Leadership During Global Crisis
A Conversation with Executive Director Kelly Tweeddale by Dance/USA
âOur opening night would be our closing nightâ
By Lisa Traiger
âIâm running a $52-million ballet company out of my San Francisco apartment,â Kelly Tweeddale said with a rueful laugh last week. âEven though weâre all at home and we might be in our sweats,â she added, âeveryone is working harder than theyâve ever worked in their lives.â Tweeddale especially.The arts manager has 30 years of experience including as the former president of Vancouver Symphony, executive director of the Seattle Opera, along with leadership positions at the Cleveland Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony. In the early 1980s, she began her career as an administrator at an improvisational dance company.
Tweeddale just joined San Francisco Ballet, one of the nationâs oldest dance companies, September 2, 2019, where, as executive director, she oversees 350 employees, including 78 dancers, 49 musicians, faculty and teaching artists at the school, and administrative and artistic staff; at peak season, employees go up to 450 and payroll ranges between $2.3 million and $3 million a month. Then a global pandemic changed everything.
Talk about a first-year trial by fire.
She is undeterred, noting, âIn some ways, having lived through the 2008 financial crisis, many of us feel weâve been through something kind of like this. But, in truth, thereâs nothing like this pandemic. I feel like everything in my career has prepared me for this moment. And nothing has prepared any of us for this moment.â
San Francisco was one of the earliest U.S. jurisdictions to face closures and, ultimately, shelter-in-place orders. The ballet felt the ramifications on the first day. âMarch 6 was opening night of our Midsummer Nightâs Dream. As we were taking the stage, we got the call from the city that they were closing the War Memorial Opera House. Our opening night would be our closing night.â

Navigating Uncertainty
Tweeddale said, âHelgi Tomasson, the company artistic director] and I looked at each other and I said âWeâll either look at this, and say it was the biggest overreach ever or weâll look back at this moment and say it was the most brilliant decision ever.ââ Looking back, she feels fortunate that city leadership made decisions that erred on the side of health and science, even with the overwhelming ramifications those have for the 87-year-old ballet company.
To navigate uncertainty during this trying period, Tweeddale has relied on Tomasson, whose 35-year tenure at the company has been a godsend to her. She also included SFBâs 52-member board, and former dancer-turned-doctor Richard Gibbs, who started the companyâs wellness center, as instrumental in providing guidance to help the organization navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Gibbs runs a free medical clinic in San Francisco and has offered essential advice to Tweeddale and the leadership team as it develops plans and protocols amidst the pandemic. âWe thought about what social-distance seating might look like if that was the next step. Then the shelter-in-place [order] came March 16, to begin on March 17. We had 24 hours to notify everybody in the organization that we would be sheltered in place. That was a game changer.â

Staff and Dancers Come First
Tweeddaleâs next step was personal. She said, âRegardless of everything else, we have to take care of our workforce. This is a public health pandemic. Health care has to be at the forefront and compensation â for our staff and dancers. I donât know how weâre going to do it, but everything else is up for grabs.â
She noted that the company has the ability to meet its obligations through June 30th right now. âWeâre rethinking how we will announce our next season and what will it look like. Weâre going through scenario planning.â
That included making a list of assets, which Tweeddale noted isnât typical to do in a crisis. Among them is the school itself, which has a drive-through carpool lane where parents drop off their kids for class. These days, the ballet is partnering with a food bank that uses the drive through as a weekly popup to serve the community. Dancers and staff volunteer to help with the distribution. âThat keeps us connected with our community. We also are working with providing volunteer support and some staffing support for the free medical clinic for people who donât have health care.â
Looking forward, Tweeddale said, âWeâve set very clear goals for what weâre doing right now. I will say in 2008 at other organizations, I vowed after that experience to never let the balance sheet lead the conversation, because when the balance sheet and the financial sheet lead the conversation, you lose touch with your mission. That doesnât mean you donât have to pay attention. Thereâs reality about what you can afford to do.â The question became: âHow do we lead the organization through this so that we have something on the other side that is committed to the art form? It has to be more than âjust how much money will we lose?ââ
To that end, scenarios to support the dancers have been paramount. While Tweeddale noted that many arts organizations worry about how to get audiences back in theaters, âWe are starting with how do we get the artists back into the studio so they can at least take company class so that they donât lose their entire careers. We want to be ready when the time comes to create again. Thatâs a different approach, we think, because you wonât have audiences if you donât have dancers.â They donât know what that might look like yet, but theyâre brainstorming different models, smaller company classes, taught in shifts, keeping masks on, and other revised health and safety protocols.The leadership team is considering using the wellness center for COVID-19 testing to get the dancers back in the studio. By dividing the company into cohorts: âWeâll have dancers who only take class together and weâll have multiple classes, so if there is an outbreak, we keep it contained.â
While not many companies have the budget and staff of SFB, Tweeddale believes a few approaches sheâs followed can be useful as the field moves forward toward a new normal.

Don't Be Afraid to Break the Rules
First, âThrow away âthis is the way we workâ and be willing to innovate. Be willing to say âyesâ to as many things as you can, because right now weâre in a world of âno.â There's something energizing when you say, âYes, we're going to do this. Weâre going to give it a try.ââ
Next, she urged: âDonât be afraid to break those rules.â For example, the executive team, which had been working for a couple of years on developing a digital stage, had just settled on a three-year-plan shortly before the coronavirus pandemic. That was how long Tweeddale and the executive staff thought it would take to negotiate releases from the unions. âNow all of a sudden we are at year three,â she said. âSometimes it takes a crisis to break the rules. Our partners and our unions see the value. This is an opportunistic moment to do things differently; do not overthink it.â
New Ticket Models
As SFB and companies around the world pivot to online and virtual means of sharing work, Tweeddale acknowledged that as much as every company would like to monetize its online presence, it might be too soon. âWe have a whole community that is discovering [an art form] that they may have forgotten about or never experienced,â she said. âWe need to be benevolent in understanding that this is a welcome mat. There will be time to talk about monetization and it will be critical. But if you think about the digital platform, it was developed based on free access first. Monetization came second. We have to be willing to understand that thatâs how the digital platform works. You have to create value before you can create a paywall. I donât think any of us have the answers yet.â
One model that appeals to her subverts the concept of single ticket sales or the single ticket buyer. âIt might be that the value may not look like a ticket, a ticket buyer. The value might look more like, âI donât want to lose this incredible asset in my community and Iâm going to contribute. When I contribute, I get a certain additional access,â like a membership, with a series of experiences that you get because you care deeply.â
Additionally, Tweeddale and her team have considered what the comeback might entail. âInitially we thought it might be a sequential coming back to the stage and to the audiences. Now we believe that we may be back in fits and starts. That means that we may come back and then there might be an outbreak and we shelter again. We might come back for a year but there might be another type of pandemic that we havenât even thought about yet.â
The idea of managing according to a three- or five-year company plan is a thing of the past. âWeâre talking about how adaptable and agile can we be. Weâve talked about the virtual and physical ticket. When you buy a ticket in the future will it be a physical and virtual ticket? Then, no matter what happens, you have access, which means it is important to archive and capture performances, even if you canât have an audience. This is the time to figure it out.â
Lisa Traiger edits From the Green Room, Dance/USAâs online journal, and writes frequently on dance and the performing arts for publications including Dance, Dance Teacher and Washington Jewish Week. An award-winning arts journalist, she is a former co-president of the Dance Critics Association and holds an MFA in choreography from University of Maryland.
Header Image: Kelly Tweeddale // © Brandon Patoc