When Philip Neal retired from the New York City Ballet in 2010 after 23 years with the company, dance critic Roslyn Sulcas made this observation in the New York Times: “Mr. Neal has never been a flashy dancer, nor has he seemed to particularly seek the limelight. But he has a quiet showmanship, a stylish accomplishment in movement that nonetheless brought the limelight to him, shining on his beautifully honed technique, his impeccable placement and gifts as a partner to countless grateful ballerinas.”
Now, as chair of the dance department and artistic director of the Next Generation Dance Company, Philip Neal is shining his light on the young dancers of the Patel Conservatory. He was appointed in June as the successor to Peter Stark, under whose leadership Patel’s dance program earned an international reputation for the quality of its graduates. He and Neal, both NYCB alums, know each other well, and when Stark decided to leave Patel to run the men’s program at the Boston Ballet School, he alerted Neal to the opening.
“The challenge for me is maintaining all the great things that Peter accomplished,” says Neal, “and then forecasting what we do from here.”
He’s off to a good start. Next Gen’s 2015 Summer Intensive, the first under Neal’s direction, was the school’s biggest ever, drawing 280 students from more than 800 applicants. A kind of ballet boot camp, the Intensive introduces young dancers to the rigors of Patel’s year-round training progam and helps the staff identify future prospects. As such, it’s key to the school’s growth, and Neal is making a point of expanding recruitment efforts, visiting more states (particularly in the Southeast U.S.) and reaching out to his contacts in the dance world.
He’s got a lot of those. Now 47, he began studying at the age of 11 at the School of Richmond Ballet, won a summer scholarship to NYCB’s School of American Ballet at the age of 12, became a member of the corps at 19 in 1987, a soloist in 1991, and a year later was promoted to principal. With that experience, plus years of gigging as a teacher, choreographer and guest artist, he pretty much knows everybody who’s anybody.
“A lot of my friends have landed in cities across the country,” says Neal. “One of the fun things about the job is contacting all of them: Is there anyone there who wants to come to Tampa to teach and stage? They keep their eyes peeled on our behalf, too, for students.”
Neal is also a sought-after repetiteur of the ballets of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, meaning that he is entrusted by their estates to set the legendary choreographers’ dances on other companies. When we spoke, he was preparing for a trip to Ballet Nevada to work with the company on Robbins’s Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, the jazzy noir ballet from the Rodgers & Hart musical On the Town (Gene Kelly danced it, memorably, in the film version). Neal was enlisted by Robbins to dance Slaughter because he knew how to tap. “I learned it in 24 hours and did it for the next 23 years.”
Versatility across genres is something he hopes to encourage in his students. “Dancers that are adept with everything are the ones that are working,” he says. To ensure that students are exposed to other ways of moving, Neal is looking forward to collaborations between the ballet and contemporary dance programs at Patel.
Above all, he stresses work ethic, evaluating students not just on innate talent but on their levels of “concentration, discipline, respect for others in the room, and how quickly [they] can absorb a correction.”
Thankfully, he says, Stark made a point of instilling these qualities in Patel’s dancers. “I’ve staged works at other companies, and without fail the Next Gen product doesn’t get injured, shows up to work on time, is completely prepared — at 19 or 20.”
In the next few weeks, the new class of dancers begins preparing for a season at the Straz Performing Arts Center that will include The Nutcracker, the Youth America Grand Prix competition, and a full-length Giselle. It’s a challenging schedule, but Neal is raring to go.
“I’m not someone who teaches from a chair. Sometimes you can verbalize, sometimes you have to get up and show them. I have to be careful, though, or I’ll get carried away and dance all over the room.”
Which, given his background, probably wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2015.
