Bentley is thrilled about the opportunity to create many such life-transforming experiences at the new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

“The Kauffman Center will provide us the means to complete a full arc of artistic experience for Kansas City audiences,” Bentley explains.   “The goal of a performing arts event is to begin the experience at the earliest possible moment for the participants.  It begins long before patrons actually arrive at the theater.”

Bentley even gets excited talking about audience experience starting with flawless and flexible ticket purchase to events at the Kauffman Center. Then he echoes architect Moshe Safdie’s intention, talking about patrons arriving at the center and parking “without a lot of sturm and drang.”  In their minds, Kansas Citians will arrive at the proscenium theater in the Kauffman Center feeling light, relaxed and positively tingling with excitement.  “You find yourself in wonderful seats with great sight lines, sitting close to the dancers and all the theatrical nuances a first-rate stage can provide.  The Kauffman Center will greatly enhance many aspects of attending a performing arts event.”

Why is this so important? “Well,” Bentley continues, “when just getting to the theater and parking is a struggle and the venue is less than ideal, with insufficient acoustics and sight lines, the onus is completely on the artists to make it a good experience.  The artistic element should be part of a total experience—an interaction with the arts that can be as exciting as that I had as an eight-year-old.” 

Bentley stresses that the Kansas City Ballet dancers are up to the challenges presented by the world-class Kauffman Center.  Dancers need more time performing on stage, before an audience.  “We say that dancers learn technique in the studio but they become artists on stage.”

Currently, there are not enough available dates to go around, since the Opera, the Ballet and the Symphony all share the Lyric Theatre.  Once the Kauffman Center is open, the Ballet plans to immediately expand from three seasons annually to four, plus “Nutcracker.”  In addition, each season will be longer and include two weekends of performances instead of just one.
 
To have an expanded season within a beautiful, artfully designed facility positions Kansas City performing arts groups to do what they know is possible, Bentley says.  “We know the arts to be providers of life transforming experiences.  We’ll be able to have the opportunity to deliver that within the Kauffman Center…and we truly can’t wait.”