Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Nathan Bland with me. Hello, Nathan.
Nathan Bland: Hi, Toni. Thanks for having me.
Toni: How are you?
Nathan: I’m good, thank you.
Toni: Good. Nathan, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Nathan: I am a professional ballet dancer, and for the last three years I’m the owner of Berks Ballet Theatre Conservatory of Dance, which is Reading’s premiere classical ballet school. I’m also the Executive Director of Berks Ballet Theatre, which is our nonprofit performing Company. We keep very busy. Coming up next weekend, December 20 and 21 is our annual production of “The Nutcracker.” It’s at the Scottish Rite Cathedral. We had our fall show. We have our winter show coming up in March. We keep very busy. I’m also dancing in the ballet as well, so I’ll be dancing Cavalier with the Sugar Plum Fairies, so I keep busy taking class myself and teaching.
Toni: Thank you for fitting us in for the Get Inspired! Project!
Nathan: Thank you for having me.
Toni: Let’s go into the Project. What does inspiration mean to you?
Nathan: I think that everything has inspiration, especially in what I do. When I’m teaching the kids I see the inspiration in them within what we’re doing in class and every little thing that they learn. I get inspired when I’m teaching the little ones and from week to week and they remember what we’ve been working on. That inspires me that they have that goal to want to get better.
Toni: What does inspiration look like?
Nathan: That’s a hard one to answer. For me, inspiration looks like hard work.
Toni: Okay.
Nathan: That might sound a little odd, but I feel like if someone is putting a lot of hard work into something, that inspires me to want to make them work even harder and achieve their goals faster. I feel like when I see someone going above and beyond what I’ve asked them to do or what they think they should be doing or is more than I thought they should be doing, that makes me inspired to work even more with them.
Toni: How about for yourself? How do you take what inspiration looks like and also how you are inspired and put that into practice here in Berks County?
Nathan: Taking it to the next level. Berks Ballet Theatre has been around for almost 40 years now, and it’s always been a thriving art organization in the community, but I feel like we’re taking it to the next level each year. I feel like I see the inspiration of the dancers and the hard work, and I see that our Board of Directors is really dedicated to making the organization grow, and that makes me want to continue to do that as well – taking all of these steps and creating more performance opportunities for the dancers; getting out into the community, bringing outreach, bringing other people who maybe have never seen dance to bring them to dance so that they’re inspired.
Toni: So it really is almost a 360 approach now with you. You inspire others to work harder, and you also are inspired to work harder yourself when you know it’s being appreciated.
Nathan: Correct.
Toni: You do that primarily with the Company and the nonprofit.
Nathan: Yes. We have almost 30 dancers in the Company, and they range from 11 to 17. The older ones are there almost 30 hours a week. When I see that dedication of the 30 hours a week at the studio, that’s on top of schoolwork and friends, and it shows me that they are dedicated, and what we are doing is appreciated, so we want to make sure they know that they’re appreciated by not just sitting back and saying, “We do this and that, but let’s add this show. Let’s do another performance. Let’s take them here.”
Toni: Outside of ballet, when was the last time you were inspired? Can you think of when you felt it, you knew, “I like that. I’m inspired by that.”?
Nathan: Yes. It probably had to do with some kind of performance or dance that I witnessed. Actually, I saw the Disney movie “Maleficent,” and I was very inspired by the quality of the production. I felt there was an integrity to tell this story that’s never been told before, and it was done so well. I wasn’t expecting to even really like the movie, but I just saw it a couple of weeks ago, and I was inspired by the depth that went into telling this story that maybe was never meant to be told.
Toni: Who in Berks County inspires you?
Nathan: That’s easy. The dancers really do inspire me. The girls in our Company do inspire me. Even when they’re tired, they want to work hard. They want to be better than they were the day before in rehearsal. It’s true. They are the ones that inspire me to keep going and push forward.
Toni: Anybody else in Berks County inspire you? Are there teachers or colleagues?
Nathan: My colleagues who I work with at the Conservatory and also within the Company. Kelly Barber, who is the Artistic Director of the Company. She is there every day as well teaching and rehearsing. We’re there almost seven days a week, every week throughout the year.
Some of the parents also. There’s a lot of parents who are very involved with the Company – not only in terms of helping with fundraising and things, but we have a few moms who are in the costume room every night or a few nights a week, every weekend, making sure the costumes look how they should look for stage, making sure that nothing’s going to fall off, fitting them to each dancer. The dedication that they put forth for their child, which is in turn dedication for Berks Ballet Theatre, is quite inspiring, the amount of hours they put in on top of their jobs and all of that as well.
Toni: Again, that common theme with you is that hard work – the unexpected hard work is what I’m hearing the theme is with you. Whether it was the movie, the unexpected outcome of the movie of hard work to make sure the integrity of the story was there, to the people around you who are working hard and pushing you to work hard.
Nathan: I think it comes from my parents and that hard work wasn’t a question. It was an expectation. Sometimes I feel like we always look for the easy way to do things, but there’s not always an easy way to do things. Sometimes you just need to put in the hard work, and you reap the benefits. Once you reap the benefits, then you realize the hard work was with it.
Toni: Absolutely. And sometimes, there’s an unexpected benefit that happens when you’re working just harder than you thought you would, and then you think, “Wow, that’s fantastic!”
Nathan: It’s true.
Toni: What would you like your legacy to be?
Nathan: I think I would like my legacy to be that everyone has access to the arts. I feel there’s some times that ballet or the symphony is only for certain people, and to me, those things are for every person. You don’t have to wear a tux to see the ballet.
I’m that person that when I’m in New York City, maybe I wasn’t planning on going to see a show, but I found myself a couple of free hours and I saw the show. I’m going to go buy a ticket. I don’t care if I’m wearing flip-flops, shorts, and a tank top. I’m going to go ahead and go in and see that show. Sure, there might be people who are really well dressed, but there’s also other people like me who just on a whim decide to go see something.
I think I would want everyone to know that it’s all-inclusive. There’s something for everybody. It’s not boring. You can always find something exciting within the music, within the sets, within the storyline that will inspire you to take away from that.
Toni: Are you helping to debunk that myth with certain arts? Are you helping to do that now?
Nathan: I would like to think so. We bring in the Olivet Boys and Girls Club. We bring in a few of those children to our shows. They were at “Alice in Wonderland.” They’re coming to “The Nutcracker.” We also bring in some Girl Scouts as well that maybe would not attend these performances without us bringing them in. I would like to expand that into teaching them dance. Maybe not that they’re taking ballet class all the time, but they get exposed to some movements. Not only is movement art, it’s also physical activity, and I think that some people forget that ballet is an art, but it’s also physical and it’s good for you, so even if you’re doing it just for the pure enjoyment, it’s also beneficial to your health.
Toni: Nathan Bland, thank you so much for showing up for the Get Inspired! Project and also helping to tear down the hierarchy of the arts so that everyone has access.
Nathan: Thank you, Toni.
