When the Saratoga Performing Arts Center opened on 7/9/66, the very first performers to step on stage were members of the New York City Ballet, which, under the direction of George Balanchine, inaugurated the new place with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is the sort of thing that can safely be called a “long-term arrangement”. And it continues to this day: every summer, the NYCB heads up north, just outside of Albany, to lay down on and rise up from and bounce about on the SPAC stage. Of course, because this is 2012, things are no longer quite so simple as they once were – or maybe things were never simple and we just didn’t hear so much about them back then – anyway, the NYCB would like more money from the SPAC now, thank you, and this could cause the PAC to shrink the ballet’s residency from two weeks to one next year – this after the ballet went from three weeks in the Springs to two in 2008. (FULL ARTICLE: Steve Barnes, Albany Times-Union)