Back To The Barre In New Orleans

By Nancy Galeota-Wozny

For Joseph Giacobbe, life after Katrina is full of the joy of dance.

On a sunny Saturday in June, the Giacobbe Academy of Dance is abuzz with action. Dancers are trying on tutus, rehearsing their steps, and preparing for a run-through of an upcoming recital. The mood is unmistakably jubilant. Younger ones in the adjoining studio are rehearsing a dance to a Beatles tune with bright smiles. One would hardly know that just 10 months prior this area experienced a devastating hurricane and that every one of these children had their lives disrupted; most would rather dance than talk about the storm. Near the mirror stands Joseph Giacobbe, a legendary New Orleans ballet teacher. Both he and his students are grateful to be back dancing in their beloved city.

Last August marked the one-year anniversary of the storm—and what a year it’s been. Giacobbe spent a good part of it putting his studios and company back on track. It’s a tale of learning, coping, and persevering, all skills the studio owner holds in abundance. And it’s a good thing too; neither hurricanes nor dance careers are for the faint of heart.

Giacobbe’s story began in 1943, when his two older sisters, Maria and Georgie, opened a small dance studio behind their parents’ grocery store. They were 13 and 14 at the time and determined to share their training with the neighborhood children. The girls continued to train in ballet, tap, and acrobatics, and as their reputation grew, so did the school’s enrollment.

Joseph began dancing at age 6, first under his sisters’ tutelage and later in New York City and Chicago. He began teaching during his last year of high school and continued to do so as a student at Tulane University. After dancing professionally for several years he returned to New Orleans and assumed the role of codirector of the Giacobbe Academy of Dance. In 1967 he and Maria started Delta Festival Ballet, which performs an annual Nutcracker in addition to other events.

In 1993, at the school’s 50th anniversary, Giacobbe was presented with an award from Dance Magazine for outstanding contributions to the profession. Other acknowledgments include the Mayors Arts Award, Dance Educators of America (1993), and a Lifetime Achievement Award from American Dance Awards (1999). Giacobbe Academy students have gone to dance with such companies as American Ballet Theatre and the Boston, Joffrey, New York City, English National, and Pacific Northwest Ballets.

As a native of New Orleans Giacobbe was no stranger to hurricanes. He remembers the time before they had names. “Once the sign for our family dance school flew into the studio behind our home,” he says about a particularly brutal storm in 1947. “Not until Ivan did we ever evacuate.” He weathered Hurricanes Betsy and Camille at home, playing a board game with his friends. He could easily launch into a detailed story of the Mississippi Delta and its canals and levees. Water and growing up in New Orleans go hand in hand.

In the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina, Giacobbe was doing what any school owner does at that time of year: getting ready for the fall opening of his three studios. As artistic director of Delta Festival Ballet, he was in the planning stages for The Nutcracker. He was excited about the upcoming season and the big gala fund-raiser that was slated for early November 2005. The Giacobbes had been working all summer to get things in place. “It was going to be a lovely affair—live music, dancing, and a silent and live auction,” says Giacobbe. “Funds were to go to upcoming performances of the Delta Festival Ballet and the New Orleans Youth Ballet, our resident professional company and our pre-professional company, [respectively].

“I never feared something like Katrina would ever happen; I lived through so many and we always got through them,” continues Giacobbe. “During the days before Hurricane George, I remember being warned that the big one was coming and that the city was going to be 30 feet underwater. The eye of the storm was aimed at the mouth of the Mississippi. It would have flooded the city for sure.” It never did. George made a turn and the city was saved once again. Ivan wasn’t so nice, and Giacobbe considered it a dress rehearsal for Katrina.

When Katrina was looking like a category 5 storm, Giacobbe and his wife, Gwen, decided to head to Little Rock, Arkansas. They taught their last class of the summer on August 27, just two days before Katrina struck. Thinking it would be like all the rest of the storms, the couple took only a three-day supply of clothing with them. The dancers and students scattered around the country. In Little Rock Giacobbe learned what happened when the levees broke and 80 percent of the city flooded. “We watched the devastation by the unexpected floodwaters, wept, and worried for the remaining citizens of our beloved city,” he wrote in an email message to friends and family. Uncertain of his next move, he tried to cancel the ad for the Nutcracker auditions, not knowing that the city daily, The Times-Picayune, was completely underwater.

A week after the storm Giacobbe was able to get back to New Orleans and check on his home and studios. He went to his home first. “It was funky,” he says. “We had about eight inches of water in the downstairs. We brought charcoal to help with the smell. Tree limbs were scattered everywhere and the pool looked like an oil well.”

All three of the studio locations—in the neighboring towns of Metairie, Slidell, and Mandeville—had been hit hard, but miraculously the schools themselves fared well. “It was as if there was a shield around it. The building next to the Metairie studio was missing an entire wall. It looked like a war zone,” recalls Giacobbe. “In fact, New Orleans reminded me of what Europe was like after World War II.” Minor leaks were the only damage. Looting was a larger concern. Ballet master Richard Rholden and DFB character dancer Harry Novellino guarded the main studio in Metairie. Novellino stayed in the studio through the month of September. “He was our guard dog,” Giacobbe says.

As Rholden and Novellino opened the studio door, to their surprise the phone was ringing. David Howard was calling to check in, as did Bob Stern, a former publisher of Dance Magazine. Giacobbe experienced a moving outpouring of concern from all ends of the dance world.

The warehouse was not so lucky. Two feet of water was enough to damage most of the sets. Moisture wicked up the lightweight wood, damaging most of the sets beyond repair, including the Robert O’Hearn Nutcracker set that Giacobbe had purchased from Pacific Northwest Ballet. In a stroke of good fortune, the costume mistress had taken some of the Nutcracker costumes out for repairs, thus saving them from damage. Along with the sets went props, costumes for other ballets, furniture, tools, construction materials, and fabric.

The Giacobbes returned to New Orleans in late September and considered their options. With so many people homeless or displaced, who would be sending their children to dance lessons in the months following the storm? But Giacobbe kept a positive outlook. “I remember my mother telling me about the Depression,” he says. “It was hard times, yet everyone found a quarter for their kids to come to dance class.” He never let himself believe that Katrina would be the end of the dance legacy his family had built over 63 years. “After assessing our losses, we realized it was more important and productive to appreciate our blessings—what wasn’t lost, not only in [terms of] property, but in lives,” he says. “We are truly among the lucky ones, and we learned quickly to appreciate that.”

When Giacobbe heard that public schools would reopen in Metairie, he knew his studios had to open as well. On October 3, all three studios resumed operations, only a month after their scheduled opening. Parents helped notify students and everyone tried to get the word out. Giacobbe took a photograph of the students holding a huge banner that proclaimed “Yes, We’re Open.”

The school owner remembers the first post-Katrina classes well. “Of course we started with a group hug,” he says. He then told the children to go to the barre and take up where they had left off. “We wanted to give our [students] a sense of normalcy in this most abnormal of worlds,” he says. “Many of [them] returned to us unharmed and eager to dance.” Getting back to dance class may have been the most healing activity for these kids who had had their lives disrupted. Giacobbe told the children that someday they would have an amazing story to tell their grandchildren, that they had survived the storm of a century but it was time to get back to the work and art of dance. “I was not going to dwell on Katrina, but you [couldn’t] ignore it either. The parents were so grateful that we had returned.”

Giacobbe was surprised at how quickly students returned to class. Assembling the faculty took some time, however, and class schedules needed some rearranging. Running a dance company and three dance studios is an enormous job. Doing all that and coping with the storm of the century is even tougher. Living in a near ghost town and dealing with a damaged home and a flooded warehouse, Giacobbe managed to cope on the “one day at a time” principal and the positive energy of returning students. His surroundings were daily reminders that many around him had lost everything. Knowing that some of his students’ families might be going through hard times, he offered scholarships. The Capezio Foundation provided assistance, too, giving dance supplies to those in need.

In April 2006 Delta Festival Ballet performed for the first time since the disaster. The concert was appropriately called “A Time to Dance” and featured former students Tobin Eason and Jacqueline Reyes, now members of American Ballet Theatre. Tom Ralabate, Giacobbe’s close friend and an assistant professor of dance at the University of Buffalo, set a new piece for the company as a gift. He described the work, called Stay With Me, as being about creating a guiding light of movement that helps one navigate through difficult times. “I feel blessed that I had the opportunity to give back to Joseph, his family, and the school,” says Ralabate. “I was impressed with the strength and courage [of] the dancers as they [held] onto the joy of dance.”

By May 2006 the studios were back up to 80 percent of their pre- Katrina enrollment, a remarkable fact considering how few people had returned. All three studios held successful recitals in June. More than 90 students attended the academy’s 38th annual intensive ballet summer workshop. “It was . . . another wonderful opportunity for our young people and their families to continue their journey to some normalcy,” says Giacobbe.

Still, obstacles remain. More than a year after the devastation, some people still cannot get into their neighborhoods. Others are living in trailers, and parts of New Orleans still look like ghost towns. With only an estimated one-third of the population back in the city, building audiences is an issue, as is the lack of viable venues. The Mahalia Jackson Theatre of the Performing Arts was severely flooded and there are no plans yet to reopen it. Arts groups all vie for the same spaces at Loyola and Tulane. Fund-raising continues to be a high priority for Giacobbe. “It’s still not exactly a time to ask for funds,” he admits. “We need to come up with another angle, and I don’t know what that is just yet.”

Giacobbe is quite the problem solver these days and is quickly becoming an expert at making do with what’s possible. The unfathomable loss to the arts in New Orleans has given him ample reason to reflect on the meaning of a vibrant cultural landscape to any city. He addressed this issue in another one of his email updates: “Everyone knows the economic base of the city must be restored, the levees repaired and strengthened, utilities restored, and families’ lives rebuilt. But we cannot afford to ignore the significance of the arts in any community. They are essential. They provide the heart and soul of the community, helping to sustain and nourish human existence.”

This month Giacobbe resumes where he left off a year ago, and Nutcracker rehearsals are well underway. Cincinnati Ballet principal dancer Janessa Touchet, a former student, will guest. The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra will be playing, and Giacobbe is grappling with where to put the musicians because he needs the pit to extend the stage. The performance will take place at Tulane University’s Dixon Hall. “It’s not ideal, but it will have to do for now. I have even suggested that we put the orchestra in the balcony, a new and novel idea,” Giacobbe says. “It will be different, but what isn’t in New Orleans now?”

Bringing The Nutcracker back to this besieged city is an important step in reviving the city’s cultural life. The theater may not be a perfect fit and the sets may be minimal, but the spirit, apparently, is incredibly resilient. It seems that neither wind nor water can stop the dancing in New Orleans.  

Photo captions (top to bottom):

The Giacobbe Academy of Dance re-opened just over a month after Hurricane Katrina hit.  

Joseph Giacobbe with students. Photo by Phillip Wozny

Damaged property removed from the Giacobbe school.

Joseph Giacobbe with students. Photo by Phillip Wozny.

Joseph Giacobbe’s students in “Stay With Me,” Choreography by Tom Ralabate. Photo by Phillip Wozny.