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Colorado Matters
April 13, 2026: 'If You Can Keep it' on declining democracy; Colorado Ballet's Gil Boggs on taking chances
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If you can keep it. Today, our series about unprecedented presidential politics du political scientist Seth Maskett on what he calls a reverse civil rights agenda. Then weekend work for lawmakers at the state capitol and in Pueblo for the state's most prominent Republicans. We'll get the lowdown on both. And I don't think Gil Boggs of Colorado Ballet is a name dropper, as it's just that when you ask him about his long career, he naturally brings folks up.
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B
Misha came up to me, Mikhail Barystikoff, and he said, you know, I think, wait, wait, wait.
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A
Baryshnikov comes up to you.
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He was the artistic director, and he says, Twyla Tharp has just asked me if you could work with her company.
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Boggs marks 20 years as Colorado Ballet artistic director. How he's transformed the company and his vision for the future. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and krcc. I'm Ryan Warner. Democracy in the United States is deteriorating. Three studies find this. In one, our ranking fell from 20th to 51st. In another, more than 500 scholars conclude the US system now falls midway between liberal democracy and dictatorship. And that's where we'll start, if you can keep it this time. Our series about unprecedented presidential politics du political scientist Seth Maskett. Hello again.
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C
Hello again, Ryan.
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A
Is this just the liberal academy telling us the sky is falling?
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C
No. I've known some of the scholars who are involved in these studies. This is a very serious look. A lot of these various different studies are very serious looks at different aspects of, of American democracy, looking at things like the ability of people, you know, journalists to say and print what they think in a newspaper or, you know, late night comedians to speak freely on TV or people to have access to the polls when they want to vote and, you know, not worried that they're, you know, they're going to be prevented from voting or anything like that. All these things go into, you know, just, you know, generally a calculation about just how democratic our society still is. And these scholars are very seriously worried about this.
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A
Do democracies bounce back
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C
sometimes? Yes, and quite a few have. I mean, I think, you know, one very instructive example we've had is from Hungary, which has been experiencing, you know, a version of the same sort of conservative populism we've been having in the United States over the past over more than a decade now under Viktor Orban. And that was a, you know, a form of government that some political scientists call call competitive authoritarianism, where you have a pretty authoritarian government. There are still Elections that are very much tilted in the government's favor, but they still exist. And in this case, Orban's party simply lost in a, you know, pretty overwhelming drubbing. That country is likely moving back toward democracy, and we've seen that from a number of threatened democracies. Just because the democracy is sacrificed or compromised in one era doesn't mean we'll always trend in that direction. But it does take some work to pull it back. It takes some organizing and some real efforts by those who don't like the path that it's currently on.
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A
You know, a lot of the coverage I saw of what happened in Hungary included phrases like, we can't believe he conceded that that wasn't necessarily, you know, a given in this country. A president who tried to steal an election in 2020 and who pardoned his accomplices now positions himself as the watchdog. So President Trump signed an executive order constricting mail in balloting. As you put together your new book, the Elephants in the Room, did you glean anything about the stolen election storyline and why it lingers after the Republican sweep in 2024?
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C
It lingers. I mean, in large part, you know, Trump is the person who created that, you know, the big lie, the idea that the, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He continues to press it. Even today, even after returning to office, he continues to claim that it was stolen from him. And so as a result, that becomes important to his supporters that this idea that there, that there was something seriously wrong with the electorate and that, you know, or with election rules and that that needs to be rem. He's continued to push it. When I'm doing research for my book, I spoke with quite a number of local Republican leaders in different parts of the country, not all of whom were, were fixated on this, but who very, you know, very strongly accepted Donald Trump's view of that election, that there were serious problems with it and that, you know, the, the country needed pretty serious overhaul of its election laws to prevent fraud from occurring again. That, that's, that wasn't true across the board. There were some who, when, you know, if you really press them on details, but, you know, what do you mean by the election was stolen? Some would just say, well, the media was biased against him, which, you know, you could, you could make that argument. It doesn't necessarily mean there's anything seriously wrong with election laws, but this is a pretty sincerely held view among a lot of Republican activists when it comes
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to the executive order. Here's what the Republican head of the Colorado County Clerks association, told us last
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week, I see it as executive branch overreach. So the Constitution gives some power to regulate elections to Congress. It gives no power to the executive branch. So had this gone through Congress, then we would look to engage on it in a different way, like with the Save America Act. But because this is coming from the executive branch, we expect those lawsuits to be successful.
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A
Lawsuits that include the signature of Colorado's attorney general, who's taken the administration to court so many times. Maybe he should have his own parking space. Can you talk, Seth, about the pace of the judicial system versus the pace of the executive branch under Trump these days?
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C
I'm sorry, what do you mean by the pace?
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A
Well, just. Is the judicial system keeping pace with how quickly, especially through executive order, the president is acting?
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C
Yeah, it's harder. I mean, the. By definition, you know, the judicial branch is. Is not a branch that's designed to act rapidly. For the most part. It's, it's very reactive. It basically depends on people bringing lawsuits to it in order to have sorts of, you know, effects in these kind of situations. You know, there are some moments where the court can step in or a court can step in quickly to put some sort of injunction on a new law or a new executive order while it sort of works its way through a more appropriate legal decision. But it's a very mixed calendar. It obviously can't move as quickly as the President. The president, as we've seen, he tends not to involve even Congress all that much in his decision making or policymaking and tends to do a lot of things by executive order or even just by posting on social media. And that's become his form of lawmaking.
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A
Ostensibly, the motivation here, at least in part, is to lessen the impact of Democratic leading voters. But reports show Republican voters would also be negatively affected if there is this constriction in how we vote. Is this a case of be careful what you ask for?
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C
Well, yes, it is. It's not entirely clear. I mean, first of all, I tend to agree with the gentleman you quoted before that it would not be. It's not obvious that this would ever actually become the law of the land. It probably would not. The president probably does not have this kind of power. But at least in the short run, you know, this. This could at least affect some states trying to hold vote by mail. And if, if it basically makes it harder to vote by mail, if it increases the amount of, you know, the number of forms of identification that people have to bring forward, that tends to hurt poorer people more than than richer people. And, you know, poor people are less likely to have a driver's license on hand or have a passport on hand to be able to prove their identity. It's just a tougher jump for them to prove that they're supposed to be able to vote. Now, in the past, anything that hurts poor people probably hurts Democrats more, but that's not necessarily been the way of things. In more recent elections, in fact, the Republican coalition has been involving more and more poor Americans. This could have more of an impact on them, although at least right now it's looking like it might have a bigger impact on Democratic voters.
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If you're just joining us, Seth Maskett of the University of Denver is back for our series, if you can keep it. And Seth, on your substack Tusk, a reference to elephants, you've recently written that this is part of a reverse civil rights agenda. What do you mean by that?
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C
Yeah, so basically, when it comes to actual election rules in this country, the Constitution pretty plainly says in Article 1 that this is not the federal government's job. This is up to states, it's up to county governments to implement the rules created by states just to it's the states that set the rules for who can and can't vote when the elections are held, how they're held, that sort of thing. There have been a few rare occasions when the federal government will step in, basically when there are huge inequalities in who can and can't vote, most often in the cases of civil rights. So we saw the federal government step in with the Civil Rights act of 1964 and the Voting Rights act of 1965, basically saying there's a huge inequality, mostly in the south, black voters are not able to get to the polls or they just have a much harder time doing it than whites can. And they simply sought to remedy an inequality and essentially expand the electorate to make it more of a multiracial democracy. Trump is basically seeking to use that precedent, you know, the precedent of the federal government stepping in and adding some regulation to elections, only to move things back in the other direction, to actually make it harder to vote and to have, you know, the kind of impact that would tend to make it harder for poor Americans, probably harder for non white Americans to cast a ballot. That's essentially moving us away from the goal of a multiracial democracy while still using essentially the architecture of the civil rights movement.
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A
It's fascinating parallels to draw there and the distinctions between those two with the highest court in the land now is the matter of birthright citizenship. The administration wishes to end it. President Trump attended some of the oral arguments, the first for a sitting executive. I wonder what you made of that. As a political scientist.
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C
I wasn't really sure what to think about Trump's presence in the room. It's obviously, it's so unusual. You know, you could. You could view it as like he was trying to intimidate people, or maybe he was just sort of signaling this is the case that he cares the most about. Like, this is his executive order. He really deeply believes in ending birthright citizenship, and he wants to signal his overwhelming interest in it. He might have been just sort of cheering on his solicitor General and then lost interest once that guy stopped talking. It was hard to, you know, it's hard to know. But one thing that was very clear about it was like, this is a case that the President cares about. And I don't know that, you know, too many Supreme Court justices are necessarily afraid of him. But, you know, to the extent they are like that, that was a signal that they could take that this is something he's going to notice. And regardless of which way the vote goes, he will have a pretty substantial reaction to it.
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Justices seem skeptical. A decision is expected this summer. I suppose I'd like to ask, Harkening back to the idea that the president uses social media in a way to convey policy, but also to share memes, and there's a rather messianic one floating around. Did you see this?
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C
Well, there's one this morning related to, you know, positioning him as Jesus.
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Yeah.
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C
Is that okay?
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Yeah.
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C
Is that, though, or. We're thinking of a different one.
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That's the one I'm thinking of. And just in the realm of unprecedented, the notion of a president sharing something that depicts themselves as a religious savior. Do you want to share a few words about that before we go?
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C
I mean, I tend to think of that as related to his series of his social media rant last night against Pope Leo, where he's essentially saying the Pope doesn't understand the Bible, but he does, which in itself is a pretty striking thing for any president to be saying. But it's also sort of, you know, consistent with kind of a Christian nationalist worldview that he has, you know, that he has employed at times and that some of his supporters have employed, which is that, you know, the real Christianity is the version that he's expounding, which is basically has like a, you know, a version of Christianity that advocates for, like, a muscular, robust U.S. military policy.
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Yes.
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C
And I think you really have to look toward the, you know, toward the way back of the Bible to find
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any reference to that with fighter jets in the background of this meme. Thanks so much. Seth Maskett, political scientist at the University of Denver. His new book is the Elephants in the Room, How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News. It's Colorado Matters from CPR News. I'm Ryan Warner. State lawmakers are hammering out the budget. The Colorado Constitution requires them to balance it. And with a big shortfall. This is a dramatic process. Ray Solomon is covering the legislative session. Hi again, Ray.
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D
Hi, Ryan.
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A
Colorado faces a billion and a half dollar budget shortfall. How do they plan to close it?
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D
Yes, it's a big hole to fill. And the legislature basically has two moves to work with. They can either spend less money, which means budget cuts, or they can do some financial maneuvering, you know, moving money around from different buckets to make it all pencil out in the end. So some of the biggest cuts came from Medicaid. The Joint Budget Committee voted to cut provider rates by 2%, pretty much across the board. That was a big move and that will save tens of millions of dollars. But of course, critics worry that providers could start pulling out of Medicaid altogether if their reimbursement rates get too low. And they also voted to cut services and benefits for people with disabilities and their families. And then committee members have said that some of the most painful cuts they had to make came from the state's safety net for immigrants. The Coverall Coloradans program essentially extended a Medicaid like coverage to undocumented children and pregnant women. Lawmakers created that in 2022, but it's ended up costing the state six times more than projected.
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A
Wow.
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D
So to roll that back, they limited some eligibility and enrollment requirements. And then some of the benefits will also be slimmed down.
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A
What else? We're also seeing cuts.
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D
Oh, there are other big spending cuts like the cost of living wages, the cost of living raises for state employees will not be happening this year. And then there are just a ton of smaller cuts across the board that add up to, you know, when you add them all up, it becomes more significant. So all that sounds like a lot of cuts. But even after all that, when you zoom out, the state budget is still growing this year to $46.8 billion. That's mainly due to increases in Medicaid spending. The Department of Corrections and the Judiciary Department.
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A
Okay, so there are cuts, but the budget is still growing overall. And what the financial maneuvering, the moving, as you called it?
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D
Well, in one of the biggest moves there, the Joint Budget Committee voted to lower the amount of money the state needs to hold in reserve by law. So the reserve requirement is usually 15%. They lowered that to 13%, which frees up hundreds of millions of dollars. But of course there's a risk if the state runs into a recession, we could run into trouble down the line. The House also voted to keep about $300 million over couple of years that the state thought it might owe in TABOR refunds. That's complicated ambiguity stemming from complications with the Trump administration's big beautiful bill. But there's a good legal argument to be made that the state does not owe those refunds. And the JBC decided to assume that question in the most beneficial way for the budget.
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A
Okay, interesting to see if that will go to the courts or not. The Joint Budget Committee writes the spending plan, but that's six members out of a hundred. So have the other 94 tried to make changes to the to the budget?
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D
They sure have so far. When the JBC presented their work to the full House in the form of the long bill, lawmakers on both side of the aisle tried to pick it apart. They floated amendments to tweak it. Most of them were Republican amendments looking to shrink the budget or to throw more support to veterans and seniors, to public safety and rural communities. And then on the Democratic side, some of the biggest sticking points were around the ballooning cost of corrections that I mentioned. A lot of Democratic lawmakers were unhappy about spending more on incarceration. But Ryan, you know, the fact is that the prison population here is growing. Prisons are overcrowded and understaffed. The state is already keeping overflow inmates in county jails, which is causing all kinds of other problems. And so until lawmakers can address the root cause, why we're locking up so so many people, the state really has no choice but to pay more into the corrections system. And then those cuts for the coverall Coloradans program for some undocumented immigrants that I mentioned before, that was another really hard pill for Democrats to swallow. And they actually managed to pass an amendment undoing a lot of the cuts proposed by the jbc. But that amendment is probably going to get stripped off the bill as it continues moving through the process. A bipartisan amendment to save the state's auto theft prevention program also passed, along with an amendment that prevents more money being thrown at wolf reintroduction. And then some lawmakers have also Been scrambling to prevent cuts for things like veterans courts and teacher education.
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A
Let's get into the political drama. House debate over the bill was delayed for two days, and lawmakers worked over the weekend on the budget. This is after a Republican asked for it to be read at length.
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D
Yes, that was a very unusual move. On Wednesday night, while lawmakers were trying to get through voting on all the amendments to the long bill, Republican Representative Brandi Bradley of Littleton threw a wrench into the works. She asked for the entire state budget proposal. This is more than 650 pages to be read aloud at length on the House floor. And the way this works, for the uninitiated, it's an automated voice that reads every printed word on the page. And because it's so long, the process took about 15 hours. So, Ryan, imagine spending a day and a half instead of getting any work done. You're just listening to this page.
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B
461, House Bill 26 to 1410, Department of Public Safety appropriation from item and subtotal total general fund cash funds, reappropriated funds, federal funds, $$$.
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D
That was an interesting day. And a lot of lawmakers, including most of the other Republicans, were pretty annoyed about this. It's not like they could just, you know, split and have fun. While this was happening, Bradley had the option to stop the reading at any time. So they all had to stick around, at least close enough to come back to the floor on short notice in case she did that. And so they had to find ways to keep themselves occupied. And so while all this is happening, I ran into Democratic Representative Brianna Tatone of Arvada, who probably I'm going to call it. She gets the prize for the most creative way to pass the time. She brought her sewing machine to the Capitol, along with some fabric and a vintage 1960s pattern. And, Ryan, she made herself a dress, an entire dress from scratch while the bill was being ready.
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B
You kind of go crazy sitting around
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trying to find something to do, and
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there's only so much work you can do.
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You have to do something else.
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C
I like to keep busy this way.
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A
Do we know why Bradley would ask for the budget bill to be read word for word?
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D
I mean, it's a protest, basically. Asking for bills to be read at length is a pretty common stalling tactic used by the minority party. It happens a lot. But when it comes to the budget bill, aptly named the long bill, it's, you know, it's often used as, as just a negotiating leverage. Like if you don't listen to our concerns. We're going to waste your time by reading 15 hours of this bill. And as far as I can tell, no one has ever actually followed through with the threat before, at least on the long bill. So when Bradley first asked for it to be read on Wednesday night, she said she wanted to bring attention to her problematic experience reporting a complaint to the House Ethics Committee.
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B
I move that the bill be read at length until such time as we commit to address our own shortcomings, the injustice of our own rules, and bring both light and justice to victims in this House, including myself and all others. Then we can actually address with integrity the funding needing for those across the state.
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D
But then when I spoke to her on Friday while the bill was being read, she insisted it was more about protesting a bloated budget and said the proposed cuts are not in taxpayers best interests.
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B
The people of Colorado are tired of being feed and taxed to death. The cost of our budget has grown 48% in six years. Population's only grown 5%.
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C
I believe that we needed to take
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B
a pause, maybe reassess all of their projects and what it's costing the people of Colorado.
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The budget heads next to the Senate. There will be tweaks by the Joint Budget Committee and then the governor must sign off on all of this. Ray, thank you so much for the reporting.
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D
Anytime, Ryan.
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A
Ray Solomon covers the State Capitol for CPR News along with Bent Berkeland. Meantime, Colorado Republicans met in Pueblo over the weekend to choose candidates for the primary ballot. The widest field going into the state assembly was for governor with 18 candidates. In the end, two qualified state representative Scott Bottoms and Minister Victor Marx. State Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer may still qualify via petition for US Senate. Delegates narrowed the field down to just one State Senator Mark Basley. Delegates gave Jeff Hurd, who represents western and southern Colorado, a primary challenger. Former State Representative Ron Hanks succeeded in a last minute bid to be nominated from the floor. President Trump had intervened earlier to try to ensure Heard would not face a primary. Here is Heard followed by Hanks.
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B
You have a responsibility not just to choose a nominee, but to choose someone
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C
who can win in November.
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B
This is not about personalities.
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C
It's not about noise. It's about results. It's about effectiveness and it's about keeping
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Colorado's third District in Republican hands.
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C
If I had an audience with the President, I would go in and say, Mr. President, what more can I do
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B
to forward the America first agenda?
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Vanessa Ruggles is chair of La Plata County Republicans. And after the assembly she's optimistic.
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C
Hopefully, you know, we can move in
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a good direction because that is what's going to have to happen in order for us to to be able to win. If we can't come together as a party, then it's going to be hard to move candidates forward and turn Colorado back. Red See a list of the Republican primary candidates@cpr.org as well as the Democratic who already held their state assembly. Colorado's primaries June 30th. And we're back in a moment backstage at the Colorado Ballet. This is CPR News. You're back with Colorado Matters from CPR News and krcc. I'm Ryan Warner.
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B
We are at Places for hot, wild places.
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Colorado Ballet wraps up its season with a profound and profoundly challenging trio of pieces. Its annual Masterworks production runs through the end of the week.
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B
And we call them the sort of the bucket list ballets that the dancers want to dance. They really love them. Artistic director Gil Box Concerto Barocco. We also had Yoshi Arai come in and choreograph a new work for us, which they're very excited about.
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A
Would you tell us about it?
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B
It's to Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, and he follows Rachmaninoff's story. Actually, when Rachmaninoff first wrote a concerto, it was a complete flop and he went into a deep depression for about three years and he worked with a psychiatrist to get out of that and get back to music. And so he tells the story of depression and then hope in the second movement where he starts to reimagine music, and then the third movement where society sort of welcomes him back into their fold.
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Boggs popped out of rehearsals at the Ellie Calkins Opera House in Denver to chat with me backstage. He's marking 20 years with the company and ballets in the Zeitgeist, ad campaigns from Ralph Lauren and Uniqlo, a campy horror flick starring Uma Thurman, and those disparaging remarks from actor Timothee Chalamet. Hi, Gil.
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B
Ryan, how are you?
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A
I'm excited to be at the Ellie Calkins Opera House with you in something of a makeshift room. Where are we?
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B
We are in our physical therapy room at the theater.
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A
You have set up a massage table. There are those sorts of rollers I see at the gym, some kind of thigh master. How demanding a production is this?
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B
This one's a killer. The piece right of spring that we're doing, I told the dancers, I told the gentlemen, especially back in the summer, I said, come back in shape because this will kill you. And some companies actually have places for you to throw up in the wings if you. It's so demanding.
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A
It's art about art.
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C
Exactly.
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A
Does it feel familiar to you? Were there times either in your dancing or producing career where you had to bounce back?
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B
Yes, absolutely. There was a time when I was dancing with American Ballet Theater. And you.
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A
You say that somewhat casually, but this is like the Keystone Company in the United States of America.
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B
Right? It was. It was a great place to be. I will admit that. It was a spectacular company when I joined and, you know, I learned a lot there. But it was a point in my career where I was just not happy. And Misha came up to me, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and he said, you know, I think.
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A
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Baryshnikov comes up to you? Again, it's a little casual. Sorry, the telling of the story to someone from the outside. Baryshnikov comes up to you.
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B
He was the artistic director. And he says, gil, you seem like you're not very happy at the moment, and Twyla Tharp has just asked me if you could take a year's leave of absence and work with her company, perform with them. And I said, I would love to. I think that would be a great break. But Misha, you just gotta guarantee me I can come back after the year. And of course he did. So I did that. And that really helped revive my love of the art form.
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A
Would you credit Twyla in particular?
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B
I would, absolutely. When I came in, I think she was, you know, excited to have me. She choreographed a couple of works on me. She brought in a ballet, the Little Ballet was the name of it, and she had choreographed that specifically for Misha, and she brought that into her company for me to dance while we were on tour. And we toured for seven months that year, so there was a lot of performance, so it really helped.
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A
Do you have the same investment in your dancers happiness so that if you saw them flagging, you would look for opportunities for them?
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B
You have no idea. It's maybe the most important thing to me is the health and well being of these dancers and how, you know, I want to create an atmosphere where they want to walk into the building every day and practice their craft and maybe puke. Yes. Yeah, well, I'm going to challenge them. There's. There's no dance. No question about that.
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C
Okay.
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A
Choose your own adventure. On this next question, we go in Timothee Chalamet or another direction.
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B
I'm already over Timothy. You know, it Just. It's a. It's not worth, you know, my breath, to be honest. It's. You know, everybody has an opinion. And, you know, certainly when I got here, people were like, colorado Valley. You know, I'm not so sure about that. And 20 years ago. 20 years ago. So there was a lot of perception that needed to be changed and so forth.
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A
In the community.
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B
In the community, absolutely.
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A
What was the perception and how has it changed?
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B
I think that the company, financially, it wasn't good at all. So that was one of the perceptions that they had. And why would you support something that, you know, can't take care of itself as an institution?
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A
Right. No one wants to go into an empty restaurant.
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B
Right. And, you know, or go into an empty restaurant and eat bad food. So you want to make sure that the product on stage is there. And when I. When I interviewed for this position in the first performance I saw, which was Nutcracker, the dancers just blew me away. There was a lot of talent on that stage, and I was very excited about that when I got the position.
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A
But.
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B
But the product needed work.
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A
It's interesting to hear you say product. You know, the McDonald's CEO got lampooned for referring to a burger as a product.
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B
Oh, really?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Okay.
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A
On social media, yeah. Is it dangerous to think of art as product?
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B
I don't think so. You know, it's. I guess I would say it's an inter. I'm speaking externally, yes, but I think it's just an internal thought process that I have.
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A
How has the product changed, then?
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B
I have an incredible artistic staff that they get it done for me. My ballet master is the assistant to me, and my ballet masters, they've grown up in this business. They know the business. They've danced all over the world. They've seen what the quality is, and they know how to achieve that with the dancers.
- [32:22]
A
Do you think then, that part of your success is delegation?
- [32:25]
B
Oh, absolutely. I couldn't do all this by myself. Yeah. So. And, I mean, I'm not only talking my artistic staff and the dancers. Oh, Bohr also.
- [32:34]
A
Hi. Has a dancer walked in?
- [32:37]
B
A dancer has walked in. Josh Allenback.
- [32:38]
C
Hi.
- [32:39]
B
Meet Ryan Warner.
- [32:41]
A
What are you working on today?
- [32:43]
C
Like, what am I doing right now? Just some bicep workouts to get my
- [32:47]
B
blood going before rehearsals for tonight. So we've been talking about Rite of Spring. You want to tell them about Rite of Spring and the challenges. Lots of stamina. It's a fun one to do, but just.
- [33:00]
C
It's very challenging on the body to do it all. Sorry, I'm not very good at doing all of this talking stuff.
- [33:07]
A
Oh, that's interesting. A ballet dancer who's used to being on stage. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're excited to, like, grab a microphone and. And talk.
- [33:16]
C
Exactly.
- [33:17]
A
I love that. I love the dimensions of art. I'll let you get back to these bicep curls.
- [33:23]
C
Thank you.
- [33:24]
A
Okay, back to where we were. Delegation. Does this mean you're not a control freak or you do have to fight?
- [33:32]
B
No, I'm not a control freak at all. I depend on people's opinions and their thought process and I listen heavily. Even the admin staff, they do incredible work behind the scenes, from fundraising to marketing. Just our finance department, what they go through every day. So, yes, I love to delegate.
- [33:51]
A
Let's talk about the fact that the company has grown in numbers quite a bit in the 20 years as well. And anytime there's growth, there's the question of whether it is sustainable as arts groups in general, ballet companies as well, struggle financially. Do you have concerns about the expansion of a company and its sustainability?
- [34:14]
B
You always have concerns. Simply because of what? The economy. What could happen to the economy? You know, any downturn and you have to be prepared. But from a financial standpoint, we've never been healthier. We have an incredible endowment to fall back on. So the growth. Yes, we've grown a lot in the past 10 years, and it's going to slow down a touch, but we still want to continue to grow. Grow.
- [34:36]
A
It's going to slow down a touch. What do you mean? How do you know that?
- [34:39]
B
Well, I've gone the past few years from 33, 34 dancers to 40 dancers very quickly. And now, you know, there's a goal to get to more dancers in the company. It just probably won't happen as quickly
- [34:50]
A
as that, given the nature of the economy right now.
- [34:54]
B
The economy, I think, is doing fine right now. But, you know, all indicators say anything could happen.
- [34:59]
A
All indicators say anything could happen. And you've just summed up America.
- [35:04]
B
Yes.
- [35:04]
A
Or the state of the world. Do you miss dancing?
- [35:08]
B
No. No, I. I loved it. I love being on stage. And I've actually, I was on stage a couple years ago on a role called Dr. Coppelius, an old man and a ballet. But I had a wonderful 21 year career. And when I got to 39, all of a sudden I just couldn't do it anymore. Yeah, I was.
- [35:23]
A
Come on in, come on in. We're in your space.
- [35:27]
B
You know, I just, I. I had trouble getting up and going to class and just being interested. And, you know, from a physical standpoint, I think I was still okay. But from a mental standpoint, it just got very tough. And so it was time to retire again.
- [35:39]
A
Your brain telling you you needed a change. And what did it mean to grow into the role of artistic director?
- [35:47]
B
Well, it meant a lot in the fact that I came to an organization that was looking for new leadership and Colorado Ballet. Colorado Ballet that wanted new leadership, and I just had to hit the ground running and, you know, provide all of that. And there were challenges from a financial standpoint, as we've talked about, to growing the company, the number of dancers that we had 27 dancers at that time in the company. We now have 40 dancers in the company and a second company of 20. So it's grown quite a bit on that.
- [36:17]
A
The second company being.
- [36:18]
B
These are kids who have just graduated from high school. They're wanting to be professional dancers, and we provide them an opportunity to perform with our performance. Professional dancers, they work with them each day. They're doing performances. Our second company mostly is doing a rehearsal right now on stage, and they get trained so that they will have a career in professional dance, whether I'm able to give them the job or they have to get it somewhere else.
- [36:39]
A
Is that gratifying to you?
- [36:41]
B
Yes, very much so.
- [36:42]
A
To watch them grow, you spent some time outside the arts managing a golf school in New York.
- [36:49]
B
Yes.
- [36:51]
A
How is golf like dance?
- [36:53]
B
Funny enough, the golf swing is very similar to a dance. You want to repeat the same thing every time so that you are consistent. If you want to stand on one leg and turn around 10 times, you have to do it exactly one way. If you want to hit the golf ball straight and hit it forever, you have to swing a certain way. So repetitiveness is very much in common with that. And as we all know, it's almost impossible to achieve.
- [37:18]
A
I'm curious how you're thinking about your own eventual successor. I'm not like pre retirement, but thank you. I know that you have to keep your eye on the long game, maybe creating a stronger pathway for dancers interested in leadership roles. So you spoke to the younger folks coming up into the ranks as dancers. But, you know, there's all this data that shows that women, people of color, are underrepresented in those leadership roles in the nation's largest ballet companies, that includes Colorado Ballet. Can you talk about fostering the directorial talent?
- [37:58]
B
I haven't gotten to that stage yet.
- [38:00]
C
Yeah.
- [38:00]
B
But when the time comes, it would be looking around to find somebody to bring them in and nurture them on how to run a company. If that's something that the board of directors want, they may just want to say we want to do a national search. And Gil, we're done with you and you know, enjoy the sunset and we're going to find somebody else. But the potential is there to groom someone.
- [38:18]
A
Do you meet dancers who express interest in that life, you know, after the stage career?
- [38:25]
B
Absolutely, yes. A lot of questions. Yosvani Ramos, who was in the company of principal dancer for years, he and I would talk about what it took to be an artistic director as he was retiring. That was one of his main interests. And he now runs a ballet company in Monterrey and Mexico. And so, you know, I helped with him, I think, a little bit, understanding the challenges that can come with it. All the joy.
- [38:49]
A
Artistic director at Colorado Ballet Gil Boggs is marking 20 years at the helm. Up next, virtual reality. This is Colorado Matters. From CPR News, it's Colorado Matters. I'm Ryan Warner. Back to the Ellie Calkins Opera House where Colorado Ballet leaps into its last show of the season, masterworks. We're backstage with Gil Boggs, who's marking as artistic director. The director of an opera company noted that since the pandemic especially, he now thinks Netflix, hbo, you know, Apple TV are his biggest competitors. So not just other live performance companies, but people choosing to stay home and, you know, binge watch a season, how are you thinking about who the competition is?
- [39:43]
B
Our subscriptions have maintained, if not even grown since the pandemic. So, you know, you hear a lot of people say we're last minute buyers now. So that that's a little bit of a competition. So I would say the biggest competition is myself and my programming. If I am not putting out programming that people find interesting and want to come see, then I'm not going to have an audience to come. We just did a new run of new sets and costumes with a ballet, Midsummer Night's Dream and our second weekend sold out. It's word of mouth. You know, we've gone to these five productions and we brought in a ballet, Casanova last year. And I got an email. Well, I didn't. The company did on our info line. And it was from a woman who said, you would never catch me or my friends dead in a theater. It's not what we do. We will not go. But Cary Mussey, who wrote the music for that ballet, Casanova, I love his music so much that I convinced our friends, my friends to buy a ticket and we all went. It was spectacular. And we had no idea it could be that good. And we're not coming to everything, but we will come back to the ballet. It's about challenging your audience with new works and things that they wouldn't know. You know, if I say to you Swan Lake, I was just gonna say
- [41:13]
A
getting away from Swan Lake or just having something to complement Swan Lake.
- [41:16]
B
Exactly. So something else that, you know, our Dracula does this for us. What else? We did Jekyll and Hyde the year before that. Just new works that people aren't familiar with from ballet companies to bring in.
- [41:27]
A
How do you strike the balance between the old favorites and the newfangled? I think about this a lot with our classical service. You know, like, they all want to hear that.
- [41:38]
B
Beethoven's Night.
- [41:40]
A
Exactly. Or like Rhapsody in Blue. And then how you bring in garage metal or something.
- [41:50]
B
Alice Cooper. I love Alice Cooper.
- [41:52]
A
The Alice Cooper Ballet next season. But how do you. How do you balance that one?
- [41:57]
B
I need buy in from my artistic staff and my dancers that they want to do this and that it's worthy of them that I've chosen, you know, for Casanova or Jekyll and Hyde, that when they get into the choreography, they start learning this, that they really want to do it. Because if they have buy into it, then there's going to be buy in on the stage and the audience is going to see a quality of performance that is necessary to drive the audience back and have trust in Colorado Ballet that what we're putting on the stage is worthy.
- [42:25]
A
Do you surrender to some extent yourself to the idea that a particular show in a season might lose money, but that others will make up for it?
- [42:38]
B
Absolutely. We. Okay, so Masterworks, which we are doing, you know, these are our final performances of the season. Masterworks, we lose money on. Masterworks came about, as I said, with Stravinsky's writing on the 100th anniversary of Rite of Spring. And when I heard that, I went to the board and I said, next year in this time slot, we've just done Peter Pan, made $750,800,000. And I went to the board and I said, I want to celebrate that music. The orchestra has asked me if they can play it. I know a ballet, Glintly's ballet, that we can put on, and I'm going to add another couple of pieces, and we're going to do it with orchestra, and we're going to move it into the Ellie Calkins Opera House, where we haven't done a rep program in years. Oh, you know, And I want to put that on. And there was so much excitement in the room. And then somebody asked the question, well, how much is it going to make? And I said, we'll be lucky to make $250,000. And we kind of came in at that number. Yeah. So they. Exactly. Their eyes got a little wide and so forth. But it was a defining moment for this organization when that happened. And now we do it every year.
- [43:37]
A
That's got to feel freeing.
- [43:39]
B
I love the accomplishment of what we've been able to do with it.
- [43:43]
A
On the topic of bringing ballet to new audiences, is ballet only for places like the Ellie Calkins, or do you imagine that Colorado ballet can be in more immersive places?
- [43:57]
B
So last summer, do you know the Green Box Mountain Festival?
- [44:00]
A
Oh, yes, in Green Mountain Falls, just outside Colorado Springs.
- [44:04]
B
Exactly. So they called us up and said, we just saw you at the Vail International Dance Festival. Would you come be part of our festival this coming summer? And it's a three week residency. And we said, absolutely, we'd love to. So we took about half the company, 17 dancers down there. I had the piece that's being performed created in Green Mountain. So it was just a lovely setting. It was an outdoor theater plus an indoor theater, and just something completely different. And you were in the community. You were part of the community for three weeks. People recognized you. They would talk to you. The neighbors across the street from the house I was staying in, we had great conversations. So it was a great feeling to get out and be somewhere else.
- [44:40]
A
And to say yes to offers.
- [44:42]
B
Yes. And to say yes because, yes, there was a financial, I don't want to say burden, but there was a financial cost to us to be able to go and do that. Yes, Green Mountain helped support that, but we also had to come up with our own funds to make this happen.
- [44:55]
A
Are there digital spaces you can imagine bringing the ballet into? Or, I don't know, do you think about TikTok or new ways of marketing ballet? Where is the innovation in outreach, you know?
- [45:11]
B
Well, funny you should ask, because today, for the first time in the audience with their cameras and their microphones is a company called Charter xr. And they have been producing video of Lakers, Los Angeles Lakers basketball games and selling it to Apple tv. And you have on, you know, whatever those masks things are. And you sit there and you are sitting courtside, you are literally LeBron James just walks right by you.
- [45:36]
A
This is like VR.
- [45:37]
B
It's like VR.
- [45:39]
A
Virtual reality.
- [45:39]
B
Exactly. And so they're out there now doing testing with their Cameras and with their microphones so that our fall production of Don Quixote, they're very much interested in. Of recording and getting it onto Apple
- [45:52]
A
TV to be used on these devices that immerse you.
- [45:55]
B
Yes, exactly.
- [45:57]
A
It sounds a bit quixotic, Gil. That's a Quixote joke. You got that right?
- [46:03]
C
Yes. Okay, good.
- [46:05]
A
I was just making sure.
- [46:06]
B
Right.
- [46:07]
A
But did they approach you?
- [46:08]
B
I think I'm re. Choreographing the ballet now. Just one kind. I'm kidding.
- [46:11]
A
Did they approach you? They did.
- [46:13]
B
They did.
- [46:14]
A
Interesting.
- [46:14]
B
Yes. So it's a local company here in Denver, and they just. They said, why don't we look at Colorado Ballet? You know, the art form, the energy. You know, there are athletes up there on the stage, and I think that's what's driving them. And the interest for this, are they paying you? No, but they're not charging us.
- [46:32]
A
It's funny to ask this question as you sit, I think, on a literal bucket. Oh, maybe that's just. Oh, that's like a Gatorade.
- [46:39]
B
Exactly.
- [46:40]
A
Thing to hydrate dancers, I gather. But what's on your bucket list, still, as an artistic director of Colorado Ballet?
- [46:49]
B
Well, fortunately, next season, I was just approved by the Kranko Trust to do John Kranko's Romeo and Juliet, which is just a spectacular production of Romeo and Juliet, and it takes a lot of dancers, so I've been able to build up to that. And it's a new echelon for the company to achieve this production and to be able to bring it in.
- [47:12]
A
Now, what is special about the Kranko production?
- [47:14]
B
The choreography, the costumes, the sets, everything that's involved with. It's just. It's just a beautiful production, and it flows so well, and you're able to understand the story. Not that we don't already know it, but it just moves along so well.
- [47:28]
A
I hear it doesn't end well. It's not pretty, but it's interesting. I ask a bucket list item, and it's actually one you can soon check off.
- [47:36]
B
Right? Yes, I'm.
- [47:38]
A
Check off.
- [47:38]
B
Check off, exactly. Yes. So it's, you know, it's quite the process. And I contacted them, and they said, well, we have to send someone to adjudicate the company to look at the company for three days, work on casting, and just determine if your company is capable to do this in the first place before we will ever commit to that. And so a couple of months ago, we had somebody come in from. She came in from France, and for three days, she looked at the company. We had conversations, sometimes difficult conversations. She was challenging me on, ken, you should do this. Are you sure you can do this? You can provide this.
- [48:09]
A
And that wasn't necessarily all about the dancers. That was about the capacity of the company in other ways.
- [48:15]
B
Yes. As far as numbers. And then there's also a lot of supernumeraries who are involved in that. And can I find those within the community, which. Absolutely. I mean, you're going to be on stage in Romeo and Juliet. You don't know it yet, but you're going to be one of our supers up there.
- [48:29]
C
Okay.
- [48:30]
A
All right.
- [48:31]
B
It was a very nice feeling for them to say. Yes.
- [48:34]
A
But what a remarkable thing that in order to draw a show, you have to try out for it as a company.
- [48:42]
B
It's really the first time that that's happened.
- [48:44]
A
Oh, really?
- [48:44]
B
In my 20 years. Yeah. So that's how break a leg.
- [48:49]
A
And our dancer has headed out. But. Wow, that's the first time in 20 years. Okay.
- [48:54]
B
Right.
- [48:55]
A
Gil Boggs, for 20 years now, artistic director at Colorado Ballet Masterworks, runs through the end of the week at the Ellie Calkins Opera House in Denver. And that is Colorado Matters for now. With special thanks to Stephanie Wolf and Ben to Birkeland. I'm Ryan Warner at CPR News and krcc.