Moore, Rachel

Dance company executive

B orn Rachel Suzanne Moore, February 19, 1965, in Davis, CA; daughter of Charles Vincent and Patricia (Dudley) Moore; married Robert Ryan (a business consultant and executive). Education: Brown University, B.A. (with honors), 1992; Columbia University, M.A., 1994.

Addresses: Office—American Ballet Theatre, 890 Broadway Fl. 3D, New York, NY 10003-1211.

Career

D ancer, American Ballet Theatre II, New York City, 1982-84; dancer, American Ballet Theatre, New York City, 1984-88; development officer, National Cultural Alliance, Washington, D.C., 1994-95; director and coordinator, Center for Community Development and the Arts, Americans for the Arts, Washington, D.C., 1995-97; managing director, Ballet Theatre of Boston, Boston, MA, 1998; executive director, Project STEP, Boston, MA, 1998-2001; director, Boston Ballet Center for Dance Education, Boston, MA, 2001-04; executive director, American Ballet Theatre, 2004—.

Awards: Presidential Scholar, U.S. Department of Education, 1982; National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts Distinguished Alumni Award, 2008; Teacher’s College Distinguished Alumni Award, 2007.

Sidelights

A fter a career as a dancer with American Ballet Theatre, Rachel Moore began working on the other side of the arts business as an administrator and advocate. After a post at the National Cultural Alliance, she held a series of positions at such institutions as Ballet Theatre of Boston and Boston Ballet Center for Dance Education. In 2004, Moore returned to New York City to become the executive director of American Ballet Theatre.

Born Rachel Suzanne Moore on February 19, 1965, in Davis, California, she was the daughter of Charles and Patricia Moore. Both her parents were economists, and raised their daughter in the city of her birth. Moore did not begin studying ballet until the age of eleven when she began taking classes at the Davis Arts Center. Moore quickly progressed by working harder than all her classmates. Within a year of graduating from high school, she became a professional ballet dancer.

Moore began her career in 1982 as a dancer in New York City with American Ballet Theatre II, the young touring wing of American Ballet Theatre. She spent two years with the company before joining the main American Ballet Theatre company in 1984. After four more years as a dancer, long-term foot and ankle problems compelled Moore to end her dance career and focus on her education.

Moore’s career path was influenced by her experiences as a member of the Dancers’ Union Committee and chair of the Dancers’ Emergency Fund for American Ballet Theatre. She decided to pursue a career in arts administration. Moore first entered Brown University in 1988, and she earned her B.A. with honors in political philosophy from the school in 1992. Moore then moved back to New York City to do graduate work at Columbia University. She was awarded her M.A. in arts administration in 1994.

Degrees in hand, Moore began working in arts administration in Washington, D.C. She moved there to work as a development officer for the National Cultural Alliance in 1994. Leaving the position in 1995, Moore became the director and coordinator for the Washington-based Center for Community Development and the Arts, part of the nation service organization Americans for the Arts. She spent two years in the posts before moving to Boston and focusing again on dance as an administrator.

In 1998, Moore became the managing director of Ballet Theatre of Boston. In this newly created position, she was responsible for many administrative and operational duties for the company and its school. Moore was happy to be back working in dance again. She told Karen Campbell of the Boston Herald upon taking the job, “Having been a dancer with an understanding of the dance world, I had been working in arts advocacy for a long time. I was feeling a little distant from the actual art form, and I felt a strong need to get closer to artists and the production of art. Ballet was my first love, so this is a perfect fit. It’s like coming home.”

However, Moore left the post after less than a year to become the executive director of Project STEP in Boston. Moore remained at the classical music school for low-income students until 2001 and learned much about the art of fund-raising and arts outreach there. In 2001, she took another education-related and dance-related position by becoming the director of Boston Ballet Center for Dance Education.

The first to be named director of the center, Moore’s position was heading the $3 million educational arm of Boston Ballet and its more than 2,000 students learning in various locations around the city and its suburbs. Soon after taking the post, Moore told Ellen Pigott of Dance Magazine, “I can speak the [languages of the] world of business and dance, and help communication between the two.” Upon taking the post, Moore worked to better link the center’s various programs and locations around the city, which had previously been working at odds with one another. She also began implementing her own five-year plan for the center, emphasizing a populist philosophy to dance education and the future of center.

After three years of leading the center, however, Moore left Boston in 2004 for a more prestigious position in New York City. That year, she returned to American Ballet Theatre to become its executive director. At the time, American Ballet Theatre had experienced much turnover among its executive directors—Moore was the fourth in four years—and there were concerns about its financial stability. Among her immediate concerns were creating a balanced budget, despite previous significant budget deficits, and a strategy for the ballet.

Upon taking the job, Moore expressed her happiness at being back at American Ballet Theatre. She told Jennifer Dunning of the New York Times, “I’ve known a lot of these people for a long time, and I know the culture of the organization. I have a common artistic language with Kevin [McKenzie, artistic director] and the artistic staff. I’m never going to second-guess that we need 24 swans. And I think that having a business background I’m able to communicate with people outside the dance world why it’s so important to do what we do.”

Moore embraced the challenges presented by American Ballet Theatre and promoted the ideas of long-range planning, building an endowment, restructuring the senior staff, and economizing to maximize the ballet’s funding. She was successful in changing the business environment around American Ballet Theatre, and in just over a year, she was able to nearly double its endowment and have a budget surplus as well as increased box-office receipts. While Moore no longer danced herself, she was still drawn to the experience when she watched her company perform. She told Vogue’s Rebecca Johnson, “I dance in my seat. I can’t help it; I still feel the music.”