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Paul:
Can you believe it's that time again? The USA International Ballet Competition has rotated back around and it's here this June in Jackson, Mississippi. Hey, it's Paul Wolf with the front row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson. We call the podcast Soul Sessions, and it's the people, places, and events that make the City With Soul shine. Today, I've got USAIBC Executive Director, Mona Nicholas, who's joining me to talk about the two-week international competition, held here every four years in the City With Soul, but because of COVID, it's been, what, five years now?

Mona:
Right. Five years. And so there's been a long wait for this to come, and I'm very excited about it and I'm ready for it to be here, and I'm ready for the dancers to be here, and I think they will be too.

Paul:
Well, by the time this airs, the town, the city downtown will really be spruced up and welcoming. I've seen flags going up on poles and it really is a production, a celebration of all things ballet.

Mona:
It really is. And I think all things art.

Paul:
Oh, sure. Tell me more about that.

Mona:
Not only do we have beautiful dancers here, we have the symphony playing, we have the Mississippi chorus will be singing at opening ceremony. We have an art exhibition at Browns Fine Art and Framing. Andrew Bucci is our official artist. And we also have the sculpture, Dancer 12, out in front of Thalia Mara, and the artist that created that will be here. We have Jennifer Homans, who is the dance critic for the New Yorker magazine, will also be here about a book that she's written about Balanchine. So it's just a celebration of all sorts of art, not just dance.

Paul:
And a celebration of just Jackson as a city too. I know the conversations that we have had. You always say that the dancers have this one thing they say about the competition here, and that is...

Mona:
Dance Jackson. They want to dance Jackson. So I think that is just amazing. And so in our marketing plan and our ads that we've had in magazines and in print and online, on social media as well as the commercial that has started airing, we feature Jackson and it's all about dance Jackson, and downtown Jackson right now looks really beautiful, I think better than it has ever looked.

Paul:
I'm going to back up just a little bit because I think I still talk to people in the public who go, wait a minute, ballet competition, happens here every four years. The only place it happens in North America is in Jackson, Mississippi. Just briefly, maybe a little history lesson is in order.

Mona:
Well, that is the big question. "Why Jackson?" I always answer it, "Why not Jackson?" We have the best food. We have southern hospitality like no one else, and our beautiful theater named after Thalia Mara. And really the answer to the question why Jackson is because of Thalia Mara. She was recruited to come here to open and start a professional ballet company, and she noticed that her studio on Friday nights emptied out. She could not figure out where everyone was going. Well, of course, we all know Friday nights are football games, so she did figure out quickly because she had been from New York, that people in the South really love a competition, so she knew of these other ballet competitions that were happening around the world.

The oldest ballet competition is in Varna, Bulgaria and also Moscow, Russia, and now it's in Helsinki, Finland. But at the time, the other competition was in Tokyo. But the United States did not have an international ballet competition. So she went to work and along with the local and state government and a whole host of arts loving citizens, they won this competition for Jackson. We now have a joint resolution from US Congress saying that Jackson is the home of the International Ballet Competition for the United States.

Paul:
That is absolutely fascinating, that we will have visitors here in June from all over the world, and they come here to dance, but they also come here to be signed by major dance companies from all over the country as well.

Mona:
That's right, because our first competition was in 1979, so you can imagine now those competitors are probably now in their sixties, and many of them, their career was launched on the stage here in Jackson, so they all have a special place in their heart for Jackson. We are known for our fairness, for quality, for integrity, and so everyone wants to come here. We had almost 400 applications and we chose 120 and those were from over 20 nations.

Paul:
This is going to be a spectacular two weeks here in Jackson, opening night June 10th, is that right?

Mona:
That's right. Opening night is on June the 10th. We'll have the Parade of Nations where the competitors walk in, carrying their home country flag and the symphony plays that night. We introduce our international jury. We also introduce our faculty for our international dance school, which takes place as well on the Belhaven campus. We have about 120 young dancers coming to participate in that. Everybody will be there to welcome the competitors, and then the second half after intermission, the Washington Ballet will perform.

Paul:
Star studded. Stunning. What would you say to somebody who's like, "Eh, not really into dance, not really into ballet." How do you get them to come out and check this out for themselves?

Mona:
Well, I usually say, do you like quality or the best of the best? I mean, it is something that you will not want to miss. I can promise you if you come to one, you're going to come to the second one. My husband, who never... I don't even think he'd ever even seen a ballet dancer before. He would not miss a night. He gets his program, he scores them, he takes notes, and really, he could actually probably be a juror by now because he usually gets it right.

Paul:
Okay, so come out, check it out, give it a shot. Check out these athletes because they put in so much work for this and they do need your support. And speaking of support from the community, you need that in the form of volunteers. Why are volunteers so important to this event?

Mona:
It takes almost 600 volunteers to be able to run this event. This event is a two-week international event, but it really starts the week before because our dance school students and our competitors, the coaches arrive a week before. There are all sorts of volunteer opportunities. We need people to work the transportation, driving VIPs around. We need people to meet the competitors at the airport to greet them, and the list goes on.

But one of the neat things that we have as far as volunteer opportunities that sets us apart from other competitions in Varna, Bulgaria or Helsinki, Finland, is that we have something that's called competitor ambassadors. What a competitor ambassador does is you are assigned a dancer and you're just their cheering squad. You may want to buy them some flowers when they are performing, or maybe they need to go to the grocery store or bring them some snacks or whatever. You're just their support system. And it's very important that all 100 competitors have a competitor ambassador because we want them all to feel the love that we want them to all feel the southern hospitality. So they'll go and tell their friends and they will want to dance Jackson.

Paul:
That's the executive director of the USAIBC, Mona Nicholas. Now were you listening When Mona said she needs 600 volunteers? This is your time to shine Jackson. Everyone says "it's the people." So show up and share that warm hospitality that we are known for. I'll put links to volunteer opportunities, the two-week schedule and tickets in the show notes. Soul Sessions is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization for Mississippi's Capital City. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Rickey Thigpen. To learn more about us you can do that on our website. It's always up-to-date with the latest info at visitjackson.com. I'm Paul Wolf and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

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