Ballet Frontier finds a new home

In front of board members, friends and invited guests, Enrica Tseng introduced the students of her Ballet Frontier of Texas on Sunday, and they performed scenes from The Nutcracker and variations from other ballets.

While it was a sweet showcase for the students, there was something else to celebrate: a new studio.

The new home in southwest Fort Worth, the Ballet Center of Fort Worth, opened Oct. 31 after years of planning and building. The 8,500-square-foot space boasts three dance studios of varying sizes, ample office space, dressing rooms, a teachers lounge, a welcoming lobby and storage for costumes and props — a room that is already filled to the ceiling.

She thanked everyone for their hard work and dedication, but also for their inspiration and motivation — all things without which the arts cannot happen. She even thanked her banker, who is integral to something else that helps the arts thrive: funding.

It’s saying a lot that less than 10 years after former Texas Ballet Theater principals Tseng and her husband, Chung-Lin Tseng, began the roots of what would become Ballet Frontier, they’ve just opened a $1.05 million home after several years of renting studio space in strip malls on the same side of town.

“We are lucky that we are in a city that appreciates the arts,” says Enrica Tseng, who is originally from Chiavari, a coastal town in northern Italy.

It’s not every arts organization that can afford such a space, especially when said group’s current budget is a modest $122,000 — the highest it has been in the organization’s history. Perhaps what made it work is that Ballet Frontier didn’t purchase the land and the building; the Tsengs did. Their company, Ballet Frontier, rents the space.

“I’ve always wanted to have my own studio,” says Chung-Lin Tseng, 48, who met his wife when they danced for the Universal Ballet of Seoul, South Korea, with which they toured the world as principal dancers.

It was on that touring circuit that they were introduced to Texas Ballet Theater, and joined under the leadership of Benjamin Houk, who served at what was then Fort Worth Dallas Ballet for three seasons, following Paul Mejia and preceding Ben Stevenson.

Chung-Lin Tseng, who started his career as a figure skater in his native Taiwan and became a ballet dancer relatively late (in his mid-20s), left the Texas Ballet Theater in 2004 when his contract wasn’t renewed after a knee injury. He had always wanted to choreograph, and both he and Enrica enjoyed teaching, so they decided to take the plunge and start their own company.

Their group had the first unofficial performance with “An Evening of Ballet,” which was a benefit for the financially struggling Texas Ballet Theater.

“For the first three years it was very hard,” says Enrica Tseng. But they were determined to follow their passion.

In 2008, she retired from TBT to focus full-time on Ballet Frontier, which was officially incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 2009. Now, as the group plans its seventh production of The Nutcracker — which signals the opening of the 2014-15 season — Ballet Frontier has 250 students and does three public performances a year.

This season, the story ballet in the spring will be A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the sixth nonholiday story ballet that Chung-Lin Tseng — who officially retired as a dancer last season — will have choreographed.

That’s a big shift from his early inclinations as a choreographer, when he was more interested in non-narrative works in the vein of George Balanchine.

“I always believe that ballet is physical, and we have these stories to tell,” Chung-Lin Tseng says, noting that his biggest inspirations have been the late Universal Ballet artistic director Roy Tobias, and Ben Stevenson, who was present at Sunday’s studio-warming. “I don’t want to create a ballet that nobody understands.

“I get my sense of music and beauty from [Tobias], and [Stevenson] is very detailed,” he adds.

With the new momentum, the Tsengs say they hope Ballet Frontier can grow talent, using more guest artists, such as the ones from TBT they currently use.

“I think there is space for everyone,” says Enrica Tseng, referring to the ballet community in North Texas — one that is overflowing with ballet schools but short on professional ballet companies.

But she might as well be commenting on the new home to call their own.