Swimmer (ballet) Swimmer (ballet) Swimmer is a 42-minute ballet made by Yuri Possokhov set to music he commissioned from Shinji Eshima, plus existing music by Kathleen Brennan, Gavin Bryars and Tom Waits, for the San Francisco Ballet. The première took place on Friday, 10 April 2015 at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco and it was revived by the company in 2016. Based on the 1964 short story by John Cheever called "The Swimmer," it incorporates the choreographer's vision of the United States while growing up in the Soviet Union. Other sources of inspiration included Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, J.D. Salinger’s The
Ballet San Jose 2006 shortened its name to simply Ballet San Jose. In 2003 the company gained benefactor and current chairman of the board John Fry, co-founder of Fry's Electronics.with a 1 million dollar contribution. Fry helped the company survive the dot-com crash and continued to support the company until he closed it in 2016. Over the years Fry became personally involved and Ballet San Jose faced increasing Fry's support, prompting Karen Loewenstern, founding board chair of Cleveland San Jose Ballet to say "...he bought himself a ballet company." By 2007, still lead by founding artistic director, Dennis Nahat, there was a resident