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Joffrey Ballet's turnaround artist
Chicago Crains
By Jeremy Mullman
July 11, 2005
In four years at the helm of Chicago's Joffrey Ballet, Jon Teeuwissen has choreographed an enviable financial pirouette, along with a lesson in how to revive an old-line cultural organization.
When Mr. Teeuwissen (pronounced "tay-vissen") arrived from New York in 2001, the 50-year-old ballet company faced a set of problems familiar to established cultural groups here and elsewhere, particularly large orchestras like the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Audiences were shrinking, red ink was flowing and observers were wondering out loud if the art form itself was losing its appeal.
Today, the Joffrey's ticket sales are rising, profits are back and reserves are increasing. And it's getting attention beyond its Auditorium Theatre audiences.
"The Joffrey is the best-case current example of arts marketing (in Chicago) right now," says James Newcomb, senior manager of corporate identity and sponsorship for Chicago-based Boeing Co. He recently presented the Joffrey as a marketing case study to students at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Boeing is a leading Joffrey donor.
How did Mr. Teeuwissen do it? He combined changes in programming, scheduling and pricing with a marketing strategy that zeroed in on twenty- and thirtysomething women yearning to reconnect with their inner ballerina.
Mr. Teeuwissen, 47, a coal miner's son from Teays Valley, W. Va., who majored in accounting at West Virginia State University, admits to some unfulfilled balletic impulses of his own. He saw his first ballet at 19, a performance of "Swan Lake" that awakened an urge to dance. But lessons showed he lacked a dancer's elasticity. "If I'd discovered it earlier, I might have the flexibility to be a dancer," he laments. "I wish I had."
He settled for an administrative job at a small dance troupe in New York after graduation. An aptitude for the business side of ballet led to loftier positions, and he developed a reputation for improving struggling companies, like New York's American Ballet Theater, where he served as general manager for 14 months before joining Joffrey.
The Chicago troupe needed those turnaround skills. When he arrived as the Joffrey's sixth executive director since moving its operations to Chicago from New York in 1995, finances were a shambles. The company was coming off a $2-million deficit for fiscal 2000-2001 and still losing money. To keep its doors open, the Joffrey had used $1.4 million that had been raised to pay for a permanent home to cover operating costs, angering donors.
"Jon came in at a dangerous time," recalls Joffrey trustee Fred Eychaner, CEO of Chicago-based Newsweb Corp.
Repairing relations with funders was among Mr. Teeuwissen's first challenges. He worked closely with Joffrey trustees, including Exelon Corp. Chief Administrative Officer Pamela Strobel and real estate magnate Bruce Sagan, to convince them that the organization was essential to Chicago's stature in the dance world and that he had a plan to attract new customers and fix the finances.
"(Donors) weren't happy, but we just told them the truth," says Mr. Teeuwissen, who's erased any traces of West Virginia from his accent and favors stylish suits that convey an aura of hipness without testing the comfort level of corporate grantmakers. "If we didn't use the money then, there wasn't going to be any need for the funds later because we wouldn't be around to use them."
Corporate Donations Up Benna Wilde, executive director of the Prince Charitable Trusts, was among the Joffrey funders he won over. "We understood that this is an expensive undertaking, and that it would take years to build a local ballet up to the Joffrey's caliber," Ms. Wilde says. "So, we gave them the money."
Under Mr. Teeuwissen, corporate donations are up 73% and foundation donations are up 88%. But blue-chip cultural organizations typically have an easier time raising money than they do expanding their audiences, which was Mr. Teeuwissen's next task. He retooled the Joffrey's marketing to focus on the ballet's core audience of young and middle-aged women.
Brochures that had previously emphasized athleticism - which tends to appeal to men - now played up sophistication and beauty.
And convenience: In an attempt to make performances easier to attend, Mr. Teeuwissen increased weekend shows and eliminated sparsely attended Thursday shows. And he cut some prices, making three-show packages as cheap as $50.
He added pizzazz to performances by replacing taped background music with live accompaniment by the Chicago Sinfonietta.
"There was so much more energy (with live music), and it seemed unfathomable to me that we couldn't be at our best at home, when we were dancing to tape," recalls Mr. Teeuwissen, who got the Chicago Community Trust and Joyce Foundation to foot much of the Sinfonietta's bill.
The moves paid off: Total performance revenues, which consist mostly of ticket sales, reached $5.6 million in the recently ended 2004-2005 season, up 19% from 2001-2002. Full-season subscription sales for the 2005-2006 season are running 27% ahead of last year's pace, Mr. Teeuwisen says. The subscription renewal rate, another key measure, is up to 75% for the 2005-2006 season, from 50% four years ago.
Luck helped, too. The Joffrey erased its remaining $2.6 million in debt by selling a building in Chicago that ComEd donated in 2000. The building didn't work as a permanent rehearsal space, but it sold for $6 million, enough to wipe out debt and give the organization more than $3 million to invest.
Thinking Expansion The changes added up to a $300,000 surplus for the 2005 fiscal year, which ended in June, compared with a $2-million deficit the year before Mr. Teeuwissen arrived. He expects to break even next year.
"It's remarkable for any group to go from that deep in the red to the black," says Gail Kalver, executive director of Hubbard Street Dance. "You just don't see arts groups with budgets that size change that quickly.
That stability has Mr. Teeuwissen thinking expansion. He plans to launch an endowment and capital campaign for "not more than $50 million" and expand the company's touring during the next two years.
This month the Joffrey signed a lease for a 17,000-square-foot rehearsal space at 17 N. State St. and is in talks to lease about 8,000 square feet of office space in the same building.
"Our old rehearsal space was sort of tenement-like," he says. "Not someplace you want to hold fund-raisers."
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