Dan Guin, Executive Director and Co-Artistic Director of Boca Ballet Theatre, and his wife, Jane Tyree, Boca Ballet Theatre’s School Director and Co-Artistic Director, have been the faces of Boca Raton’s arts community for 30 some years. Although they arrived in Boca initially to work with what was then the Dance Academy of Boca Raton to mount summer performances (both have a long pedigree of professional dance and entertainment experience), that foray grew into their establishing the Boca Ballet Theatre in 1991. The couple proceeded to found the Boca Raton Cultural Consortium, which allowed local arts groups a forum in which to collaborate and advocate for their organizations and the arts in general. Since then, the city’s arts profile has blossomed, from the establishment of Mizner Park, the relocation and expansion of the Boca Raton Museum of Art there, the Festival of the Arts Boca to a movement currently underway to raise finds for a much-needed performing arts venue. Guin and Tyree have witnessed—and helped guide— the evolution of Boca’s arts, and remain at their forefront today.
WHY BALLET?
JANE: “ You fall in love with it…Right now as a teacher when I ask a group of 8-year-old or 10-year-old students ‘Who in here thinks they want to be a ballerina?’ They all raise their hands. Through time you start to find out how hard it is, how disciplined it is, what commitment it takes and then there’s the physical part: can your body handle it?”
DAN: “There is a love that’s innate in people that give themselves to classical dance. There’s very little monetary reward…”
WHY THE ARTS ARE IMPORTANT:
JANE: “There are just so many reasons…It’s a fantastic visual experience for people, the performances and entertainment and immersing yourself in the arts—but because we have such a large school and we’ve been here so long…[I see how] it’s [helped] in developing a strong healthy community. Young people need the arts to give them structure, focus, commitment—whether they become dancers or not.”
DAN: “Everybody works hard, everybody’s trying to make money. I’m not trying to say money is not important—we all need stability—but my short answer is that the arts are food for the soul. You have to have reasons to live and feel uplifted and moved. A thousand years from now, we will be judged by our arts and our culture, on whether a community or a civilization was successful.”
WHY THEY STARTED THE CULTURAL CONSORTIUM:
DAN: “When I arrived here fulltime Jan McArt’s theater had just had a fire, Little Palm Family Theater was using Jan McArt’s theater, the Caldwell Theater Company had just been bopped out of the old Boca mall downtown. The Boca Pops was in a tiny little office off Sanborn Square. All of the arts organizations really were screaming for facilities…Then, Mizner Park happened. The group formed at that time decided that collaboration was a big deal…I saw what we were missing in this beautiful paradise was the understanding and appreciation of culture… I think Boca Ballet Theatre has helped develop the soul of this town.”
WHAT THEY WANT THEIR LEGACIES TO BE:
DAN: “To have had an impact on the way ballet is being trained and presented in the United States. To have left a venue that Boca Ballet could call its home and hub of dance in South Florida. And that everyone thought I was a nice guy.”
JANE: “Teaching has always been what’s driven me so I guess my main thing would be to be remembered with respect from all the children and families that have graced my life.”
This article is from the November/December issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
