In what ways is the artistic director of a ballet company similar to the President of the United States?

"What are you supposed to do in four years? All you’re doing is inheriting stuff from before," joked Michael Pink, artistic director of the Milwaukee Ballet, who this season celebrates a decade with the organization.

"It’s not different in any of these institutionalized jobs. You have to deal with what you’re inheriting first. And then you get to start to make your mark, in year three or maybe four."

There is no doubt that Pink has made his mark. Not only has he held the job longer than any other artistic director, he has focused on unprecedented artistic collaborations within Milwaukee’s artistic community and presented original works like "Dracula" and "Peter Pan."

For the Milwaukee Ballet, Pink is paying off. Last year he and Executive Director Dennis Buehler oversaw one of the Milwaukee Ballet’s most successful fiscal years to date. The company performed for over 40,000 patrons during the 2011-12 season, a 20% increase over the previous season. Box office receipts reached $1.7 million.

But the Englishman is unsurprisingly modest about his achievements.

"I’m lucky I avoided the ax," he said. "I must have done something right."

The Milwaukee Ballet will perform Pink’s latest piece, "La Boheme," later this week at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts.

Pink took a break from his grueling rehearsal schedule to talk with OnMilwaukee.com. In an interview in his office, he discussed his career, the future of the Milwaukee Ballet and what he calls the "wild insecurities" of the  industry.

OnMilwaukee.com: What do you think are the most dramatic changes you’ve made in the company? When you started it was known for being a very top-heavy organization, with lots of principal dancers and soloists and so forth.

Michael Pink: Yeah, I don't subscribe to the class structure; I mean especially an organization where there’s so few dancers – if you have 25, 24 dancers, they're all going to have to work equally well and what you want is a diverse team of people and their strengths. I would love all my artists to be just artists. And I changed the whole structure from being principals and soloists and corps – which are just antiquated categories – to just "artist" and "leading artist."

What's that saying – the cream rises to the top.  You see the obvious people that can do those things, and I think we have less ego and less ego issues – we don't have any issues with anybody who assumes they’re greater than anyone else, and that’s lovely. We're all playing our part. But I made that day one - there was a line of people telling me how I was going to run this company to fit in with their schedule, etc. … and I thought that God forbid I should stand in the way of their careers and they should just go pursue their careers ... and they did. (Laughs)

OMC: You’re officially the longest-serving director of the Milwaukee Ballet. What made you want to take this job in the first place 10 years ago?

MP: You know, it was a time in my life and career when I knew I would end up working in America. England has the old-boy network and it’s very, very hard in the theater world – you’re either part of an institutionalized system like the arts, or you’re not. And I’ve always been too much of a naughty boy, and in my youth I used to be very outspoken about the idea of saying, "This is the way we do it and you have to stand in line and wait your turn."

But that’s the way the English system used to work, and frankly to me it was just pointless. And now it’s changed and I’m really pleased, and that’s why the Royal Ballet and Wayne McGregor (resident choreographer of the Royal Ballet) have more radical and different people doing this because they’ve realized, you don’t maintain your audience. The ballet world is no different than the straight theater or opera or symphony in that we have to adapt to our current environment and we’re providing a product, so it better be good and it better be accountable.

OMC: People don’t usually think of ballet as business.

MP: This is a responsible business. And you know, the fact that in the boom years, arts’ charities were viewed as luxury items and people would throw money at them and it was great and you could do lovely things like invite stars to your house and show off and we want to encourage that and get back to that … but it’s still a business and if it’s not managed fiscally well and responsibly then really it’s an insult to the people who are believing in you and giving you the money.

So I think that any arts organization that feels it should exist only because of its self-importance is on the wrong track. And I’m not going to name any names. (laughs)

OMC: You said you have to adapt to your current environment – how do you see your environment? Adapting to an audience that doesn’t want to spend money on tickets anymore?

MP: Well, I mean, that’s your challenge – if you have a product, it’s all about getting your message out and how you promote yourself; I think it’s crucial, and how do you do that with limited funds and what is the message that you want out there and bearing in mind that ultimately we’re not providing a life-saving – it’s not like the medical industry – but we are providing a life-enhancing experience in that we improve the quality of life. It’s about whether people will make that choice and come to us for their two hours of escape.

With my children (Max, 12, and Georgina, 10), I make them come and sit and watch a piano recital and go to the symphony and do those things and they’ve kind of moaned and groaned over time, but now they actually, secretly, really enjoy it. They come and see everything, and if I’m working on a production at the Repertory Theater, they’re in the audience and they’re loving it.

They came to see "Assassins," which I just worked on (with The Milwaukee Rep) and they were the only two kids in the audience. Max knows every single word of every single song, he’s singing the soundtrack, he’s learning it, he’s loving everything and he’s learning history about these people, what they did, and so it’s all very good stuff. So if you can get people in there and give them something to engage them, then we know that the arts really will do something.

OMC: Do you see yourself staying here in Milwaukee for a while?

MP: Well, you know, I have a few more years on this contract and there’s no indication that things would change. But you never know. Whether there’s another move for us in our lives, I don’t know – our children are good, they’re doing well in school and the quality of life is here. We’re not looking for something round the corner.

OMC: What have been your favorite pieces to present?

MP: They’re all so different. In terms of an achievement, "Peter Pan" was great because of the way we produced it and the amount of money that we spent on it, so I think that has set a benchmark and a blueprint for how we’re going to move forward with new work. I really, really enjoyed reworking "Esmeralda" last year. That I really enjoyed, because I’ve always loved that piece; it was a very pivotal time in my life, creating that, and it never quite worked and so I was about to give up on it and I thought, you know, I’ll just rethink it and I’m very pleased with that.

OMC: Are you excited to present "La Boheme?"

MP: I am. Again, it’s a challenge to work with such an incredibly popular score, to try and work beyond the voices and the expectations of the voices – but it’s quite a different piece when you’re listening to it without the singers. It’s a great story to tell and it lends itself brilliantly well to have a work that’s for six people, really.

OMC: You’ve set Puccini’s Mimi and Rodolfo in 1950s Paris – what was behind that decision?

MP: Just period … it’s a far more interesting period to move in. The costumes are glorious. And the story can be set at any time … Paris, I mean, it’s just a promiscuous society full of bohemians who don’t need an awful lot other than to believe in their ability to have fun. I think it translates very well and the same story is very believable in 1950s as it was in 1850.

OMC: What were the challenges in transforming a vocal performance into a dance-based one? How do you make Mimi and Rodolfo mute?

MP: (laughs) I told them to be quiet. You don't need to adapt those characters because, I mean, their story is the same. I really went to the libretto, you know, the original score, and I worked through the libretto and the music so I could really understand what’s going on all the time. Then I had to make the choice about which parts of the music would stay and which parts would go.

I just promised myself I wanted to stay as close to the story as possible and use the music where Puccini has written music specifically to say this and this – I don’t want to reinvent it. I wanted to be honest to it. I did add one scene which isn’t in the opera, and that took some time to find the music. We are using Puccini; it's from two incidental pieces, and that's really a scene to try and help set up a little bit more the nature of their relationship.

OMC: So what’s next for you?

MP: After "La Boheme," the very next week I go to Washington, D.C. and they open "Dracula" (which Pink choreographed), which is great, but sadly I won’t get to rehearse them in any detail because I’m here creating this. I’m delighted that’s going to be in Washington. Very few ballet companies of our size will produce my works … it takes a lot of investment financially and otherwise to produce these works because they just require a lot of people. And yet, if I was to take any of these pieces to the American Ballet Theater, there would be a thousand reasons why it’s not possible, not least because of the fact that it’s made in Milwaukee, so it can’t possibly be that good because it doesn’t come from Russia or it doesn’t come from England.

OMC: Does that attitude exist in the ballet world?

MP: Oh! Oh, of course. It’s just shortsighted. It doesn’t happen in the live theater. When Mark Clements is going around looking for work he doesn’t say, "Oh, I can’t bring this in because it was in a little-known theater in the back of Philadelphia somewhere." Is the work worth doing? Yes? Well, then, let’s do it. It’s just bred in this profession, because it’s born out of wild insecurity and lack of achievement … and, oh, it’s just such a messed-up profession. (laughs) 

OMC: What are you most excited for about bringing "La Boheme" to the stage as a ballet?

MP: Well, success? (laughs) It'd be nice. I think bridging the gap again between the two art forms and showing that just because it's opera, it's not exclusively opera – I'll regard it as a personal achievement if I can pull it off because I think it's a hard one to do and I think that's why it hasn't been done, really, before. It has been done, actually; Simon Dow (former Milwaukee Ballet artistic director) did a production with the Western Australia Ballet, he added a lot of music to build party scenes. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to see if we could keep the gravitas.

And then designing a set that was affordable, practical – I conceived it and drew it and I got Rick Graham (also the set designer for "Peter Pan") to realize it for me. I wanted something that would translate very well and give us a sense of Paris, but also provide us with the space we needed. It's very practical , all this will go onto one truck with the costumes and it will be very affordable to get this from A to B, and with the music and its popularity, I would love to think that other companies would pick this up.