Ballet West’s Breaking Pointe

By Sheri Candler

The production is so excited to see the new reality series on Joffrey alum Adam Sklute’s Ballet West called Breaking Pointe. It is a 6 part series on the drama of being in a major ballet company produced by BBC Worldwide Productions and it is billed as being nothing like the dance competition shows currently on air. This show focuses on 10 dancers in the company and shares the experience of all the hard work, training, rehearsals, injuries and, yes, the competition each feels toward the others in the company. The show also follows the dancers home to give audiences a sense of them as people.

Though we interviewed Adam Sklute a few months ago, he couldn’t mention the series at the time because it hadn’t been publicly announced by the CW. He is also featured in the film and in an interview excerpt he talks about what he took from his direct contact with Robert Joffrey. Sklute was one of the last two dancers Joffrey chose for his company before his death.

“What Robert Joffrey did for me with my own work as a dancer and now as a director was really guide the way I look at the art form of ballet.  I met Robert Joffrey late in his life and I did not have as close a contact with him as many other dancers and the artistic staff members, but I admired the man so much.  I studied what he did and how he presented things.”

“As a teacher now, I try and emulate his whole way of being.  He was a marvelous teacher.  Always patient, very challenging, very demanding, required absolute precision and perfection in everything that one did.  But was always good humored about it.  Always calm.  I never saw him get angry at all.  I mean it was an amazing thing.  Robert Joffrey was an amazing politician, also.  This is something that now being an artistic director myself, I see how much one has to be a politician.”

“Robert Joffrey had an eye for detail like no one else.  I was amazed that he could just see the tiniest little detail on the side of the stage and tell one of his staff members to fix it or fix it himself.  He would do it.  And again, that’s how I’ve always tried to live my professional life. A very, very innovative man.  Robert Joffrey really infused my whole way of looking at the art form of ballet.”

Watch Adam Sklute in this clip and then check out Breaking Pointe tomorrow night on the CW.

Adam will also be participating in our Salt Lake City screening on June 19. Come to the screening and meet him in person.