Leadership Team: Ali Taylor Lange

As we come to the final month of the BBT 40th Anniversary Blog, we feature interviews with BBT’s leadership. We are delighted to begin the series with Ali Taylor Lange, BBT’s Executive Director

How old were you when you started dancing?

I was three and my sister got put into ballet. The joke was always that she was so clumsy that Mom put her in ballet. She’s three years older than me, so anything she did I wanted to do.

Were you nervous, the first time that you went?

I have no recollection of it actually. I don't really remember ballet much before six or seven years old. We'd have to ask my parents.

Do you still take classes now?

I did much more when I first came to BBT, but I haven’t in the last couple of years taken any kind of regular class. I took a little bit at home when the pandemic started, but it's very hard for me to get into the space of ballet when I’m at work, essentially, and I don't really feel like I want to go to any other school then BBT so the sum of those two things means I'm not really taking class right now.

The thing I noticed is that I’d be in the middle of a plié and a faculty member would come over and ask a question about payroll or a question about a program because it's the kind of thing where they’re like ‘Oh, I meant to send this you an email, but since you’re here, I had this question…,’ which is great, it just made it really hard to do ballet so I don’t. And I feel like such a traitor, if I were to go anywhere else.

What different styles of dance have you been interested in other than ballet?

I was way big into tap dancing when I was a little kid. It was so much cooler than anything else in the world. And I still harbor dreams of being an awesome hip hop dancer. I'm very much not a hip hop dancer but, if I could be excellent at any kind of dance style that would be it. Whenever you watch hip hop dancers, you can always tell which ones have a ballet background. I've never overcome it. It's like skiing. That's a huge passion of mine, and for some reason it doesn't feel as incongruous to ballet training as hip hop.

What do you feel was the single thing that your parents did to help you with your training?

There's an element to my childhood and how I was raised that really encouraged me to test the limits of my strength. I feel like sometimes people shy away from being tired, or sore feeling like it is something that needs to be fixed or avoided. But growing up, being tired or sore was something to be proud of - you can really only tell where your line is by crossing it now and then. Otherwise, you’ll never know what you can actually accomplish. So that frame of reference, I think, is a bit of what you need for ballet. You need that drive and you need to enjoy the fitness and the rigor and pushing over that hump to the next level. I think that dancers really value that and they really see it.

Were your parents dancers also?

No, not at all. They learned about it mostly through me and my sister who stuck with it until like eighth grade. I went to a really, really small school so I got moved into her level when she was in ninth grade, and I was in sixth grade and that was kind of the end of it for her.

Did you have dreams of becoming a professional?

I did. I trained and believed in it, all the way through high school. And then I was sort of too chicken to really see it all the way through, and my parents were pretty unsupportive of the concept. There was a pretty big push to go to college. so I went to college. I entered as a dance major with the agreement with my parents that I would not graduate with the dance major, so I graduated with a journalism degree.

I have never written about dance. I enjoy the practice of it and the community of it and I enjoy watching people participate in it much, much more than I ever really enjoy watching a performance. Even when I was dancing my favorite part, the appeal was rehearsal, followed by class, followed very far behind by performance. I never liked it.

That's interesting because most people like the performance aspect much more than rehearsing.

Yeah, put me in a rehearsal any day of the week and I'm like a happy camper. Put me in a show and it's not torture, but it's not super interesting.

When you were in college, did you find opportunities to dance?

For the first two years of college I danced pretty heavily. I definitely went from a rigorous training schedule in high school and maintained it. I was in some kind of dance class from like 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. pretty much every day, for the first few years of college, and then I just walked away and didn't go back to dancing for six years.

Have you ever regretted walking away?

No, not at this point. I think I regret not insisting in high school that I at least audition and give a professional career a shot, but by the time I was in college, I had moved beyond it as an option.

What drew you to BBT?

I saw that kids at BBT get to have an experience that I wished I'd had when I was their age. I like how good the training is. I think the faculty are pretty extraordinary and the opportunities the kids have to participate in and perform are incredible.

BBT has definitely expanded in every kind of way since I first started here. The scope of the organization from when I was first introduced to it to how it is now is hugely different, but a lot of it is really similar. The focus on having a group of kids love what they're doing and pursue it at the highest level – that process and the way BBT goes about that process is super special.

I like the fact that the dancers really genuinely like each other. I like getting to see the phases that the dancers go through as they engage with ballet. You can see it in the kids, but also the adults as they find that they become really passionate and find their niche within it. I like that I'm in a role where I'm working on the strategy of it – there's a different thing that needs to be solved every day.

It sounds like you found the perfect job for yourself that you really truly enjoy doing.

I did, which is so ironic, because I promised myself I would never work for an arts organization. When I was 15, I was positive that I would never work for an arts organization. I’d talk to other dancers, and they’d tell me what they're going to do in life, and what they're absolutely not going to do in life. I always think about that and smile because I wonder how many of them are going to have a similar story like mine.

Given where BBT is right now – coming through this whole pandemic period and the changes BBT has made – where do you think BBT will land 5 to 10 years from now?

I actually see everything getting bigger and brighter for the school. I think that when this [pandemic period] ends, which it will eventually do at some point, everybody's going to come to the work with a real awareness of how appreciative they are of it. I think that the dancers will really dig in and their technique will really expand. I think that Robert, in a lot of ways, is going to soak up that energy it will gel into what will be a huge explosion, for the school.

A lot of it will center around the Nutcracker. I think that the production is very exciting and I'm looking forward to seeing it take shape and how we're able to rewrite a lot of the baggage and stereotypes that traditionally come with the Nutcracker. I'm also really excited to see how the training incorporates a lot of what I see Robert choreographing into the piece, I mean watching it in the park, there's a lot of coordination and a lot of level changes and information that the dancers are being asked to do for the Nutcracker that is going to be really key in how they look at training.

I also see a bigger youth division, a lot more adult classes and a lot of growth. I'd love to see more styles of dance available for adult classes and a lot of community rentals bringing the Bay Area arts community into the BBT studios. As the Studio Company settles into doing a collaboration with another arts organization every year, I see this as a very exciting performance. I’d love to see this expand beyond the Bay Area, maybe the dancers go on a mini tour. As for a 10-year plan, I don't know – 10-year plans get pretty wild.

What's the biggest change that you've seen?

The biggest change is probably that the kids' dreams are bigger, for themselves either around ballet or just in general. I think that the school has been able to talk about professional careers more openly. There was a feeling when I first started BBT that we were like this hidden gem school and when you talk to the kids it was almost like it was an accident that they were fabulously trained. There wasn't a collective awareness of, ‘I worked really hard for 12 years and I spent every day and every Saturday at the school and now I’m an exceptional dancer, and I want to go do this profession.’ That ethos didn't exist. There is an empowerment now with these kids that is very special.

I’m sure you danced the Nutcracker like every single ballet school. What was your favorite dance?

Oh, Robert's going to be so disappointed in this answer. Okay, a couple things. My school wasn't big enough to have a Nutcracker until I was a sophomore in high school, so I did not have as many Nutcracker years as most people would have. I think I've done more Nutcrackers with BBT than any other place.

I love the ballerina doll. That was my favorite thing that I danced. Because you got to wear clip-on curls and it bounced around and you had a big green bow on your head and I thought it was the coolest thing. But I always wanted to dance the Arabian Coffee and I never got the part. So that's always been the nemesis piece that I don't have out of my system because I never got to do it.

What is your favorite Nutcracker music?

I'm not a huge Tchaikovsky fan in general, but the Snow Pas music is lovely. And growing up, we didn’t have a Snow Pas de Deux, so I only came to really hear that music on repeat with BBT’s Nutcracker.

In the New Nutcracker, you're going to have a Snow Pas de Deux?

There is a Snow Pas, and it's actually currently in development this week as we're talking. One of the things that we're doing with the Nutcracker is a lot of dismantling of gender stereotypes. Robert’s choreographing everything so that most roles can be played by either gender. And I'm super excited to have men and women snowflakes, which I think is going to be very cool.

If there was a ballet that you could have performed in, what would it be?

Romeo and Juliet. I think it has the best story, the best music, good costume options, it’s very tragic. I appreciate the melodrama of the situation.

What would you be doing if you didn’t have this job?

I really do love what I'm doing but, I would be writing novels for sure.

Have you ever thought about doing both?

I've tried. BBT is like 10 to 12 hours a day kind of work, so the novel writing doesn't happen.