The Art That Made Me: Oliver Halkowich, Choreographer, New Orleans

Oliver Halkowich, dancer, choreographer, New Orleans, New Orleans Ballet Theatre

Oliver Halkowich, Resident Choreographer at New Orleans Ballet Theatre. Right: Prodigal Son, and Dracula.

THE ART THAT MADE ME: OLIVER HALKOWICH, NEW ORLEANS BALLET

My name is Oliver Halkowich and I am the resident choreographer for New Orleans Ballet Theatre. I am a relative newbie, having moved here in 2023 after two decades in Houston as a professional ballet dancer with the Houston Ballet. I haven't fallen so hard for a place since I spent a summer in San Francisco in 1997, when I made a decision that my life would be surrounded by tulle, Tchaikovsky and the temperamental people I know and love as ballet dancers and family. I have made two full length productions now for NOBT. Romeo and Juliet premiered in 2023 and Dracula in 2024 (which returns to the Orpheum Theater this Halloween). My newest production Prodigal Son is definitely my most personal project so far. I won't pretend that it doesn't mimic some aspects of my leaving home, but it is also a love letter to my new home at New Orleans Ballet Theatre and the fantastic dancers I continue to create art with. I’ll try to take you on a little journey of the people and places that have influenced my art.

Tchaikovsky
I use two big pieces of Tchaikovsky’s music in Prodigal Son. It was Pyotr and his Nutcracker that began my love affair with ballet and my eventual journey from home. I had my picture in the Sun Sentinel when I was seven as the white rabbit in Miami City Ballet's first production of the Nutcracker and there my ego was born. I saw stardom. But it is the achingly beautiful melodies cut with the dance club percussion that affected me early on. Tchaikovsky had his demons and you can hear them, but he knows how to make you dance through them.

Balanchine
George Balanchine is the preeminent choreographer of 20th century ballet. Balanchine created a Prodigal Son for the Ballet Russes in 1929. He restaged it for Edward Villella, a young boxer turned ballet dancer in 1960 and made him a star. Edward Villella was the founding director of Miami City Ballet where my mother would drive the hour-long route on I95 so I could take ballet classes. I’m still six degrees from Kevin Bacon but maybe only four from Balanchine. I was introduced to Balanchine’s ballets while going to see the fledgling Florida ballet company and his fast rhythmic technique I learned in classes. Balanchine’s use of the down beat, his sympathies for jazz and his love of American entertainment spoke to me and still does. Every choreographer cites Balanchine as an influence. There is no one quite like him.

Baryshnikov
This list is feeling kind of banal so I’ll try to spice it up later but I can’t leave out the preeminent male ballet dancer of the 20th century. I watched every VHS tape of Mikhail Baryshnikov there was. Nightly. Among those tapes was Misha in Balanchine’s Prodigal Son. His mix of strength and delicacy is something that was so incredibly beautiful to me and that I wanted to emulate so badly. He could also switch from the danseur noble in all the classic 19th century ballets into a jazzy dude in a suit dancing to Sinatra and Twyla Tharp. He is the man, and when he ended up on the preeminent TV show of the 21st century, Sex and the City (ok maybe a stretch) as Carrie’s guy I was even more in love with him.

Emeril
The promised spice. Besides the ballet tapes, I watched the food network. And Emeril was my favorite. My passion for food I inherited from my mother. Emeril taught me I could have a good time playing with my food. It was maybe driving across the country from Florida to SF that we stopped in New Orleans and I was adamant we eat at Emeril’s restaurant. Another star for me. When I moved away from home I began cooking for myself. My mother would send me healthy recipes to make but I usually leaned more to “Bam!” than barley. Cooking for myself became my playground long before I even thought about choreography. Since losing my mom I cook constantly. The kitchen is where I feel closest to her.

The Turning Point
The 1977 film starring Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft and Baryshnikov might be my favorite movie. Yeah, it's cheesy but it's got some great one liners (“She’s really gonna do it for you Deedee.”). Shirley and Anne hitting each other with their purses on a roof has to be on the greatest camp scenes of all time list, and it has some of the best filmed ballet performance scenes to this day. But I love the movies. When I moved to SF I'd go to these great independent video stores and rent arthouse titles like Peter Greenaway’s 'The Cook, the thief, His Wife & Her Lover' or Pedro Almodovar’s 'Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!' I was going through puberty and obviously interested in things a little less PG than Baryshnikov and Leslie Brown’s sex scene in The Turning Point but I learned a lot about color, structure, editing, sound and framing from the more obscure titles that influence me in how I put together dance now.

George Wright
There was a boy in the San Francisco Ballet School with me, maybe a year or two older, who wore Kenneth Cole suits to ballet class and smoked and sort of was nasty to everyone and I thought he was great. We got close. I was enamored with someone so in charge of their identity as I was trying to figure out mine. We lost touch but I still see touches of George when I walk into a room.

Britney
I had a poster of Britney Spears over my bed for four years, in my first solo apartment in Houston. I was not a girl, not yet a woman and Britney was my guardian angel. I still can go down a Britney rabbit hole watching old performances at the VMAs. The sequin bodysuit reveal for I Can’t Get No Satisfaction. The snake in I’m a Slave 4 U. It's good shit. And before Britney there was Madonna and Janet And Michael. That's when I first started making dances in my head. There's a scene in the new Prodigal Son where I told the dancers that I wanted it to feel like they're walking into a Britney Music Video. But with Tchaikovsky playing.

Women
There are a lot of men on this list and in a way my outward expression has been shaped strongly by men. First and foremost by my father who continues to amaze me with his creativity. But the inward guiding light has been female in my life. I would not be in the dance field without my mother. From the first dance class she put me in, to the thousands of hours in the car driving me to future ones, to moving to San Francisco to be with me. When I lost her, I lost my want to be a dancer but found something I think I enjoy more, making dance. My best friend and sister Phoebe didn't really get a say at 11 if she wanted to move to San Francisco but she went along for the ride. The three of us had a studio and then a one bedroom and Phoebe and I shared a bunk bed. We went to see every movie that premiered on Fridays, sometimes sneaking into a second or third. We skipped down Van Ness after seeing San Francisco Ballet shows, and now 25 years later we skip together through New Orleans when she visits and she has helped me as a dramaturg on Romeo and Juliet and Dracula.

There’s also my first two ballet teachers Liana Navarro and Magda Aunon, two very strong Cuban matriarchs who instilled in me a passion for ballet, and Gert, my surrogate Jewish grandmother in Boca Raton who never missed one of my recitals or competitions and would meet me for lunch at Wendy’s, and Juanita who took me in when I moved to SF with her husband Ward and let me practice my newly learned sass on her. She took me to see Boogie Nights and walked out cause it was too much for her but stayed in the car so I could finish it. And then there’s Julia Adam who made a dance on me when I was in the San Francisco Ballet school called “Ou est Olivier”. Our paths crossed again in Houston where she came to make ballets for the company and later I became a part of her summer dance project in Northern California. This summer was the 12th summer I have worked with her. Her daughter Zoe now lives in my townhome I own in Houston where she dances with Houston Ballet and Julia is currently in New Orleans staging her ballet Cluedo for NOBT. On this same program with Prodigal Son. And there are many more. I have taken a little liberty with Luke’s parable and have the son leaving the mother rather than the father. It is that first separation from the mother’s womb that initiates all of us sons and daughters on our journey. And who knows what happens at the end but it seems as though we return to Her.

The New Orleans Ballet Theatre's production of Prodigal Son is at the Civic Theatre, Saturday, Sept. 27th: 8:00pm and Sunday, Sep. 28th: 2:00pm. Click here for more information and ticketing.

The New Orleans Ballet Theatre's production of Dracula is at the Orpheum Theatre, October 24th-30th (October 24th: 8:00pm, October 25th: 2:00pm, October 25th: 8:00pm, October 30th: 8:00pm). Click here for more information and ticketing.

CLICK HERE TO READ OUR REVIEW OF DRACULA

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