In Sunday’s (7/8) Dayton Daily News (Ohio), Meredith Moss writes, “It’s a new day for the arts in Dayton. The Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, Dayton Ballet and Dayton Opera are officially united. The Dayton Performing Arts Alliance, a new nonprofit performing arts organization, started operation July 1. In addition to establishing a more solid professional administration for groups that have been forced to cut staff in recent years, the hope is the new alliance will usher in an exciting period of collaborative and innovative arts programming. This season, for the first time in decades, audiences can look forward to ‘The Nutcracker Ballet’ with live music provided by the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra. … Paul Helfrich, the newly appointed president and CEO of the Alliance, who formerly served as president of the DPO, says those who initially had turf issues were eventually able to keep their focus on the arts and what was best for the long term. … Each of the individual arts organizations will retain its own identity and donors can still designate gifts to their favorite group. Each group will be led by an artistic director: Neal Gittleman for the Philharmonic, Karen Russo for the Ballet, Thomas Bankston for the Opera.” The merger was announced in the Spring 2012 issue of Symphony. A video about how the new alliance came to be can be found here.
Posted July 10, 2012
