Jim Kleinmann has a full-time job. And another. And another.
The East Bay resident serves as managing director of the Smuin Ballet, one of the region’s premiere dance companies, now set to open its new season.
As co-founder and artistic director of Playground, Kleinmann similarly calls the shots for the popular Berkeley-based theater company.
And as for job no. 3, Kleinmann is also a happily married family man living in Oakland with wife, Lara, and their 4-year-old son, Eli.
“It’s an amazing juggling act,” says Kleinmann, now celebrating his fourth year with the Smuin Ballet and his 12th with Playground. Though he had an extensive theater background — including a stint as an administrator with Traveling Jewish Theater in the 1990s — Kleinmann thought from the beginning that he and Smuin would be a good fit.
“I’ve always enjoyed dance,” he says, “and got exposed to a lot growing up in New York. I learned quickly about Michael Smuin’s work, the theatrical nature of it.”
Smuin’s company was well established by the time Kleinmann came aboard, but until then its primary home had been in San Francisco. Kleinmann helped broaden the company’s reach, and now the Smuin Ballet regularly performs in Mountain View, Walnut Creek, Marin and Carmel, as well as on national and European tours.
“Michael is very eclectic,” he says of his boss. “I have tremendous respect for the work he produces and for the artists he nurtures. I’m always blown away by the next project and where he takes his dancers.”
This season, Smuin and his company of 16 dancers will take on the music of Julliard-trained bassist-turned-bluegrass artist Edgar Meyer in a new work called “Bluegrass/Slyde,” which opens this week in San Francisco. Perhaps the first formal ballet to employ the traditional American folk music, “Bluegrass/Slyde” also has a choreographic trick up its sleeve.
“There are specially designed poles that allow for a certain kind of rotation,” says Kleinmann. “The dancers come flying at these poles, and
suddenly you see a different kind of emotion. Some move faster or slower depending on how they change their shape on these poles. It becomes playful, romantic and sexy. The energy of this ballet is intense.”
Another upcoming production is “Eyes That Gently Touch,” centered around the music of Philip Glass and choreographed by American Ballet Theater’s Kirk Peterson.
At the same time, across the Bay, Playground is launching its 10th annual writers’ pool, a group of 36 local emerging playwrights vying for one of seven spots in the company’s Best of Playground festival. To Kleinmann, Playground is a garden growing new generations of writers for the stage.
“The work coming out is some of the best new writing I’ve seen,” he says. “We’re seeing these writers moving on to full-length productions. I want to make sure San Francisco is known as a great destination for new writers. We’ve got to get our theaters to commit to producing more local writers.”
Kleinmann grew up in a Reform household in the upstate New York town of Ossining, home of the notorious Sing Sing prison. He attended the Yale School of Drama (Tony Award-winning actor Liev Schreiber was a classmate) before moving to the Bay Area in 1992.
He worked with Traveling Jewish Theater and Marin Theater Company while building Playground on the side. There was little financial return in the early days, and even though the company has grown substantially in subscribers and donors, he is always on the lookout for more support. “We work from grant to grant,” he says. “It’s nothing a little venture capital couldn’t change.”
On those rare occasions when he walks out of the theater and steps, blinking, into the sunlight, Kleinmann devotes much of his energy to the Jewish community. He and his wife met at a Shabbat dinner sponsored by the federation’s Young Adult Division, and his work at Traveling Jewish Theater brought him into close contact with other local Jewish agencies. The family belongs to Oakland’s Temple Beth Abraham.
“I’ve always loved the idea of tikkun olam,” he says. “That has a lot of resonance for me in my life. As an artist and producer, that’s a key part of what drives me. By bringing art to people we lay the groundwork.”
“Bluegrass/Slyde” premieres 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 30, and runs through Oct. 6, at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater, 3301 Lyon Street, S.F. Tickets: $25-$55. Information: (415) 495-2234 or www.smuinballet.org.