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<small>[ 10 September 2003, 07:24 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

New NCDT chief making plans to weather slump
From The Charlotte Observer

Quality on a budget. That's LaRue Allen's mission as new executive director of N.C. Dance Theatre.

The former executive director of New York's Trisha Brown Dance Company -- and a former dancer -- moved into her new office last month at NCDT's headquarters on North College Street.

She arrived midway through a season where sluggish ticket sales caused the company to drop three of the more cutting-edge works, and single-ticket sales for NCDT's most recent show, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" fell short of the $28,000 goal by about $8,000.

"Maybe this is not the year to grow by leaps and bounds artistically or institutionally," Allen, 55, said in a recent interview. "But what we do produce should be very fine."

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McColl leads charge for new N.C. Dance Theatre space
Retired BofA exec to ask city to spend $1 million
By RICHARD RUBIN for The Charlotte Observer

Saying the public sector should support Charlotte's "best arts group," retired Bank of America Corp. CEO Hugh McColl Jr. will ask the city to spend $1 million toward a rehearsal and office building for the N.C. Dance Theatre.

The request from one of Charlotte's biggest downtown boosters comes outside the city's annual budget process. To grant it, the City Council would have to push McColl's project ahead of other priorities.

McColl plans to speak to the council Sept. 24, and he said Tuesday that he has raised about $4 million of the $6 million in private money he is seeking. McColl wants to start construction this year and open the new center city building by next summer.

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McColl defends request for N.C. Dance Theatre
By RICHARD RUBIN for The Charlotte Observer

From his 51st-floor window in the Bank of America Corporate Center, retired bank CEO Hugh McColl Jr. overlooks four big patches of turned dirt.

Those construction projects -- the arena, the Children's Learning Center, a Central Piedmont Community College building and the new courthouse -- are being built with hundreds of millions of tax dollars.

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it's two years later and LaRue Allen is moving on to be development director of the Martha Graham Dance Company and NCDC operations director Douglas Singleton will move up to be Executive Director. Steven Brown reports in the Charlotte Observer:

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/11206255.htm