GO Getter: Ashley Paige Williams

The Springfield Ballet's interim director is helping the local dance organization stretch and grow.

Ashley Paige Williams, 26, is the interim director of the Springfield Ballet, one of the host of arts organizations to call the Creamery Arts Center home. With a degree from the University of Oklahoma, Ashley is well trained—not only in ballet, but in ballet administration (she uses the big word “pedagogy”), which she hopes will help her land the full-time gig in Springfield. Until then, however, she’s busy hatching big plans for the Ballet’s spring performances, as well as this weekend’s performances of The Nutcracker. (For performance details, see p. 30.) We caught her between rehearsals to see what’s crackin’.

Where were you before you came to Springfield?
I went to the University of Oklahoma for my undergrad degree, and a ballet company in southern New Hampshire hired me out of college, so I moved to northern Massachusetts and performed with the Northern Ballet Theatre.

So southern New Hampshire is a big area for ballet?
Boston is. [Northern Ballet Theatre] is the only professional company in New Hampshire, but they pulled audiences mostly from northern Massachusetts… I performed in that company for for three years.

Was coming back to the Midwest something you were looking to do?
It was the job opportunity. I did enjoy living in New England, but it wasn’t too big of a transition because I was familiar with the Midwest.

Since you’ve been here, what are your feelings about the ballet’s footprint in the community?
I think they have a great opportunity. The dancers have a lot of dedication and commitment. I think they’re in a good place.

How educated are Springfield citizens on ballet in general?
I would like to build the community’s awareness about ballet, and how much hard work goes into it, what it entails to be a professional dancer and put on professional productions. I think they have an appetite for it here, but I would like to bring a bit more of the education, so they know more of the background of ballet.

Pop culture likes to portray ballet as being “stuffy”, all those things I’m sure you battle every day. What would you say to those people so they know, “No, it’s engaging because…”
It’s portrayed as being stuffy because in the classical ballet era, the dancers performed for royalty, that’s who the productions were choreographed to please. Those are the productions that carry over to being the famous productions of ballet—The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty. Now in the current era of ballet it can go all over the place. In the ’80s, one of the famous ballets performed by the Joffre Ballet was Billboards, which was performed to Prince music. In the spring we’re going to be performing some of those contemporary pieces.

Any specifics?
I’ll be choreographing two, and we’ll have a guest choreographer coming in—Claire Andrews from Florida—and then we’ll also be doing Swan Lake Act II. It’ll be a mixed bill; one performance with four different ballets, April 11-13.