York County Ballet closes its doors. Leader looking to ‘new role’.
Anne Blackwell didn’t anticipate retiring at age 77. In fact, she was hoping to sign another six-year lease on her business, the York County Ballet.
Instead, she’s hanging up her ballet slippers and closing the business after decades as artistic director and owner.
“I have a variety of feelings,” Blackwell said on a recent afternoon after while cleaning out the school on Oakland Ave.
The classical ballet school is dissolving because of business complications due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.
There is no way the dancers can rehearse and perform with social distancing guidelines, she said. The ballet had to cancel its May performance of “Alice in Wonderland.”
The 2020 version of “The Nutcracker,” a long-standing December tradition, also won’t happen. The ballet performs the Christmas classic each year to sold-out audiences at Winthrop University, which is closed due to COVID-19. The first performance of “The Nutcracker” drew a crowd of roughly 3,000 people more than 30 years ago.
Blackwell took over the ballet more than four decades ago from her mother Doris McClellan, who started the non-profit business in the 1970s. McClellan had previously served as artistic director of the Greenville Civic Ballet in Greenville, S.C.
Before taking over the York County Ballet, Blackwell, who trained as a dancer in New York, taught dance at a York County elementary school.
After announcing the ballet would be closing, students and their parents held a car parade in Blackwell’s honor.
“Students were crying, in tears, and they have celebrated,” Blackwell said. “I am grateful for Rock Hill being so accepting of a pure ballet school.”
Blackwell has one message for her students: “I will miss you all, for sure.”
One student, 17-year-old Margaret Price, became a dancer at the York County School of Ballet when she was 4-years-old.
“I am really sad about it because for the past 13 years, it has been a second home for me,” said Price, a Fort Mill High School senior who will major in dance at the College of Charleston. “She shaped me into the person I am today.”
Fifteen-year-old Laney Reel has danced at the ballet for 8 years. She is devastated, she said.
“It’s like losing a huge part of my life,” Reel said. “She (Blackwell) is a mentor and a role model I can always count on.”
For Blackwell, the closure has opened another door of opportunity.
“My daughter said ‘finally, you can be a grandmother and not just always at the studio’ and I thought ‘how special, I have a new role.’”
This story was originally published May 29, 2020 at 7:14 AM.
