On the Dance Floor with Gil Boggs

It’s safe to say that the Colorado Ballet’s Gil Boggs is the only artistic director of a major ballet company whose previous job was running a golf club for seven years. 

“I call it my college education,” the 55-year-old Boggs says of his position as the academy director at Chelsea Piers Golf Club in New York City. He’d become a professional dancer in Atlanta straight out of high school and hung up his slippers after 17 years at the world-renowned American Ballet Theatre in 1999.

“A dancer can’t retire on Saturday night and become an artistic director on Monday morning,” Boggs says. “You’ve got to have business skills, you have to know how to hire and fire, do budgets. I’d always loved golf, and I was very fortunate with Chelsea Piers because I ended up in a management position with 14 golf pros working for me, giving 12,000 hours of lessons a year.”

In 2006, Boggs’ unique professional trajectory brought him to the Colorado Ballet, which this June 6 will stage its second annual golf tournament to raise money for Colorado Ballet’s professional Company, Academy and Education and Community Engagement programs.

Hosted by Lakewood Country Club, the event will also honor the man who in ten years has transformed the company from an embattled, debt-ridden organization into a flush operation with seasons of record-breaking ticket sales, a fabulous new home and rehearsal space in the Art District on Santa Fe, strong community involvement and an artistic product that rivals some of the best professional dance companies in the U.S.

Boggs properly credits the company’s dancers, staff, board and donors for the resurrection. But he also cites his golf experience, which prepared him for his current job every bit as much as his 17 years as principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) did.

“What’s it like being in charge of 14 golf pros?” he asks with a chuckle. “It’s like having 14 principal dancers in a ballet company—‘How come he got the lesson before I got the lesson?’ ‘How come he got the lead and I didn’t?’”

Boggs got more than his share of leading roles during a performing career in which he worked with or studied under such greats as Twyla Tharp, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Paul Taylor, Mark Morris, Cynthia Gregory and Boggs’ idol, Mikhail Baryshnikov. As the ABT’s artistic director, the Russian-born legend hired the 21-year-old dancer from the Atlanta Ballet.

“If you do a move in dance, there's a specific technical way to do it, just like the golf swing…You try and repeat it over and over. Achieving that repetition is the same for a dancer and a golfer.”

Boggs remembers his boss’ reaction to seeing the golf clubs that accompanied him on tours and off-days. “We’re in Miami and Misha looks at my golf bag. ‘Stupid game,’ he says. ‘You should go read a book.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ Five or six years down the line, and Misha’s completely addicted to golf. I mean addicted.”

Boggs initially considered becoming a teaching pro after winding down his dance career. The golf bug had bitten him as a boy in Atlanta long before the ballet bug did, and he made a point of playing 30 to 40 rounds during each of his ABT years in New York. He made his way to Winged Foot, Westchester and Quaker Ridge.

On a trip with ABT golf buddies, he got his first ace—hitting driver into a 25 mph wind—on Pebble Beach’s 17th. His second came on 16 at his home course, Wiltwyck Golf Club—100 miles north of Manhattan—where he also shot a career-best 71 during a member-member. With the encouragement of Darryl Jack, then Wiltwyck’s head PGA professional, the dancer pirouetted towards a second act as a golf instructor.

“I quickly learned I did not enjoy giving lessons,” Boggs says with a laugh. “Working with people and their idea of what the swing looked like and what I was seeing… It wasn’t the right fit.”

Chelsea Piers was the right fit. So was marriage to fellow ABT alum Sandra Brown, a highly regarded choreographer and dancer, with whom he now has two children—Corey, 10, and Emma, 5. She had just given birth to their son when things changed. “I was working at Chelsea Piers and hitting golf balls out towards the sunset and the Hudson River, enjoying life,” Boggs remembers. “And somebody I’d worked with at ABT called me about a job in Denver.”

What followed, he says, was a “leap of faith” more challenging than any tour jeté. “When the board voted to hire me, they were going to give me a two-year contract. I said I need three years to make a difference. When they said, ‘if the company is soluble, we’ll guarantee you a third year,’ I thought, ‘What am I getting myself into?’”

Returning to dance rekindled Boggs’ love of the art form. He repaired damaged relationships in the Denver community, retired the company’s debt to the city and achieved such financial and artistic success that the board has renewed his contract three times, extending him to 2019. He loves being around dancers, whom he inspires with his passion and drive. Sandra serves as one of the company’s two ballet mistresses, with the most recent of her many critical successes being The Last Beat, which she created and staged in 2014 to the music of DeVotchKa. 

Boggs also moved the company out of its decaying headquarters at 13th and Lincoln and into a 30,000-square-foot space—a complete, customized reconfiguration of three buildings now connected at the northwest corner of 11th and Santa Fe. “This building has been a game-changer for us,” he says during a tour of the structure’s many rehearsal and education spaces, black-box theater, workout room, lockers, showers and humming administrative area.

As Colorado Ballet’s fortunes have risen so has Boggs’ handicap. “When I left New York I was a three,” he says. “Now I’m a nine.” He plays at Riverdale, CommonGround and Bear Dance, and joins friends who are members at Cherry Hills, Glenmoor and Lakewood. Two days after posing for these photos, he and Colorado Ballet Managing Director Mark Chase drove to Holyoke for a two-day, 72-hole golf pilgrimage to Ballyneal.

The trip, like his career, represents just another correlation he’s made between golf and ballet. There are others. “If you do a move in dance, there’s a specific technical way to do it, just like a golf swing,” he explains. “Both are mentally and technically demanding. You try and repeat the move over and over. Achieving that repetition is the same for a dancer and a golfer.”

However, the balance he developed in dance has led him to repeat a somewhat unorthodox golf swing. “It’s easier for me to sway and stay on balance. Instead of rotating, it’s easy to load up too far on the right side and go too far left. It’s not the most efficient thing.”

Like most of us, Boggs reflects on the “what ifs“ in his career. What if he didn’t get the job at Chelsea Piers? What if the plane of his father—U.S. Marine Major Pat Boggs, whom Gil likens to the Great Santini—hadn’t been shot down in Vietnam? Had he survived, would Major Boggs have approved of a son making a living in ballet tights? One thing’s for sure, had his father lived, young Gil would never have met Bob Dendy, a kindhearted stranger who’d heard on the radio about a certain fatherless boy who’d entered a contest to be a batboy for the Atlanta Braves.

“He and his wife contacted my mother and became lifelong family friends,” Boggs remembers. “He took me night-fishing and introduced me to golf. I parred the first hole I ever played.” He’s been hooked ever since.

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More info: coloradoballet.org

To play in the annual Colorado Ballet Golf Tournament at Lakewood Country Club on June 6th, go to: https://www.blacktie-colorado.com/rsvp/ (use code: balletgolf)

This article appears in the May 2016 issue of Colorado AvidGolfer.

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Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via www.coloradoavidgolfer.com.