Samantha Nupen: The man who asked: What can a South African ballet company be?

SamSays had the opportunity to chat to Elroy Fillis-Bell as he steps down from his role as CEO of Joburg Ballet after three years.

There is something rather fitting about the fact that he is uncomfortable talking about himself. He would much rather talk about the work. The dancers. The artists. The audiences. The possibilities. The things that could be done differently. The things that perhaps had never been done before.

There is a lot to talk about.

Elroy joined the company in September 2023, stepping into an organisation with an extraordinary history – but also, as he saw it, enormous potential. His question was not simply how to keep Joburg Ballet going. It was: what can a South African ballet company be?

That question has been at the heart of his tenure.

And perhaps the answer is something much bigger than ballet.

A rather unconventional ballet CEO

Elroy is not a dancer.

In fact, he has never had formal dance training.

His background is in theatre, arts management, curation, education, copyright and cultural development. He grew up in Vanguard Estate on the Cape Flats, studied at UCT, went to Washington DC through the South African-Washington International Programme and worked in artistic development and curation at Arena Stage. He returned to South Africa and eventually found himself in Durban, working with Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre.

He learned curation from Jay Pather, who he describes as a “curator extraordinaire” and who had been one of his professors at UCT.

His career subsequently took him through the Suidoosterfees, DALRO, the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria and a host of arts organisations and projects.

So, no, he didn’t arrive at Joburg Ballet from inside the traditional ballet bubble. And perhaps that was exactly the point. “I never had all the answers,” he tells me. “But I was going to try.”

Scarcity

His first season that he truly regards as his own was Scarcity.

And what a statement that was.

Rather than beginning with another familiar classical ballet, Elroy curated an entire season of contemporary work around the idea of scarcity – at a time when South Africa was grappling with load shedding, water insecurity, corruption and the consequences of having too few resources.

He commissioned young choreographers and artists, including Craig Pedro, Hannah Ma and Jorge Pérez Martínez. He made a call to internationally renowned South African choreographer, Dada Masilo and asked her why she had never worked with Joburg Ballet. Her response – she had never been asked.

The result was Salome.

Scarcity was a whole season designed to push boundaries and start a conversation.

And, predictably, not everyone was thrilled.

Elroy tells me about an older woman who confronted him after opening night. “How dare you do this to this ballet company!”

He had expected it because Elroy understood something important about audiences: you cannot simply abandon the people who have supported a company for decades while simultaneously expecting new audiences to magically appear.

His strategy became one step forward, one step back.

Contemporary. Classical. Contemporary. Classical. Not necessarily in that order. And even a mixture of the two in one season.

Take the audience on a journey with you.

Give the traditional ballet lover Sleeping Beauty, but also give someone who has never been to ballet a reason to walk through the doors.

It is not about choosing one audience over another.

It is about making room for more people.

And it worked.

He remembers an older couple who returned to watch Scarcity again because they had found it so refreshing.

That, for me, is one of the most interesting things about Elroy’s approach: transformation doesn’t necessarily mean throwing away what came before.

Sometimes it means making space around it.

“This is their ballet company too.”

Elroy was blunt with the board when he arrived.

The average age of the Joburg Ballet audience, he says, was between 60 and 80 and predominantly white.

“If you don’t change, in ten years you won’t have a company because you won’t have a market.”

It was a difficult conversation – but an important one.

He wanted younger audiences. Black audiences. More diverse audiences. Young professionals. People who had never been to a ballet.

But he also wanted the traditional audience to feel that this was still their company.

That balance became a defining part of his thinking.

And it wasn’t simply about getting bums on seats.

It was about belonging.

Who feels that ballet is for them?

Who feels that Joburg Ballet belongs to them?

And, ultimately, who gets to decide what South African ballet looks like?

From Joburg Ballet to South African ballet

For Elroy, the answer became increasingly clear.

Joburg Ballet needed to be more than a company that performed the classical repertoire exceptionally well.

It needed to understand its identity as a South African ballet company.

That meant honouring the great classical works while investing in South African choreographers, stories and creative voices.

It meant education. Training. Access. Community.

It meant taking the company beyond Johannesburg.

During his tenure, Joburg Ballet travelled around South Africa, including to Cape Town, Durban, Mandela Bay, Sasolburg and festivals such as the KKNK. The company also travelled internationally, with its season at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre in London becoming a particularly significant milestone – Joburg Ballet was the first African ballet company to present a full season at the venue.

For Elroy, touring was not simply about prestige.

It was about giving dancers the opportunity to perform for different audiences and experience the camaraderie that comes from travelling together.

It was also about saying: This is not just Johannesburg’s ballet company. He wanted people across South Africa to feel that it belonged to them too.

The future is not only on the stage

Perhaps some of Elroy’s most important work has happened away from the spotlight.

He looked closely at the Joburg Ballet School and its pre-professional Aspirant Programme and questioned whether the existing structures really created access.

At the time, aspiring dancers were paying to participate. Elroy scrapped that model.

Instead, he found funding for stipends and restructured the programme as a paid internship.

It is a deceptively simple change, but it changes who gets the opportunity to become a professional dancer.

Because if you have to pay for the privilege of being part of the pipeline, there are an awful lot of talented young people who will never even reach the starting line.

Under his tenure, investment in education and training grew, impact research was commissioned, and partnerships were developed to support the programme’s future. A dedicated Joburg Ballet aspirant studio is also being developed at the 44 Main space.

And Elroy has a lovely phrase for this kind of thinking.

He keeps returning to a Greek proverb:

“A society grows when old men plant seeds of trees that they will never sit in the shade of.” It is difficult to imagine a better description of what education and training should be.

Let’s work together

Another word that comes up again and again in our conversation is collaboration.

Not collaboration for the sake of having somebody else’s name on a poster. Collaboration because it makes practical, financial and artistic sense.

To bring audiences together, share resources, share ideas and cross-pollinate.

A choir brings its audience.

An orchestra brings its audience.

Contemporary dance has its audience.

Visual arts have theirs.

Theatre has another.

Why should all of these disciplines exist in separate little boxes?

His collaboration with the UJ Choir for The Bacchae is a good example – suddenly the Joburg Ballet audience can include the choir’s community and university audience.

And then there was Swan Lake. A major collaboration with Cape Town City Ballet, bringing the two companies together in a combined cast of around 60 dancers and sharing the Joburg and Cape Town seasons.

It was, he says, something that had not been done in 30 years.

And the collaboration extends to theatre spaces – not only Joburg Theatre, but The South African State Theatre where it all began – Giselle the very first ballet staged by South African Ballet Theatre at the State Theatre returned to the Opera stage in February this year and Carmen will be staged there once it concludes it’s Joburg season in October this year. The Baxter, the Artscape, the Linbury Theatre in London, the Playhouse in Durban and the Mandela Bay Theatre in Gqeberha.

But perhaps more importantly, it challenged an industry culture that Elroy found too aloof, isolated and competitive.

He wanted community.

He wanted ballet companies to talk to one another.

To share dancers and costumes.

To help one another.

Because, as he puts it, if someone goes to any ballet company and falls in love with ballet, we all win.

I love that.

And then there is Dane

One of Elroy’s personal highlights of the past three years has been bringing Dane Hurst home to South Africa as Artistic Director of Joburg Ballet.

It wasn’t a quick or easy process. There were recruitment attempts, an international search and the involvement of a professional services company that supported the search pro bono.

But Elroy already had an idea. He had met Dane briefly through Jazzart. Then, while in London in 2024, Elroy went to dinner with him. And, in his words, he “badgered” him.

Come home.

Come and be the Artistic Director.

Dane eventually did, initially as interim and then permanent Artistic Director.

The appointment was unanimous.

Elroy describes leaving the company knowing that its artistic leadership is in “deeply capable hands”.

A learning organisation

Elroy talks about the organisation as a learning organisation.

After every production, there is a debrief.

What worked?

What didn’t?

What could have been done better?

What did the dancers think?

What did the team learn?

Those lessons are documented, tracked and eventually became part of the board’s institutional archive.

Because Elroy understands something that is easily forgotten in the arts – if the lesson leaves with the person who learnt it, the organisation hasn’t really learnt anything.

The knowledge has to stay.

The systems have to stay.

The people have to stay.

The culture has to stay.

And perhaps that is the real legacy of these three years.

Not simply Scarcity.

Not Sleeping Beauty.

Not Swan Lake.

Not The Bacchae: An African Choral Ballet.

Not the tours or the international recognition.

But a company that has been encouraged to question itself.

To learn. To collaborate. To open its doors wider. To build relationships. To look at its audiences and ask who isn’t there. To look at its dancers and ask what they need. To look at its history and ask how it can honour it without being imprisoned by it.

Elroy’s own words, written as his three-year tenure came to an end, are perhaps the simplest summation:

He wanted Joburg Ballet to remain grounded in its classical foundations, while becoming “unmistakably South African in its voice” and increasingly accessible to the communities it exists to serve.

And perhaps that is the question he leaves behind.

Not “What did Elroy Fillis-Bell do?”

But: What can Joburg Ballet become now?

Because for three years, that has been the question he has been asking. And I suspect the answer is only just beginning to emerge.

Thank you, Elroy, for asking the questions.

And for being brave enough to try some of the answers

Time for rest, reflection and relationships

Elroy credits his husband, Johnathan, with keeping him sane, keeping the home fires burning and showing endless patience with the late nights and long hours that come with the job. He is deeply grateful for the support of both Johnathan and his extended family, and looks forward, as they do, to some much-needed quality family catch-up time….. at least until the next project ignites his passion.

Samantha Nupen
sam@nupen.co.za
083 449 8523
SamSays on FB and samsays_sa on IG

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