In 2019, when film director Alex Ramsey told Garen Scribner that he’d love to make a short documentary about a dancer recovering from injury, the former San Francisco Ballet soloist turned him down.
“No. 1: I wasn’t injured,” Scribner told the Chronicle via video from his sunny home in Santa Monica, his dog Maya at his feet. “No. 2, I said ‘I know who will be an even more interesting subject for you, because she has a serious career-threatening injury right now (and) hasn’t danced in six months.'”
That dancer was New York City Ballet principal Tiler Peck, then suffering a herniated disc and preparing to meet with a new doctor after seven previous ones had told her she would likely never dance again.
While these days Peck is seemingly everywhere, and a feature-length documentary on her might seem pre-ordained, at the time she was also recovering from a very public divorce from fellow NYCB dancer Robert Fairchild.
“If it weren’t for Garen being part of the project, I would have never opened up my life or my door,” Peck said recently from New York. “I put a lot of trust in him.”
Tiler Peck, center, with cast in rehearsal for the Kennedy Center Production of “Little Dancer – A New Musical” at the New 42nd Street Studios on Oct. 6, 2014 in New York City. (Walter McBride/Getty Images)
Six years later, “Tiler Peck: Suspending Time” shows Peck’s phoenix-like re-ascension, following her unexpected second and third acts through COVID-19 shutdowns, when she worked with world-renowned choreographers Alonzo King and William Forsythe through her own first choreographic commission for NYCB.
More Information
San Francisco Dance Film Festival presents “Tiler Peck: Suspending Time”: 7 p.m. Oct. 24. $33.85. Lucasfilm Premier Theater, 1 Letterman Drive, S.F. • The festival continues through Nov. 9. $188.58 for festival passes; single tickets range from free to $33.85. Various San Francisco venues. For a full schedule, visit https://sfdancefilmfest.org
The film premieres Friday, Oct. 24, at the 16th annual San Francisco Dance Film Festival, marking Scribner’s debut as a feature-length executive producer. It also caps his first year as artistic director of the world’s largest dance film festival, a tenure already distinguished by new relationships with both the festival’s artists and its attendees.
The job might appear fated for a dancer whose physical talents and easygoing intelligence have opened many doors. After all, Scribner – who grew up in Virginia as the son of a physicist and a barber who loved the performing arts – had a relatively easy time maneuvering through the competitive dance world.
Garen Scribner during San Francisco Ballet rehearsal in 2012. (erik tomasson)
Out of a cattle-call audition of hundreds in 2003, he was chosen to join San Francisco Ballet and rose to soloist by 2008. After leaving the Ballet in 2013, Scribner got a call from choreographer Christopher Wheeldon asking if he’d like to help develop a potential Broadway show. But then, while participating in a workshop with Holland’s famous Nederlands Dans Theater, Scribner was invited to join the company and decided to pursue that instead.
It all worked out: A year later, Wheeldon circled back with the news that “An American in Paris” was indeed going to hit Broadway. He asked Scribner to play the second lead, starring as Jerry twice a week and then taking the show on tour. Scribner accepted and found himself singing and dancing to rave reviews for the next three years.
Doors continued to open. While working as a freelance dancer in Manhattan, Scribner reconnected with a fellow North Carolina School of the Arts alumnus who had gone on to be a producer for the “Rachael Ray Show.” She thought Scribner should host his own show interviewing Broadway stars about what they do backstage between performances. They called it “Broadway Sandwich” and took the pilot to the New York PBS affiliate WNET, where it ran for four seasons. Scribner later went on to host “And the Tony Nominees Are …” for WNET.
Then, while dancing for the Metropolitan Opera, he broke his toe. Soon after, COVID hit.
As most of America baked sourdough bread, Scribner decided to apply to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He finished with a master’s in public administration in one year.
That’s when the real challenges began.
Garen Scribner, left, Brandon Uranowitz and Max von Essen perform at United presents “Stars in the Alley” in Shubert Alley on June 3, 2016 in New York City. (Walter McBride/WireImage)
Scribner thought the essential characteristics of a dancer – discipline, spontaneous problem-solving, hard work – would stand out on his resume. “But I applied for about 70 jobs, and I got rejected by all of them,” he recounted.
Before too long, however, his connections came through again. Artists like the internationally rising dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Orr Schraiber began calling.
“Bobbi said, ‘Can you manage me? Can you help us produce this project?’ I said, ‘That’s not what I do, but I can find you great people.’ And she said, ‘But we want you to do it,'” he recalled.
Today, Scribner manages about 15 artists under his own company, Pilot Mgmt, negotiating their contracts and connecting them with creative collaborators.
Along the way, he’s produced short dance films with choreographer (and now Oregon Ballet Theater artistic director) Dani Rowe, among others. So in 2023, when San Francisco Dance Film Festival founder Judy Flannery decided the festival needed new leadership, she called Scribner for recommendations.
Ethan Stiefel, left, Amanda Schull and Sascha Radetsky dance on stage in a scene from the film the 2000 film “Center Stage.” (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
It didn’t take long for her to see he belonged at the top of her list. But after making him managing director, she quickly realized he was better suited as artistic director. Now Flannery extols Scribner for finding new ways to connect dance films with in-person audiences.
For instance, last year Scribner proposed screening the campy 2000 dance film “Center Stage” as a special fundraiser. While Flannery was skeptical at first – “I said, ‘Isn’t that film kind of cheesy?” – the event sold out the Herbst Theater’s 600 seats. Scribner even got the film’s star Amanda Schull to show up for the event.
“It was like the ‘Rocky Horror Show’ in there, people screaming out their favorite lines, just a fabulous event,” she said.
Next year’s fundraiser should be equally fun. Scribner has arranged to screen the 1987 Patrick Swayze hit “Dirty Dancing,” followed by a Q&A with the film’s choreographer, Penny Ortega.
In the meantime, the San Francisco Dance Film Festival boasts 18 live programs, including documentaries about dance and personal triumph (“The Dancer,” about a Syrian dancer who overcame early years in a refugee camp); animated shorts for children (“Leap!” is being screened for families free of charge); and even a new music video showcase that Scribner quipped “feels very VH1 ‘Behind the Music’ to me.”
“They talk about triple threats in this business – dancer, singer, actor,” former San Francisco Ballet general director Glenn McCoy, who has known Scribner since age 18, told the Chronicle. “Add his record as producer, fundraiser, director and he must be some sort of quadruple or quintuple threat.
“Whatever you call him, the performing arts are fortunate to have him.”
Even though Scribner only takes the occasional ballet class these days, and suspects that the business world will never understand all the skills a dancer’s life drills in, he fully credits his early training for his management success.
“I never like to say ‘former dancer’,” the producer-on-the-rise said. “Once you’re a dancer, it’s in you for life.”
Rachel Howard is a freelance writer.
This article originally published at How a former S.F. Ballet star is reimagining the San Francisco Dance Film Festival.
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source link
