Silicon Valley Ballet folds after 30 years

Silicon Valley Ballet — which one year ago changed its name from Ballet San Jose and recapitalized — has ceased operations, ending a 30-year run as the primary Bay Area dance company south of San Francisco.

Following a series of performances at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts in February, 30 union dancers were let go and the remaining two programs this season, “Bodies of Technology” and “Alice in Wonderland,” have been canceled, said Millicent Powers, a board member.

Artistic Director Jose Manuel Carreño, a dashing Cuban-born leading man for American Ballet Theatre (ABT), who had been brought in to revitalize SVC two years ago, is no longer with the company.

The front office, about a dozen full and part-time staffers, has been laid off, and operations at a 20,000 square-foot office building the company runs in downtown San Jose, are winding down, Powers said.

All of this comes after the struggling dance company broke even in 2015 for the first time, Powers said, after a $3.5 million emergency capitalization campaign was met.

Though it is known within the dance community that SVB was struggling, and had no endowment to fall back on, the news still came as a shock, especially after a fall run of “Giselle,” followed by a successful tour of Spain, funded by Spanish interests.

To get dancers seen in another country is quite significant, said Wayne Hazzard, executive director of Dancers’ Group, which supplies support services to the dance community.

In 2000, the Cleveland schedule was discontinued and Ballet San Jose earned critical acclaim under the artistic direction of Nahat.

The annual budget was around $5.5 million, half coming from the school and ticket sales, and half from philanthropy.

Critics on social media cast the technology community as the villain, in not supporting a fine art that changed its name to Silicon Valley Ballet, as a desperate appeal for support from tech.

The lone survivor in the shutdown are the 450 students in the Silicon Valley Ballet School, under the direction of Rawson, 42.

The school will be under new ownership but using SVB facilities; and Rawson hopes to bring back the 20 full-time and part-time faculty, staff and pianists and pianists that were let go in February.