LETTERS: COOPERATION SUPPORTS BALLET'S VISIT

To the editor:

On behalf of the Programs in Dance at Southeast Missouri State University and as a proud resident of Cape Girardeau, I want to take this opportunity to thank all the dedicated and committed individuals of both the Cape region and the university community for their wonderful support in bringing Miami City Ballet to our area. As we all know, no event of this magnitude is ever accomplished alone. Without the following people and programmatic support, the residency and particularly the 900 or so students, community members, faculty, staff, youngsters, seniors, African Americans, persons with disabilities, Hispanics, members of the deaf community, key leaders and all other women and men, underrepresented or not, who attended the "Edward Villella and Miami City Ballet: Up Close and Personal" presentation would not have been possible.

Such a wonderful dance event like Miami City Ballet's residency represents just the tip of the iceberg of cultural performing arts programs that are not for some imagined and rarefied elite connoisseur, but for everyone. Whether it's dance, music, theater, visual arts or any other artistic endeavor, the kinds of programs also demonstrate the generous, collaborative process that members of both the Cape community and university are capable of achieving. I marvel at the cooperation of so many diverse individuals representing so many constituencies in our exciting region.

The Program in Dance at the university worked closely with the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri, including its entire executive board, several council members and the executive director, Greg Jones, in particular. Mollie's Cafe and Bar donated large portions of their energies and food to make the dancers, community and university leaders, students and other dedicated arts supporters feel at home. Each Miami City Ballet company member remarked on how wonderfully welcome there were made to feel during their two-day residency. Trent Ball and Minority Programs at the university donated support. Dance St. Louis, an umbrella arts organization from Missouri's famous city to our north, worked tirelessly with Miami City Ballet and the university and state's Funding for Results Program through their own half-million-dollar internationally recognized Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Grant. To date, I cannot think of a more extraordinary example of successful collaborations between diverse constituencies as this one. Kerry Wynn and Interpreter Services from the university, and especially Maria Reed, our interpreter for the evening, all reached out to the deaf community. Head-injured patients and real senior seniors, including a 97-year-old sitting patiently in the front row, were invited by Deborah Stuart, a new faculty members in the Department of Health and Leisure, an individual wholly dedicated to the concerns of truly underrepresented populations in both the university and regional community. The deans of both the College of Education and College of Liberal Arts, Dr. Shirley Stennis-Williams and Dr. Martin Jones, have consistently taken the lead in supporting arts collaborations such as this one. And there were many other caring believers in the value of the arts too numerous to mention.

Members of the community in both the Cape Girardeau region and the university are daily proving their mettle as enriching cultural opportunities spring up before us and present healthy challenges to our abilities to work together. By no compromising each and every one of our visions for the betterment of this society that we all participate in, Cape Girardeau may soon culturally represent the unique niche that it geographically already holds in our country, poised as it were upon the only inland cape of the continental United States at the midpoint between north and south, east and west, and along one of America's greatest vital heritages, the mighty Mississippi.

DR. MARC STRAUSS, Assistant Professor of Dance

Southeast Missouri State University

Cape Girardeau