NDT in NYC

NEW YORK CITY   Nederlands Dans Theater returns to New York City Center for the first time since Emily Molnar took the helm. William Forsythe’s N.N.N.N. is joined by a pair of U.S. premieres: Imre and Marne van Opstal’s The Point Being and Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar’s Jakie. April 3–6. nycitycenter.org. —Courtney Escoyne

Centering Latina Voices

SAN FRANCISCO  The Carmen premiering at San Francisco Ballet this month won’t look or sound the same as usual. Choreographer Arielle Smith (a 2022 “25 to Watch” pick) sets the tale in contemporary Cuba—specifically at the family restaurant to which the titular heroine returns with her new husband after the death of her mother—while refocusing the story on Carmen and emphasizing the depth and complexity of the characters with cinematic flair. Escamillo, whom Carmen falls in love with, is recast as a woman, and the new score by Arturo O’Farrill only references the familiar Bizet opera as it layers in Cuban folk music. Joining the new ballet on the Dos Mujeres program is Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Frida Kahlo–inspired Broken Wings (which SFB artistic director Tamara Rojo commissioned and starred in during her English National Ballet tenure). The evening marks the first double bill choreographed by women and the first full program dedicated to Latinx stories at SFB. April 4–14. sfballet.org. —CE

Eclipsing All Else

NEW YORK CITY  Ahead of the Great North American Eclipse on April 8, the feath3r theory alights at NYU Skirball to premiere a devised dance theater work about a group of friends who team up to watch the celestial event and miss it. Raja Feather Kelly draws on Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, the popularity of the science fiction concept of the multiverse, and the ways social media exacerbates loneliness and society’s inability to face it for The Absolute Future (or Death, Loneliness, and The Absolute Future of the Multiverse, or How to Cover the Sun with Mud). April 5–6. nyuskirball.org. —CE

Carnival of Politics

SEATTLE  Choreographed and directed by Francesca Harper and performed by dancer Wendy Whelan and poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Carnival of the Animals reframes the Camille Saint-Saëns classic to consider the animals of a political jungle as it responds to the January 6 insurrection and contemplates the future of democracy. The SOZO-produced work premieres at the Meany Center for the Performing Arts on April 6. sozoartists.com. —CE

Memories of Matriarchs

HOUSTON  With three “Bessie” Awards, the Rome Prize, and a sumptuous stage presence, Jasmine Hearn is one of the most acclaimed contemporary dance artists to come out of Houston. But Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr, a performance, installation, and online archive that preserves the memories of eight Black Houston matriarchs, is their first major commission in their hometown. Commissioned by DiverseWorks, the multidisciplinary project includes original sound scores, choreography, and garments, along with guest performances by former Houston Ballet soloist Sandra Organ Solis and additional vocals and performances by local dancers and “Houston Aunties,” as Hearn calls them. The premiere at Houston Met April 6–7 will be followed by tours to Pittsburgh and New York City. diverseworks.org. —Nancy Wozny

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

COSTA MESA, CA  American Ballet Theatre presents the North American premiere of Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor’s three-act meditation on the writings of Virginia Woolf, at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Inspired by her novels Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves as well as her letters and diaries, the critically acclaimed ballet eschews narrative adaptation to take a stream of consciousness approach to the modernist writer’s oeuvre. April 11–14. abt.org. —CE

Packed With Premieres

CHICAGO  South Chicago Dance Theatre returns to the Auditorium Theatre for an evening filled to the brim with premieres by Donald Byrd, Joshua Blake Carter, Monique Haley, Tsai Hsi Hung, Terence Marling, and founding executive artistic director Kia Smith. April 27. southchicagodancetheatre.com. —CE

The Weight of a Lie

ZURICH  Cathy Marston brings her penchant for literary adaptation to Atonement, her first new work as Ballett Zürich’s director. In Ian McEwan’s novel and Joe Wright’s acclaimed film adaptation, teenage writer Briony Tallis tells a deliberate lie about her older sister’s lover and spends the rest of her life attempting to make up for its unintended consequences. Marston transfers the action to the world of ballet, making Tallis a choreographer while wrestling with the story’s questions about the fallibility of memory and the nature of self-deception and guilt. April 28–June 7. opernhaus.ch. —CE

A Jazzy Centennial

Dance artists join the nationwide celebration of iconic jazz drummer and composer Max Roach.

Max Roach 100 at The Joyce Theater

NEW YORK CITY  Richard Colton curated The Joyce Theater’s Max Roach 100 program, which will feature a new work to Roach’s Percussion Bitter Sweet album by Ronald K. Brown for Malpaso Dance Company and EVIDENCE, A Dance Company; Rennie Harris Puremovement in The Dream/It’s Time; and a solo by tap star Ayodele Casel set to a series of duets by Roach and Cecil Taylor. April 2–7. joyce.org. —CE

Bill T. Jones at Harlem Stage

NEW YORK CITY  Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company revisits Degga, a 1995 collaboration between Jones, Max Roach, and Toni Morrison, as part of Harlem Stage’s E-Moves program. Also on offer is a new work by Roderick George. April 19–20. harlemstage.org. —CE

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But for Lensi, who is allergic to dairy, eggs, nuts, and kiwifruit, it wasn’t as easy as going to a restaurant or following a standard recipe. “I decided I needed to figure out my own recipe,” she says. With the help of her mom, tuning in from Milan via FaceTime, Lensi experimented with coconut flour and brown rice flour before settling on oat. She also learned that chia seeds can act like an egg substitute, binding the batter together. “There were a lot of trials and errors, but I figured out that it is possible to make pancakes if you have a lot of food allergies, or you just want to avoid eggs or dairy,” says Lensi.

The Joy of Cooking

Living with severe allergies while managing ABT’s grueling rehearsal and touring schedule hasn’t always been easy for Lensi. Eating out or relying on prepared food is rarely an option. “When I was younger, I always felt like cooking was a chore because I have to do it literally every day,” she says, adding that even on tour, she cooks her own food; the company travels with a microwave for her to use. But recently, thanks to cooking together with her boyfriend, ABT dancer Andrii Ishchuk, and experimenting with recipes she finds on Instagram and YouTube, she’s learned to relish her time in the kitchen. And when that’s not enough? “I like to put a TV show on, and that makes it more enjoyable,” says Lensi. “I love any comedy show. Right now, I’m rewatching ‘Ugly Betty.’ ”

Knives Out

The one kitchen tool that Lensi can’t live without is sharp knives. “I love having good knives,” she says. “Because my arms are not super-strong, if I have a bad knife I really have to push too hard. I am really picky about that.”

Ingredients

• 1 cup oat flour
• 1 cup oat milk
• 1 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for greasing the pan
• 2 tbsps cane sugar (“I personally like the taste of cane sugar,” says Lensi. “It has more of a flavor, and growing up I always used it.”)
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips (“I use the brand Enjoy Life, because it’s free of 14 common allergens,” says Lensi.)
  Toppings
• berries
• maple syrup

Instructions

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine oat flour, oat milk, olive oil, cane sugar, chia seeds, and chocolate chips. Mix until the batter is smooth. If it feels too thick, you can add a bit more oat milk as needed.
2. Set a nonstick pan over medium heat. Pour some olive oil onto a paper towel and use it to grease the pan. (Lensi stresses the importance of this step: “If you don’t use the paper towel, the oil goes around the pancake instead of underneath, and the pancakes stick to the pan.”)
3. Using a soup spoon or ladle, spoon small amounts of the batter into the prepared pan to create individual pancakes. Allow them to cook until small bubbles form on the surface, then carefully flip them with a spatula.
4. Top the pancakes with a generous serving of fresh berries, and drizzle with maple syrup. Serve warm, and enjoy!

The post American Ballet Theatre’s Virginia Lensi Shares Her Allergy-Friendly Oat Pancakes appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Company: American Ballet Theatre

Age: 25

Hometown: Cincinnati, Ohio

Training: With his parents, former professional ballet dancers Meridith Benson and Mario de la Nuez, at their Cincinnati studio, de la Dance Center

Accolades: 2018 Grand Prix winner, Youth America Grand Prix Pittsburgh semifinals

Late starter: De la Nuez was initially into activities like skateboarding, gymnastics, diving, and soccer and didn’t start dancing until he was almost 15. But once he did, he took to it with great intensity. “My parents didn’t force me, they let me find it for myself. And because of that, I found the drive,” he says. “I was really eager to improve and take corrections, and I still am. That’s the superpower of starting late.”

All in the family: “The studio was in our house,” says de la Nuez. “Right after school, and all weekend, sometimes until 10 o’clock at night, I was there dancing and watching YouTube videos and trying to imitate what I saw.My parents really molded the training around me, and made it such a comfortable environment for me to work.”

Ballet idol: De la Nuez’s father fostered his son’s admiration of the Cuban-born dancer Carlos Acosta. “His dancing is masculine but sensitive, and so sincere, and his partnering is beautiful,” de la Nuez says. Acosta’s memoir, No Way Home, is his favorite book, and Cuba, the birthplace of his father, is the place he most dreams of visiting.

Discipline and abandon: “Onstage he’s willing to go far and beyond,” says Carlos Lopez, the director of repertoire at ABT that de la Nuez has worked with the most. “He has that fearlessness and freedom, and he’s also technically very strong.” But Lopez also sees his discipline and drive. “He is very internal in terms of the work. You can see he really fights for perfection.”

Challenges: De la Nuez was born with a cleft palate, which means that the roof of his mouth was not fully formed before birth. This affected his ability to breathe and eat normally, and he’s had several surgeries, the last of which took place in November. “This will help a lot with my breathing when I’m onstage, because now I have to breathe mainly through my mouth,” he said before the surgery. As a kid, he was bullied for his condition, but he says it also helped to form his personality. “It made me figure out how to be social. It’s easy for me to be super-friendly and funny with people.” Lopez agrees: “Everyone loves Mikey, because he’s such a nice guy.”

A dedicated follower of fashion: Outside of the studio, de la Nuez has a passion for fashion. “I like to wear clothes that are a little bit more original, and I spend a lot of time researching­ on YouTube and Instagram,”­ he says. His favorite designer­ at the moment is Rick Owens.

The full package: “I really believe in his potential,” says Lopez. “He’s a bravura dancer. He can do all the technical roles, like Basilio in Don Q, but at the same time, he can be a prince. Honestly, I think he can do anything.”

The post Introducing American Ballet Theatre’s Michael de la Nuez appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Clarissa Rivera Dyas

Freelance dancer and choreographer

Clarissa Rivera Dyas thrives most in collaboration with other artists, and layers different art forms with sophistication. She created Something Remains, her 2022 evening-length choreographic debut, with visual artist and composer Jakob Pek. In it, Dyas and her three dancers pushed the boundaries of physicality as they danced with long rolls of paper and paint, serving as both brushes and canvas. Her dynamic movement, which defied predictability as it showcased both strength and vulnerability, served as the perfect counterpoint to Pek’s experimental score.

Dyas, a sought-after performer for artists like Robert Moses, prioritizes disrupting norms, challenging expectations, and embracing the raw, vulnerable, and even sloppy in her work. “How can we involve the idea of failure?” she asks. “As a Black queer artist, there is little room for failure. How can we allow for failure?”

In 2021, after recurring experiences of being tokenized in the largely white-led Bay Area dance scene, she co-founded the nonhierarchical artist collective RUPTURE alongside fellow queer Black artists jose e. abad, Stephanie Hewett, Gabriele Christian, and Styles Alexander. “It’s about being in process with collective rest, play, and somatic experimentation as resistance,” she says, “challenging what it means to be in dance and performance.” A RUPTURE event might include dance, live sound design, spoken word, visual art, multimedia elements, community engagement, improvisation, and play. In June, the cohort will present a new work at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

—Rachel Caldwell

Danielle Swatzie

Freelance dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker

If any contemporary dance artist captures the spirit of Atlanta’s up-and-coming generation, it’s Danielle Swatzie. Take her solo The Fleeting Serenade. In the section set to Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of the jazz standard “Angel Eyes,” Swatzie whirls across the stage, her legs slicing arcs, arms gesturing in staccato bursts as she embodies the emotional turmoil churning beneath the song’s smooth surface.

A graduate of Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, Swatzie is equally compelling in front of or behind a camera. She creates an aura of honesty, thoughtfulness, and fearless compassion combined with a drive to unpack­ inner emotional landscapes. Her dance films, which illuminate a vision of a more equitable world, have been garnering increasing attention. META, a solo reflecting on family, generational trauma, and feminine empowerment, received the 2021 BronzeLens Film Festival Award for Best Music/Dance Video. Her growing roots through concrete was selected for American Dance Festival’s 2023 Movies By Movers festival. The film features seven young women artists, Black and white, who join together in precarious group counterbalances to confront individual experiences with racism and find wholeness as a community—as Swatzie says, through “radical connection and radical love to manifest radical change.”

—Cynthia Bond Perry

Grace Rookstool

Soloist, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre

Last season, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s statuesque Grace Rookstool made a pair of major debuts. The then–corps-member embodied emotional resilience as Mina in Michael Pink’s Dracula and showed off her commanding stage presence and technical prowess as Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. She dances with an assuredness that artistic director Adam McKinney says got her promoted to the rank of soloist for this season. “She is a consummate professional, a classicist, and has a natural sensibility to embody music,” he says of the 23-year-old.

Born and raised on Whidbey Island, Washington, Rookstool trained at Pacific Northwest Ballet School and in its Professional Division Program. While there, she was selected for an exchange program with Dresden Semperoper Ballett and danced in its production of La Bayadère. She joined PBT’s corps de ballet in 2019.

A truly versatile dancer, Rookstool says she most enjoys high-flying jumps. Expect her career to soar in 2024.

—Steve Sucato

Erina Ueda

Dancer, Giordano Dance Chicago

Erina Ueda’s breakout moment with Giordano Dance Chicago came last April in Kia Smith’s Luminescence. With a cast of 22 dancers filling the cavernous Harris Theater, the piece starts and ends with Ueda completely alone, in a solo showcasing her unbridled facility and unflappable joy. Giordano’s dancers are known for their silky jazz technique balanced with razor-sharp precision. Ueda has that and more, bringing honesty and authenticity to the company’s rep. 

Ueda earned a BFA in dance with a minor in psychology from the University of Arizona, not too far from her hometown of Chandler, Arizona. Born in Japan, she was the first Asian woman to join the 60-year-old Giordano company. She’s upped its digital game, too, as the company’s social media manager and video content producer since her arrival in 2022.

—Lauren Warnecke

Donovan Reed

Dancer, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham

Nature metaphors spring to mind as you watch A.I.M by Kyle Abraham’s Donovan Reed. They seem driven by wind, buoyed by water, licked by fire. They might stop a liquid phrase cold with a thorny angle—not breaking the spider’s thread of movement, but rather snapping it taut. They can make the unlikeliest shapes look organic. (Though these qualities never feel less than authentic to Reed, they are very Abraham-esque: Reed, who’s danced with A.I.M since 2018, can channel the choreographer with uncanny precision.)

But Reed is an unmistakably human performer, too. In Abraham’s MotorRover—a duet that responds to Merce Cunningham’s 1972 work Landrover—they temper Cunningham’s signature formality with playfulness and wit, carrying on a danced conversation with partner Jamaal Bowman that seems full of little inside jokes. Reed’s a force of nature with a soul.

—Margaret Fuhrer

Kaitlyn Sardin

Irish and hip-hop dancer

You might know her as @kaitrock: the artist whose one-of-a-kind, Irish-dance-meets-hip-hop mashups have earned her an avid following on Instagram and beyond. While traditional Irish dance, with its strict verticality, might seem at odds with more full-bodied and grounded ways of moving, Kaitlyn Sardin finds their common thread: rhythm. Through drumming feet, swiping arms, or swiveling knees, she can tease out the intricacies of whatever sound is fueling her. (Beyoncé, Tinashe, and Victoria Monét are a few current favorites.) In every aspect of her short-form solos—including her colorful fashion choices—she is unabashedly herself.

A former competitive Irish dancer with a foundation of razor-sharp technique (she grew up training at the Watters School in Orlando), Sardin broadened her dance horizons as a student at Hofstra University, where she began adding forms like dancehall and vogue to her vocabulary. She has toured with the Chicago-based Trinity Irish Dance Company and is gearing up for new projects in 2024. From February 14–March 3, you can find her performing in Jean Butler’s What We Hold at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan. 

Being Black and queer in the mostly white, sometimes culturally conservative world of Irish dance, she’s aware that younger dancers who break with convention might see themselves in her. Her advice for them? “Just go for it. Don’t be afraid, and the world will embrace you.”

—Siobhan Burke

Jake Roxander

Corps member, American Ballet Theatre

Watching Jake Roxander as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet last July, it was hard to believe that he was making his Metropolitan Opera House debut in the role. Without a trace of nerves, the 21-year-old American Ballet Theatre corps member fully inhabited the character—cocky, loveable, magnetic, with flashes of hot-tempered recklessness. Then there was his dancing: Each solo was thrillingly virtuosic and highly musical, with pirouettes that paused momentarily on relevé—just enough time for him to give an impish grin before he was on to the next feat. 

Roxander comes from a family of dancers; he and his brother Ashton, a principal with Philadelphia Ballet, were trained by parents David and Elyse Roxander at their studio in Medford, Oregon. He spent a season with Philadelphia Ballet’s second company before joining ABT’s Studio Company in 2020, where he stood out in Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes and a duet from Twyla Tharp’s Known by Heart.

ABT has wasted no time pushing Roxander to the forefront since he joined the main company in 2022. This fall he danced principal roles in Harald Lander’s Études and Alexei Ratmansky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and debuted in the role of Puck in Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream. With his powerful, unforced technique and boy-next-door charm, he is making a name for himself, and fast. 

—Amy Brandt

Jindallae Bernard

Choreographer, filmmaker, and corps member, Houston Ballet

Jindallae Bernard’s portrayal of the jealous Lady Rokujo in Nao Kusuzaki’s Genji, an Asia Society Texas Center commission, exuded chilly charm and understated, seductive sensuality. Her quiet authority and stoic elegance also served her well in Stanton Welch’s neoclassical Tu Tu at Houston Ballet, though she proved equally capable of turning up the voltage in Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes. And her talents extend to choreography and filmmaking, too.

Bernard joined Houston Ballet’s corps in 2022. She’s been with the organization since she was 6 years old, rising through the Academy and Houston Ballet II before landing an apprenticeship in 2021. During her training, she took on several choreographic opportunities. Her whimsical short dance film Phase, created in 2020 during a virtual summer program composition class, so caught the eye of artistic director Stanton Welch that the company showcased it during its first live performance after the pandemic pause. “Her work feels so high-end, from the story to her use of color and light, and her directorial insight,” says Welch. He selected her to premiere a new ballet in December for the company’s annual Jubilee of Dance, for which she created Parodie de l’histoire du ballet. Says Bernard: “My goal is to contribute in as many ways as I can.”

—Nancy Wozny

Kia Smith

Executive artistic director, South Chicago Dance Theatre

Last year’s premiere of Memoirs of Jazz in the Alley proved a perfect showcase for choreographer and director Kia Smith. The evening-length “dance opera” exemplified her choreographic voice—note-by-note precision, fluid torso movement, unexpected gesture, powerful unison—and marked the debut of her 7-year-old company, South Chicago Dance Theatre, at the Auditorium Theatre, its largest venue to date. The work paid homage to Smith’s childhood experiences at her musician father’s weekly Jazz in the Alley gatherings. That background surfaces in the way her dances feel born out of the detail and nuance of jazz music.

Smith’s success lies not only in her artistic acumen but also in the way she considers dance and the business of it on a large scale. The Chicago native is both artistic and executive director of SCDT, which has expanded its presence at home through the South Chicago Dance Festival and abroad with its Choreographic Diplomacy international exchange program. Amidst a growing list of outside commissions—notably including the rousing Luminescence for Giordano Dance Chicago’s 60th anniversary last spring—this year Smith will bring her company on tour to Seoul, South Korea, and return to the Auditorium Theatre with another world premiere.

—Maureen Janson

Hohyun Kang

Sujet, Paris Opéra Ballet

A morbid teenager involved in a murder-suicide isn’t exactly an easy first major role. Yet from the moment South Korea’s Hohyun Kang, who joined Paris Opéra Ballet in 2018, stepped out as Mary Vetsera in Mayerling last season, she found logic and purpose in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s choreography. As she draped herself around Paul Marque, her Prince Rudolf, her lines sizzled with dramatic tension.

It was an arresting breakthrough for the 28-year-old, who had been on balletomanes’ radar for her easy, radiant musicality and technique in ballets such as Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco. A graduate of Korea National University of Arts, she was noticed by William Forsythe shortly after joining POB and landed a soloist role in his Blake Works I, before quietly making her way up the ranks and becoming a sujet (soloist) last season. She is already slated for a Kitri debut in April—and may well follow in the footsteps of Paris’ first South Korean étoile, Sae Eun Park.

—Laura Cappelle

Karla Puno Garcia

Musical theater choreographer

When last year’s Tony Awards had to go without a script and instead lean on dance to set the scene, host Ariana DeBose knew just the choreographer who could pull it off: Karla Puno Garcia. The resulting opening number brought viewers on a danced journey through the United Palace theater, using Garcia’s spunky, sassy movement to amp up excitement for the night. Later, Garcia’s unapologetically feminine flair and super-satisfying musicality showcased DeBose and Julianne Hough in a duet that felt both timely and timeless.

Garcia was the first woman of color to choreograph the Tonys. But it’s far from her only brush with the event. A Broadway vet who’s been dancing on the Great White Way since her college days at New York University, she previously performed with the casts of Gigi and Hamilton at the Tonys and was a dancer and associate choreographer in 2021 when Sergio Trujillo choreographed the opening number. Soon, she may even be up for a Tony herself: She’s making her Broadway choreographic debut this January with Days of Wine and Roses, which she co-choreographed with Trujillo.

For his part, Trujillo thinks she’s “unstoppable” as a choreographer: “Karla’s like a musician that can play all the instruments with her feet and arms and body,” he says. “She comes across as incredibly gentle, but she’s a force to be reckoned with.”

—Jennifer Heimlich

Kuu Sakuragi

Soloist, Pacific Northwest Ballet

With a raw physicality matched with bighearted sensitivity, Kuu Sakuragi is quickly heading toward rockstar status at Pacific Northwest Ballet. He creates electrifying spectacles onstage, delivering one jaw-dropping performance after another. His big technical jumps look as if he’s floating on air, an impression only heightened by his gravity-defying turnin David Parsons’ Caught, while his warmth and humility come through as deference to the other dancers onstage, as in Alexei Ratmansky’s Wartime Elegy. A PNB DanceChance student and Professional Division graduate, Sakuragi joined the corps in 2020 after dancing with Alberta Ballet for three years and was promoted to soloist in November. “Certain dancers live more completely in the moment when they’re dancing,” artistic director Peter Boal says. “Nureyev, Wendy Whelan, Carla Körbes come to mind. Kuu is one of them.” 

—Gigi Berardi

Sydnie L. Mosley 

Founding executive and artistic director, SLMDances 

In the spring and summer of 2020, conversations about racial equity and social justice erupted across the dance field. How could exclusionary systems be transformed? How could imbalances of power be corrected? How could people better care for one another?

For the choreographer, performer, educator, and writer Sydnie L. Mosley, these questions were nothing new. The Baltimore-born Mosley has been envisioning a future free from oppression—with dance as one way to get there—at least since 2010, when she founded her Harlem-based collective SLMDances. For people just beginning on that journey, she and her collaborators became a guiding light.

A self-described “creative home for trans, cis, nonbinary, queer, disabled, fat, masculine presenting, Black women and femmes of many generations,” SLMDances takes seriously the term “collective,”operating through a model of shared leadership and responsibility. Their community-engaged, joyfully interactive works have tackled issues like street harassment (The Window Sex Project, 2012) and the economics of dance (BodyBusiness, 2015). Their latest, PURPLE: A Ritual in Nine Spells, honors the Black feminist playwright, poet, and dancer Ntozake Shange, whose legacy Mosley extends through her own intertwining of movement and language. Premiering at Lincoln Center last summer, PURPLE marked a turning point for Mosley in its visibility and scale. Her vision persists; what’s changed, perhaps, is the world’s readiness to join her.

—Siobhan Burke

Laila J. Franklin

Independent dance artist

Contradictions power Laila J. Franklin’s charisma. She can shift from sly comedy to earnest sincerity over the course of an eight-count. She moves with disarming frankness, making even complex gestures look straightforward and open; she also seems to keep part of herself closed to the audience, protective of her own mystery.

That sense of unknowable-ness sits right at the center of choreographer Miguel Gutierrez’s I as another, which Gutierrez and Franklin performed in New York City last spring. The intimate, probing duet suggests we can never truly know each other, or even ourselves—but we can try. In I as another, Franklin showed a kind of virtuosic empathy, living fully inside Gutierrez’s creative vision without erasing herself. Forget walking in someone else’s shoes—she can dance in their feet.

Franklin, who earned a BFA from Boston Conservatory in 2019 and an MFA from the University of Iowa in 2021, is also a choreographer, teaching artist, and writer. Maybe over time we’ll get to know her better through her own work. Maybe she’ll always keep part of herself a mystery. Either way, she’ll be holding our attention.

—Margaret Fuhrer

Lucy Fandel

Independent dancer and choreographer

In the semi-improvised, place-based dance Lucy Fandel creates, the land is something alive, not just a backdrop. “The inhaling clouds, quivering blades of grass, swarms of gnats, or the occasional romping dog pulled us in,” she writes of her and Bailey Eng’s creative explorations during a residency in Spain. In a section of their filmed field notes, Fandel responds viscerally to these movements in the environment while dancing atop a rocky outcropping, at once fluid and angular as she articulates through her hands, rib cage, pelvis. 

A dance artist, writer, and arts outreach worker, Fandel grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, and Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France. “Switching languages forces you to think differently,” she says. She later crossed borders yet again, moving to Montreal to study contemporary dance and sociology at Concordia University. Fandel’s attachment to sociology field work influenced her dance perspective and, today, she’s at the forefront of the burgeoning sustainable eco-dance movement in Canada. She’s right at home engaging with the landscape during her outdoor research (“conversations,” as she calls them), examining the vectors of science and dance while sensitizing people to the natural environment in all its ambiguity and transformation.

—Philip Szporer

Miguel Alejandro Castillo

Choreographer and freelance performing artist

Onstage, Miguel Alejandro Castillo emanates a warmth and wit that creates instant connection. An incredibly committed performance in Faye Driscoll’s whirlwind ensemble work Weathering last April highlighted this generosity. As part of a precarious flesh sculpture that teetered off the edges of a spinning raft, Castillo maintained an active, intense bond with his fellow performers, even as his ponytail swept the ground and it became increasingly unclear whether he was being supported or smothered.

Castillo brings a bright presence and big love into the studio, Driscoll says, alongside an impressive conceptual curiosity. “He’s embracing the full range of human experience,” she says, “connecting the light and the dark.” In his own choreography, the Venezuelan artist, who started in theater, explore­s his native country’s diaspora, blending forms to forge a kind of future folklore.

Castillo recently completed a New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks residency and acted as movement director for the David Lang opera Prisoner of the State. He’ll keep building on that momentum in 2024: In addition to choreographing John Adams’ opera The Gospel According to the Other Mary for Volksoper in Vienna and touring Weathering, Castillo will be a choreographer in residence at both PAGEANT performance space in Brooklyn and Abrons Arts Center in lower Manhattan. 

—Candice Thompson

Naomi Funaki

Tap dancer and choreographer

During the in-person debut of Ayodele Casel’s Chasing Magic, Japanese tap artist Naomi Funaki commanded attention with her clear, confident sounds. She modulated her tones and phrasing to cover a broad emotional spectrum, from contemplative to exuberant, as she floated through a duet, in a role originated by Casel, with joyful ease. “Her technical prowess and rhythmic voice are dynamic and contain so much depth and nuance,” says Casel, who invited Funaki to make her choreographic debut last April during Casel’s Artists at the Center engagement at New York City Center.

Casel is not alone in her sentiments. Funaki was the recipient of a 2023 Princess Grace Award and is an apprentice with Dorrance Dance. She performed in the December premiere of Caleb Teicher’s reworked Bzzz, a tap-meets-beatbox show for which she also served as assistant choreographer, and in January will show off her range in Leonardo Sandoval’s samba-inflected I Didn’t Come to Stay with Music From The Sole.

Ultimately, Funaki’s goal is to bring the spirit and professionalism of the New York City tap community back to Japan. Casel has every faith that she will, and along the way inspire a whole new generation of tap dancers.

—Candice Thompson

Olivia Bell

Corps member, New York City Ballet

Some dancers demand your attention. New York City Ballet’s Olivia Bell politely requests it. But the elegantly understated dancer is no wallflower. A fervent musicality powers her fine-grained technique, giving it a lush, romantic sweep. 

Bell, who only joined New York City Ballet’s corps in May, still has surprises in store. At last summer’s Vail Dance Festival, she danced Balanchine’s Tarantella, a mile-a-minute showstopper that must have been nearly impossible to survive at Vail’s one-and-a-half-mile elevation. Bell handled the challenge with not just polish but sparkle, nailing the work’s witty musical phrasing and showing off the prodigious pirouettes that most of us had previously only seen on her Instagram page. Here’s to more surprises, and soon, on NYCB’s stage. 

—Margaret Fuhrer

Pauline Casiño 

Commercial dancer

Pauline Casiño booked her Broadway debut without an in-person audition. She learned about casting for Once Upon a One More Time, directed and choreographed by Keone and Mari Madrid, after the first round of auditions had already concluded and asked her agent to help find a way in. “I always knew of Keone and Mari,” she says. “As a fellow Filipino, I wanted to be part of something they’re creating.” Even though she had never taken class with the Madrids, let alone worked with them before, she landed the part of Esmeralda through a video submission. Onstage, she brought the ensemble character to life with her unforgettable fluidity, powerful femininity, and magnetic presence.

Casiño, who moved to the Bronx from the Philippines at age 12, grew up thinking dance was extracurricular. While studying chemistry in college, she danced in commercial choreographer Candace Brown’s The Soul Spot and BTS’ Love Yourself: Speak Yourself New Jersey concert, but it wasn’t until she graduated in 2020 that she fully embraced dance as her profession. Since then, she has performed with Anitta and Doja Cat at MTV’s Video Music Awards, as well as choreographed and directed her own dance visual. Only three and a half years into seriously pursuing a dance career, Casiño has already proved she has star quality. 

—Kristi Yeung

Rafael Ramírez

Flamenco dancer and choreographer

With fluid arms, deep, effortless lunges, supple contractions, and rapid, complex footwork, Rafael Ramírez spellbinds. But it is his old soul, which adds sensual vulnerability to his performances, that leaves an indelible impression.

Ramírez’s prowess in both traditional and contemporary flamenco captivates across venues, from Spain’s most prestigious tablaos to international theaters with the companies of famed choreographers such as David Coria and Rafaela Carrasco. He’s also garnered critical recognition: In 2021, he won the highly coveted Desplante Masculino at the International Cante de las Minas Festival and, last year, received the 2023 Best New Artist Award from the prestigious Festival Jerez for his Entorno. He carried that momentum into the 2023 Bienal de Málaga, where he premiered Recelo, a collaborative work with prize-winning dancer Florencia Oz exploring the primal emotion of fear, and into a 10-city U.S. tour of his solo show, Lo Preciso, this past fall. With more performances of Recelo ahead, Ramírez enters 2024 on the road to international recognition.

—Bridgit Lujan

Yuval Cohen

Corps member, Philadelphia Ballet

An elegant carriage and genteel demeanor make Yuval Cohen an ideal storybook prince. But behind that refinement lies impressive power. His explosive, elastic leaps and strong, centered turns had everyone buzzing at last summer’s USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi. The 21-year-old Israeli dancer, a newly promoted Philadelphia Ballet corps member, was the first from his country to medal, taking home the senior bronze.

Cohen’s USA IBC coach was his longtime mentor, Nadya Timofeyeva, with whom he trained at the Jerusalem Ballet School. In 2018, she took him to a competition in Russia, where he won first prize and a spot at the Vaganova Ballet Academy. After becoming the school’s first Israeli graduate in 2021, Cohen joined Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet. But the pandemic created visa complications, forcing him to return home that summer. 

Cohen joined Philadelphia Ballet II in October 2021 and became a company apprentice the following season. He’s already gained notice in a range of featured roles, including a Stepsister in Cinderella, the Gold variation in The Sleeping Beauty, and Escamillo in Angel Corella’s new production of Carmen, which premiered this fall.

—Amy Brandt

Sean Lew 

Commercial dancer and choreographer

In viral YouTube videos, two seasons of NBC’s “World of Dance,” performances with stars from Janet Jackson to Justin Bieber, and his own hour-long dance film, II, Sean Lew has won over millions of fans with his articulate athleticism, honest storytelling, and undeniable charisma. The 22-year-old is far from new to the industry, but he’s still taking his career in new directions. In 2023, he conquered his biggest fear: battling. “It’s not just if you’re good at dancing, then you can battle,” Lew says. “People live, breathe, and eat battling.” He amped up his fitness training and studied freestyle genres such as house and krumping, and, after a humbling early-round loss at his first battle, he went on to win the Red Bull Dance Your Style Los Angeles regionals in April. He then brought home the national title in May and represented the U.S. at the global competition in November.

Despite his newfound commitment to the competitive freestyle scene, Lew continues to grow his career in other areas. Over the last year, he launched his first fitness and dance intensive, Artist Range, with trainer Karl Flores; was a first-time creative director for Jackson Wang’s Coachella performance; and was a first-time co-producer on a Dermot Kennedy music video. “The beauty and curse of my life,” he says, “is I just want to do everything.”

—Kristi Yeung

Solal Mariotte

Independent choreographer and dancer, Rosas

In EXIT ABOVE — after the tempest, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s typically minimalistic world suddenly seemed looser and brighter. The reason? A new generation of dancers, led by French newcomer Solal Mariotte, who got his start in hip hop. The curly-haired 22-year-old acted as a mercurial leader, shifting easily from floor work to the air, launching himself into arresting dives to the floor.

At 18, looking for a challenge, Mariotte applied to P.A.R.T.S., the school founded by De Keersmaeker in Brussels, where he immersed himself in contemporary dance while co-founding a breaking crew, Above The Blood, on the side. In addition to joining Rosas in 2023, he is also developing projects with his crew and as a choreographer. In January, a new version of his solo Collages/Ravages will premiere at the prestigious Suresnes Cités Danse festival in France. With his influences now cross-pollinating­ in captivating ways, a shape-shifting career beckons.

—Laura Cappelle

Kamala Saara

Dancer, Dance Theatre of Harlem

Midway through William Forsythe’s Blake Works IV last April, Kamala Saara transfixed the audience in a soulful, introspective solo. She stretched her long limbs expansively, pulling every inch out of them before retracting dynamically into the next phrase. She seemed to be lost in a dream, her arms sweeping through an unseen atmospheric viscosity. And while the solo is deeply internal, Saara invited the audience at Dance Theatre of Harlem’s New York City Center season into her world. 

Saara, 21, grew up studying at the Yuri Grigoriev School of Ballet in Los Angeles, spent two summers at the Bolshoi Ballet Intensive in New York City, and at 16 was invited to Moscow to perform at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy’s annual gala. She moved to New York in 2019, training first with Andrei Vassiliev before entering the School of American Ballet. SAB’s focus on speed and lightness, she says, made her more versatile.

Meanwhile, then-DTH artistic director Virginia Johnson had had her eye on Saara since Chyrstyn Fentroy invited her to take company class at age 15. Saara joined DTH in 2020, shining in Stanton Welch’s Orange and Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante. This season, she takes on the principal role in Balanchine’s Raymonda-inspired Pas de Dix, adding a glamorous ballerina part to her repertoire. 

—Amy Brandt

Water Street Dance Milwaukee 

Contemporary dance company

In Milwaukee, ballet is king. But funders, dancers, presenters, and audiences are all sitting up and taking notice of Water Street Dance Milwaukee, giving the city the top-shelf contemporary company it deserves. The company, which rehearses in a suburban Milwaukee enclave, launched just as the pandemic hit, but still managed to build a roster of impeccable dancers, create a dance festival, and form pre-professional programs. The city’s dance community is mobilizing around Water Street’s momentum as the company produces new festivals, outdoor pop-up performances, and shared auditions. It performs all over the Midwest, but directo­r Morgan Williams’ goal is to take Water Street international. He sprinkles up-and-coming choreographers, like Kameron­ N. Saunders, Madison Hicks, Braeden Barnes, and Leandro Glory Damasco, Jr., into the rep alongside his own choreography. At just 33, he is a savvy director and choreographer with support from some of the region’s sharpest dance leaders and a long runway ahead.

—Lauren Warnecke

Header collage photo credits, left to right, top to bottom: Ryoko Konami, courtesy Naomi Funaki; Michelle Reid, courtesy Kia Smith; Todd Rosenberg, courtesy Giordano Dance Chicago; Laura Irion, courtesy Karla Puno Garcia; Rosalie O’Connor, courtesy American Ballet Theatre; Angela Sterling, courtesy Pacific Northwest Ballet; Kat Stiennon, courtesy Water Street Dance Milwaukee; Erin Baiano, courtesy New York City Ballet; Jay Spencer, courtesy Miguel Alejandro Castillo; Isabella Herrera, courtesy Kaitlyn Sardin; Julien Benhamou, courtesy Paris Opéra Ballet; Nir Arieli, courtesy Dance Theatre of Harlem; Steven Pisano, courtesy A.I.M by Kyle Abraham; Lawrence Elizabeth Knox, courtesy Houston Ballet; Alex Harmon/Red Bull Content Pool, courtesy Sean Lew; Robbie Sweeny, courtesy Clarissa Rivera Dyas; Anne Van Aerschot, courtesy Rosas; Bailey Bailey, courtesy Laila J. Franklin; C-Unit Studio, courtesy Pauline Casiño; Anita Buzzy Prentiss, courtesy Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre; Nicole Mitchell Photography, courtesy Danielle Swatzie; Gabriel Asensio, courtesy Rafael Ramírez; Camille Augustyniak, courtesy Lucy Fandel; Arian Molina Soca, courtesy Philadelphia Ballet; Travis Coe, courtesy Sydnie L. Mosley.

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“The first time we saw the maypole, we went: ‘People are supposed to carry that?’ ” says produc­tion stage manager Danielle Ventimiglia of the 20-foot-high, 50-pound wood pole, the centerpiece of a festive dance for Prince Siegfried’s birthday. The pole has no base and no wheels, so four male peasants grasp it by metal handles and carry it onstage, and two hold it steady during the dance. The pole is too tall for the ABT studios—in fact, it was originally too tall to fit onto the stage and had to be shortened—so the cast can only practice with it in the tech rehearsal.

Wig and makeup supervisor Rena Most allows 45 minutes for creating von Rothbart’s ogreish alter ego, dubbed “Lakeside von Rothbart.” She starts by positioning the horns, which are affixed to a silicone bald cap, then covers the dancer’s head and neck with a custom-made latex costume cap and secures it all the way around with glue. “The cap rarely comes unglued, but sometimes we get little bubbles, or the horns shift,” Most says. “Last season, one of the horns fell out of the silicone base and was flapping.”

Other than two earholes, von Rothbart’s cap is sealed and unventilated—and hot. “At the end of the show when we take it off, sweat pours out,” says corps dancer Cy Doherty. “It’s disgusting!”

The makeup for everyone but von Rothbart is uncomp­licated, so Most and three assistants can cover each show. (In contrast, ABT’s elaborate Sleeping Beauty needs a team of 14.)

How many pins does freelancer Sarah Levine use to secure the Queen Mother’s wig and headpiece? “As many as it takes!” she says. The wig, crown, and costume are heavier than they look, says character artist and ABT’s director of repertoire Nancy Raffa, and they alter her center of gravity. “I have a specific warm-up for Swan Lake, to prepare my body to support the weight and do the pantomime,” says Raffa.

Even after 20 years of performances at the Metropolitan Opera House, technical director Richard Koch meticulously maps out the scenery, carpentry, and electrical rigging every season. “Maybe the building has changed, or the Opera made changes during their season, or a flying pipe for hanging scenery was removed because of mechanical problems,” he says, “so I have to go back and look at how that affects the whole production.”

The cast includes 36 company dancers and 14 supernumeraries—but requires more than 300 costumes, dozens of quick changes, three backstage changing booths, 10 dressers, and a strategic plan that wardrobe­ supervisor Tomoko­ Ueda-Dunbar orga­nizes on spreadsheets. “My job is a big puzzle,” says Ueda-Dunbar.­ “That’s the challenge and also the fun part.”

During intermission, the dancer can put on her Odile costume in her dressing room, but her quick change back into Odette is a three-minute backstage sprint aided by a dedicated dresser, hair and makeup artists, and stagehands. “They wipe my sweat, make sure I’m hydrated, powder my face, snip the thread from my pointe shoes, and light the backstage crossovers,” says principal dancer Hee Seo. “They perform with me.”

The corps has its own hair, makeup, and costume assistants to help with changes and make on-the-spot touch-ups and repairs.

Production stage manager Danielle Ventimiglia is the wizard behind the curtain, in charge of everything from ensuring the marley is clean and the props are in place by curtain time to cueing the lights and troubleshooting mid-performance problems.

In the Prologue, von Rothbart wrestles with a swan puppet to dramatize Odette’s cursed transformation. “There’s nothing quite like it,” Ventimiglia quips of the puppet, a quirky contraption with a flexible neck, flapping wings controlled by internal levers—and a fake arm made of green rubber.

Siegfried receives his birthday crossbow from two of the Queen Mother’s atten­dants, often played by students of the ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School in their first mainstage roles. In this brief but tricky assignment, the dancers navigate narrow stairs, elbow to elbow and in heeled character shoes, each using one arm to support the 15-pound crossbow on its cushion and the other arm to lift their elaborate skirts so they don’t trip. “For safety, we try it without the crossbow first,” Ventimiglia says. “We want them to feel safe, so we’ll have them practice as many times as they need.”

“You want the sky and the water to glow,” says lighting director Brad Fields. Fields worked with lighting designer Duane Schuler to devise low-tech, high-impact effects, such as attaching ribbons of iridescent fabric to the backdrops and using fans to make them ripple and shimmer.

The luminous moon is another analog invention, created for the 2000 premiere­: a circular lightbox suspended behind the backdrop, filled with 120 half-reflector bulbs and covered by projection-screen fabric that blurs the individual points of light.

Fields describes the production’s 83 lighting cues as average and its 872 individual lighting fixtures as “a lot!” Two people control the scenic lighting via a push-button computer console, but the follow spots are still done manually, by specialists from the Metropolitan Opera.

When Odette and Siegfried swan-dive off the rocks at the end of Act IV, they land on two thick gymnastics mats roped to a wooden base. “I don’t think my jump is that good, but it’s my favorite part,” Seo says. “I sometimes ask my dressers to film it.” After the stagehands whisk Odette offstage under a black cloth, they move the platform over by a few feet to catch Siegfried. “He’s more forceful, so he makes a bigger arc,” says Koch. “Over the years, we’ve learned how far each man will jump.”

The post How American Ballet Theatre’s Production Team Makes Magic Happen Onstage During <i>Swan Lake</i> appeared first on Dance Magazine.

It was to be the first of the ballerina’s eight Dance Magazine cover appearances. Gregory was already dancing principal roles with San Francisco Ballet at age 19 when she decided to audition for American Ballet Theatre, which would be her home for the next 26 years. She quickly came to be recognized as the company’s prima ballerina—and, for many, “America’s prima ballerina, the reigning queen of classical dance,” as we noted when she was announced as the recipient of a 1975 Dance Magazine Award.

In a June 1991 cover story celebrating her retirement from ABT, she confessed to a preference for story ballets, saying, “I need a little drama to spur me on. With Grand Pas Classique, the pas de deux everybody loves watching me do, I got bored because it’s basically virtuoso technique. And there were a couple of years there when I was doing it an awful lot. So I would make up a character for myself. I’d be a different ballerina each night. Some of my friends would watch in the wings and try to guess who I was being. I’d be Suzanne [Farrell] or Carla Fracci or Violette [Verdy], and just do it in their style. It was fun.”

The post TBT: Cynthia Gregory Graces the Cover of <i>Dance Magazine</i> at Age 7 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Peck has noticed that former competitors share a distinctive characteristic: They’re more at ease onstage. “When I first joined the company, my director said, ‘Wow, you have no fear,’ ” she remembers. “It was how I approached everything in dance, and I think that comes from the competition dances. I also think nerves onstage aren’t as bad for those of us who come from that world, perhaps because we are so used to performing. If you do the classical route, you don’t get as many performance opportunities.”

Now, a new generation of competition-kids-turned-ballet-dancers is making its mark. Madison Brown and Brady Farrar, both dancers with American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, have roots in not only dance competitions but competitive TV shows: Brown appeared on Season 2 of NBC’s “World of Dance,” becoming its youngest soloist, and Farrar was on Season 8 of the hit reality show “Dance Moms.” Both also competed extensively in events such as Starbound National Talent Competition, Showstopper, New York City Dance Alliance, and Youth America Grand Prix. New York City Ballet corps member Quinn Starner’s experience also includes YAGP, as well as NUVO Dance Convention and 24 SEVEN Dance Convention—and a televised contest: “So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation,” in 2016.

Here’s a look at how Brown, Farrar, and Starner are bringing their comp-kid versatility into the world of professional ballet.

Madison Brown

Florida native Madison Brown has long dreamed of joining the main company at American Ballet Theatre. She spent her early years training at Lents Dance Company in Boca Raton and The Art of Classical Ballet in Pompano Beach. Growing up, she won awards in events ranging from New York City Dance Alliance to Youth America Grand Prix, spent multiple summers as an ABT National Training Scholar, and studied in the pre-professional division of the ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School before joining ABT Studio Company.

After years of balancing ballet with styles like contemporary and jazz, Brown eventually found herself prioritizing ballet. “By the time I got into Studio Company, I was still able to have all those tools and the knowledge of being able to move my body in different ways, to be able to do choreography in the different pieces of repertory that we do,” she says. In the Studio Company, Brown has performed in such works as Victor Gsovsky’s Grand Pas Classique and Vasily Vainonen’s­ Flames of Paris.

Brown believes that her competitive experience gave her a strong sense of professionalism. “When you’re doing competitions and conventions, you have to learn how to pick up choreography very quickly,” she says, adding that dancing in large groups of attendees was similar to an audition environment. Brown finds the skills she developed in competitions and conventions helpful as a Studio Company member. “When new choreographers come in to create pieces, it’s easy to tap back into that mental space of knowing how to pick up choreography fast, pay attention to detail, and to make sure that you can do it well,” she says.

Brown says “World of Dance” prepared her for professional success by helping her learn to take and quickly implement corrections. “You get the raw feedback right then and there,” she explains, “and you get that so much in a professional rehearsal environment, too.”

Brady Farrar

Miami-born Brady Farrar began dancing at age 5, training at Stars Dance Studio, and spent his childhood winning dance titles. Like Madison Brown and Tiler Peck, Farrar found that his experience in dance competitions honed his professionalism at an early age. “Competing when I was young helped me because I spent a lot of time performing,” he says. “Now that I’m older, I know what to do when I get nervous, or when I have a big performance coming up and I have a lot to do in the show.”

Even while participating in contemporary and jazz competitions as a child, Farrar knew he wanted to dance in a ballet company. “I’ve always had a respect for ballet,” he says, explaining his interest in ballet’s ability to tell a story and evoke strong feelings in an audience through technique. “My personality gravitated towards concert dance and classical ballet. There’s so much beauty in it.”

In American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, Farrar has danced roles in pieces like Balan­chine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux and Daniel Ulbricht’s Tatum Pole Boogie. He believes his background competing in different styles enhances his ability to infuse his ballet movement with a human quality. “Dance is human,” he says, “and I think that classical ballet is more of an ethereal and less natural way of moving. Being able to just move your body to music and be comfortable with that helps a lot, not only in ballet, but in other styles too.”

Quinn Starner

Quinn Starner began dancing at age 2 and started competing with her first solo at 5. She continued competing throughout her early training, which included Viva Dance Co. in Monroe, Michigan, Toledo Ballet in Toledo, Ohio, and Indiana Ballet Conservatory in Carmel, Indiana, along with summer programs at the School of American Ballet in 2015 and 2018. She enrolled at SAB full-time in 2018, which preceded her apprenticeship with New York City Ballet in 2021 and entry into its corps the following year.

Ballet was a longtime love. “I always knew I wanted to end up being a ballerina at a company,” says Starner. It was after seeing the company perform in New York City that Starner set her sights on NYCB. “I could see how I could incorporate my experience with contemporary dance, tap, and jazz into this rep,” she says. “I said, ‘This is the perfect place for me.’ ”

Starner cites her comfort onstage, individuality, and musicality as benefits of having competed. “I feel like it’s helped me find my own style in the new ballets we’re dancing and different kinds of rep,” she says. “I think tap also plays a part in the musicality that I use now when I’m dancing.” Starner has the confidence to tackle a broad spectrum of challenging choreography at NYCB, shining as a Doll in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker and originating featured roles in contemporary works like Kyle Abraham’s Love Letter (on shuffle) and Keerati Jinakunwiphat’s Fortuitous Ash. “When we get to work with outside choreographers, like Kyle Abraham or Jamar Roberts, I try to channel what I’ve learned in contemporary,” she says. “Having that background makes me me.”

The post Meet 3 Ballet Pros Who Started Out as Comp Kids appeared first on Dance Magazine.

A Hesitant Start:

“The very first time my mom asked me if I wanted to try ballet, I said no. I loved sports, and I thought ballet was really hard and the music was really boring. I cried the whole first week, but then I met a nice teacher and started to love it.”

Moving to a Different Country:

“The big challenge is language. Before I moved here in 2019, I couldn’t speak English at all. When COVID happened, I went back to Korea for almost a year and a half, and that’s when my English started getting better.”

Her Pre-Performance Routine:

“I do a lot of relevés and balances. Always before a show I’m really nervous, so that’s why I listen to something fun like K-pop music. Right now, I like the new girl group NewJeans.”

Getting Promoted to Soloist:

“The funny thing is, I had no idea. We had a meeting all together, and Kevin McKenzie said, ‘This is a promotion meeting.’ I sat down with my friends like, ‘Okay, someone is getting promoted.’ They call out Chloe Misseldine, Betsy McBride, Breanne Granlund, and Sung Woo Han, and then Kevin says, ‘SunMi.’ I was almost crying because I felt like it was a dream.”

A Career-Creating Moment:

“When I did the Moscow International Ballet Competition in 2017, the whole thing just changed my mind. I took my bow, came backstage, and my teacher asked me how I felt. I was really happy, and after that performance I knew I wanted this.”

The post ABT Soloist SunMi Park is Rocketing Through the Ranks appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I know you first came across the film of Like Water for Chocolate soon after you arrived in New York City in the early ’90s. It must have left a real impression for you to come back to it 30 years later to make this ballet.
I think the tension of the relationship between Tita and Pedro was what stayed with me. I hadn’t read any magical realism at that point, and the surreal, fairy-tale nature of it combined with this earthy domestic family saga was what I found appealing.

You went to visit Laura Esquivel in Mexico to discuss the idea, didn’t you?

Including her in the process was really important. Walking into her home, it was as if Tita lived today, going through a little gate, a courtyard with a fountain, and these brightly colored Mexican tiles. She surprised us by cooking a delicious dish from the book, champandongo, a bit like a Mexican version of lasagna, with tortillas instead of pasta. The whole afternoon was enchanting.

It’s quite a complex story. Does the audience need to know it in advance?

I don’t want people to feel they have to commit to reading the book, but I want to encourage people to read the synopsis as a way of having a little more insight. I’ve been speaking to a couple of Mexican actors about having them read it so you can watch that online, maybe the day before, and not be scrambling through your program as the lights are going down—which is usually me!

How much did the original cast feed into making the characters, and will they change with new dancers?

Marcelino Sambé and Francesca Hayward were the couple I wanted to make this ballet for from the beginning. They had clear opinions and they interpreted the movement motifs that we came up with, shaping the characters around the way they move. But part of the joy of redoing a ballet is seeing other dancers adapt the choreography. Not necessarily changing the steps—although I’m not precious about that; no one needs to see someone struggling through something they can’t do—but how they bring themselves to the character. We did a little promo video shoot with American Ballet Theatre and already in the snippets of choreography I gave them you could see how different they’re going to look and feel.

There are other strong characters beyond the leads, like Tita’s sister Gertrudis (originally danced by Anna Rose O’Sullivan), who gets overtaken by lust in one scene. It takes a certain dancer to play such a wild scene!

[Laughs] There’s a fabulous dancer at ABT, Catherine Hurlin. She’s fiery and has this slightly unbridled energy about the way she dances, and she’s going to be a fantastic Gertrudis.

How similar are the two companies, The Royal Ballet and ABT?

They’re definitely related, with the connection between Ashton and MacMillan and the British choreographer Antony Tudor; there’s a built-in understanding of dramatic work. But there’s a different energetic attack to ABT’s dancing, which I suppose is innately American.

What about in day-to-day working life?

The ABT studios at 890 Broadway have a lot of history. They’re well-used, well-worn. And they have this old heating system, so at about 5 o’clock on a winter afternoon, in the middle of a really atmospheric moment in a run-through,­ you suddenly get the radiators going bang! clang! But like anywhere in the world, dancers are subject to brutal schedules and long hours rehearsing multiple ballets, and, you know, they get it done! I’m really looking forward to these dancers taking it on. 

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Over the years, Lane created this spin on her mother-in-law’s recipe, adding apple for a sweet twist, rosemary to bring out the warm, wintery flavors and fennel to aid digestion. Lane’s approach to cooking is closely paired with her interest in nutrition. Since leaving ABT she’s had the chance to turn that passion into a profession. In addition to guesting with companies worldwide, during the pandemic Lane received her nutrition health coach certification from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and now works regularly with other dancers. “I want to be someone that can support dancers to prioritize their health,” she says.

Keeping Perfectionism Out of the Kitchen

When Lane started cooking, she was inspired­ by her mother-in-law. “She puts so much love and work into preparing meals, and it brings people together,” says Lane. That approach helped her to let go of striving to be perfect, and, instead, she could play around in the kitchen. “I had enough perfectionism in my ballet work. Cooking became more intuitive and artistic. I’m not afraid of making a bad dish or making mistakes. I think trial and error is the best way to learn.” Although, Lane adds, laughing, “my poor husband has to eat it!”

Instant Pot Enthusiast

Lane often turns to her Instant Pot when making her lentil soup. “You can do all of the sautéing in there, then turn it on and it’s done quickly,” she says, “and you have limited dishes to wash.” She recommends dancers invest in a multi-cooker as a way to quickly prepare nutritious food. “We just have limited time and energy to be standing in the kitchen after long rehearsal­ days,” she says. “Less time in the kitchen, more time with your feet up!”

Ingredients

• 1–2 tbsps olive oil
• 1/2 large onion, diced
• 1 fennel bulb, diced
• 2 apples, diced
• 1 tbsp garlic, minced
• 1 tsp ginger, minced
• 1 tsp fresh or dried rosemary and/or thyme (“Dancers don’t always have a lot of time to grocery-shop regularly, so dried works just as well,” says Lane.)
• 1 tbsp salt, plus more to taste
• 1 lb red or brown lentils, rinsed in cold water and checked for debris (“Green or yellow will work too, but I find that the darker lentils go really well with the apple.”)
• 48 oz vegetable broth
• 1–2 tbsps red wine vinegar (optional)­

Instructions

1. In a heavy saucepan or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil.
2. Add the onion, fennel, apples, garlic and ginger, and sauté over medium heat until slightly softened (about 10 minutes).
3. Toss in the rosemary and/or thyme as well as 1 tablespoon of salt, and stir.
4. Add the lentils and the vegetable broth and bring to a gentle boil. Partially cover with a lid and simmer until soft (about 25–30 minutes). Add more salt to taste.
5. When serving, drizzle each bowl with a spoonful or two of red wine vinegar for tartness, if desired. To turn the soup into a complete source of protein, pair with a whole grain or a piece of whole-grain toast. “Lentils are an excellent source of protein, especially for vegetarians, but they don’t have all of the essential amino acids our bodies require,” says Lane.

The post Ballerina and Health Coach Sarah Lane Shares Her Spanish-Influenced Sweet and Salty Lentil Soup appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“ABT and other dance companies have a responsibility to encourage and allow opportunities for emerging choreographers to develop,” says Jose Sebastian, Incubator’s artistic director and a dancer in the company’s corps de ballet. “Incubator is an essential way of fulfilling that commitment.”

This year’s cohort, chosen by audition, spanned five artists at different stages of their careers—from seasoned dancemakers Mark Caserta and Roderick George, to newer choreographer Eva Alt, to ABT soloist Luciana Paris and first-time choreographer and corps member Tyler Maloney—whose movement styles encompass contemporary dance, classical ballet, tango and hip-hop influences. “There is a great range of aesthetics in this year’s group of choreographers,” says Gregory Dolbashian, who provided choreographic consultation. What united them, he says, is that “while they’re at various stages of their development as individual makers, they all have a very thoughtful and supportive approach to their work and their collaborative exchange with their casts.”

Incubator also offers ample rewards for the dancers, who gain experience in artistic collaboration and expand their expressive palette with boundary-pushing movement. “The chance to create on one’s colleague is priceless,” says Sebastian, “as is the opportunity for these emerging artists to work together with other choreographers.”

Dance Magazine went into the ABT studios with each group of artists for a glimpse into their Incubator experience.

Eva Alt

“For me it began with the music, which is a guitar quartet arrangement of a Philip Glass string quartet. I started listening to it when we were coming out of the pandemic and I was walking all over the city, watching it reawaken and come to life again. When I hear music, I see it physically, and I was seeing dance images that had a bit of a ballroom flavor to them. I love watching ballroom dance, and that musicality and intensity was something I wanted to imbue in the piece. I knew that it would be a fun, playful and joyful piece naturally, so I just let those feelings spring from the movements.”

“Making a dance is like solving a puzzle, and I truly have relished in that process with the dancers. They have been so incredibly invested in the work with me and I’ve so enjoyed figuring it out collaboratively.”

Roderick George

“Most of my work is built on improv studies that I don’t articulate in the room. The creative process begins with me creating tasks for myself, and I film myself improvising in my home, the studio, outside, etc. I let these systems ride in the room, and then I take the artist/human social cues as the impetus of the choreographic cues. Then with repetition and music, these cues become more solidified.”

“I use a mixture of social dances, ballet aesthetics, forms of modern dance and acrobatics. Most are all-encompassing ideas from my professional dance career.”

“I wanted to dive into an atmosphere of how artists orbit their psyches around perfection and validation, yet I want to find ways to honor their most authentic form—the many emotional arches that individuals embody and their complexity. As artists, we are vessels of society and the realms we participate in.”

Mark Caserta

“The movement language is a culmination of my background as a dancer and artist, blended with the uniqueness of the people involved in each work. The language is full of references to queerness and my experiences as a queer person, contemporary ballet, theatricality and drama, and reimagining the forms I’ve dedicated my education to studying. I value rhythm, texture, patternmaking and rearrangement. But the biggest informers of my movement language are the artists I’ve collaborated with and what they’ve individually found within the choreography and direction I offer.”

“I love moving with each person in the studio individually. It’s a really fun way to get a feel for their unique energy and artistic signature. Initially, we created unique material for everyone as individual solos, and the energy felt right to flow from there into a solo and a unison duet.”

“Life is wild and scary, and it often feels like we’re experiencing the world ending. It is really exhausting to simply exist as a person connected to the world these days. I think all of this has gone into the language of the work. Watching Aleisha, Fangqi and Joseph grow and take on the challenges of this process has been incredible, and their self-empowerment in the creative process is vital to the feeling of the work. The piece is capturing and heightening the uniqueness of our time together with these challenges and glimmerings in mind.”

Tyler Maloney

“I am naturally very narrative-driven, so I wanted to push myself in this creation to make something that still makes the audience feel something without it being too literal. The concept I had was who we are and how we present ourselves outwardly, and the battle within to find the strength to say and do what we really mean. The piece is a lot about pushing yourself and also facing who you really are.” 

“My goal is to showcase classical technique in a way that anyone watching, no matter their experience with ballet, can feel and relate to the piece. I try to mix virtuoso ballet steps with more pedestrian moments.”

Luciana Paris

“The choreography all happened in the studio with the dancers. I choreograph my ideas, but I always prioritize their comfort—what can feel natural for me can be completely different for my dancers, not organic. I’m discovering this is what I enjoy the most about collaborating, understanding my movement through the dancers.”

“The tango music defines a lot of the movement in the piece. I wanted to explore tango between men, how it started in the streets of Buenos Aires, but from a different perspective, with the freedom that we have these days, when tango is danced all over the world, including queer social tango.”

The post Behind the Scenes of ABT’s Annual Incubator Choreographic Residency appeared first on Dance Magazine.

In The Wind at My Back, you talk about how Raven Wilkinson had a way of creating a community wherever she went. 

The way that she shared stories with me always made me feel like I was a part of this beautiful community—the Black ballerina community, but also just the dance community—in such a loving way. Typically, dancers or former dancers want to tell you everything they see when they come to your performance; Raven was never that way. She wasn’t like, “I noticed this; you should do this or try this differently.” There was something so comforting and familial about our relationship and the energy that she gave to people.

The book illustrates not only the impact of race on a Black ballerina’s life, but also the roles of color and social class, and the privileges and vulnerabilities you each experienced as you found success. 

I have to credit Susan Fales-Hill, who co-wrote the book. We spoke a lot about the importance of telling more than one story of what it is to be Black in America. I have a well-known personal story, and I think a lot of people think Black ballet dancers, especially when they start late, experience being on scholarships because they can’t afford to be a part of ballet. That’s not every Black person’s experience. That was not Raven’s experience. 

I think it’s important for us to talk about the fact that we all come in different shapes and sizes, with different backgrounds, but that as Black dancers, we often have the same experiences in the ballet world. Raven and I had very similar experiences. And though they happened about 50 years apart, it shows how much work we still have to do within the ballet community.

Where do you want to see The Misty Copeland Foundation and the BE BOLD program go?

When people think about ballet, they don’t often think about the leadership tools that we’re giving to people who are part of it. It shouldn’t just be about competition or reaching the goal of being a professional, but about changing and building new audiences, and educating young people to know that this is a beautiful outlet. It’s something that they can do with their futures. They’ll know this is a space they can exist in. 

We’re thinking about new and inventive ways to bring more people into dance, and to really use ballet as a way of social justice and activism.

What has motherhood been like?

Being a mom is the most amazing job I’ve ever had. I feel like a lot of the conversations I had with moms while I was pregnant were preparing me for the worst, and it’s been so much better than all of the stories I’ve heard. I’m excited to get back on the stage with this new life experience.

What else do you plan to bring back with you when you return to the stage?

I feel like I have such a different perspective. The last time I was onstage was December 2019. A lot has happened in the world and in my world. By the time I come back, I’m going to be 41. I’m coming into ABT with a new artistic director, a new executive director and a new generation of dancers, some of whom I’ve never even met in person. We have soloists in the company I’ve never interacted with. It’s amazing, it’s exciting. 

I want to perform roles that will challenge me artistically, but I also want to continue to not take away from the dancers who are there. I know what it’s like to be a young, up-and-coming dancer and want to have opportunities. There are principal dancers that have been doing these roles for 20 years, and you’re like, “Can I just have one show?” I want to be a part of the company in a way that I can help lift up the other dancers.

The post Misty Copeland on Her Latest Book, Launching Her Foundation and Motherhood appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Draw From the Past

When it comes to successful auditions, most people think confidence is key, but New York City–based mental performance coach and mental health counselor Liv Massey disagrees. “Confidence feels good, but it’s not required in order to perform well,” she says. “The physical ability is still there, so if you find yourself feeling insecure at an audition, remember that doesn’t mean you will dance poorly.” Regardless, no one likes feeling self-conscious, and it’s hard to feel secure when doing something you’ve never tried before. To cultivate confidence in an audition, Massey recommends dancers think of past positive experiences. “Every dancer has them,” says Massey, who has worked with New York City Ballet. “Maybe it was a rehearsal that went really well, and your teacher gave you positive feedback. Remembering what that felt like primes your emotion centers to feel that way again.”

Pro tip: Keep a journal of your best moments. “Performers have a negative bias, meaning we are attuned to things that aren’t perfect,” she says. “We need something to help us remember the good things.”

Think Positive

“In dance, our body follows what our mind is thinking,” says Massey. “If you are thinking about tripping, messing up or forgetting the choreography, your body is more likely to do that. Instead, think about how you would like your audition to go.” For example, if your anxiety is saying “Oh, gosh, what if I forget it?,” Massey recommends countering with mantras like “I don’t forget choreography,” “I have done this before” and “I love what I do.” The only caveat is that mantras like these have to be rehearsed. “Trying out a mantra for the first time at a big audition is not going to work the way you want it to,” she says. “These require repetition, just like rehearsing. So say those mantras in your daily practice, and you will automatically know what to turn to when the pressure is on.”

Control the Controllable

Kate Lydon, artistic director of summer intensives at American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, says the best way to feel secure at your next audition is to prepare well and plan ahead. “When you get in the room, you can’t control the exercises,­ where you stand at the barre or who else is going to show up,” she says. “But there are a lot of other things you can control.” For example, Lydon recommends doing your hair well that morning, choosing an outfit you feel good in, packing warm-ups in case you need them while you wait and making sure you’re comfortable with your shoes. “Registering online or early and having your photos printed and ready to go can help relieve stress the day of,” she says. “Taking care of logistical steps ahead of time will allow you to feel calm, which in turn will help you dance your best.” Arriving early may also quell your nerves, and give you time to stretch.

Practice Low-Risk Auditioning

It’s difficult to know what to plan for if you’ve never attended an audition. In the past, the children’s division at the JKO School has helped students by holding mock auditions, in which dancers wore numbers, learned new combinations quickly and performed them in groups. “You might consider­ asking your teachers to do something similar,” Lydon says.

Focus on the Process, Not the Outcome

Regardless of how prepared or confident you are, success is never guaranteed. “What I want people to know is that if you are focused on the outcome, you are less likely to get what you want,” Massey says. Instead, focus on the steps that can lead to your desired result, “like waking up 30 minutes earlier to stretch, or working on a particular weakness of yours while in class,” she says. “It’s the little things that will make you the best performer you can be.”

Avoid Comparison

It’s hard to walk into an audition and not size up the other dancers, but Lydon says it’s a mistake to do so. “Comparison rarely helps dancers—you are a unique person developing a particular set of gifts and talents, and that is what we are interested in seeing,” says Lydon, adding that former ABT artistic director Kevin McKenzie classifies gifts as what dancers are naturally good at and talent being made up of grit, determination and self-discipline. “We are looking for all of that in an audition, so try not to judge how you compare to others, because those things will not—and should not—be the same for everyone.”

Strive for Resilience

If at the end of the day the audition doesn’t go your way, both Massey and Lydon recommend focusing on being resilient, meaning that you learn from the experience and try again, next time focusing on factors you can control. “The athletes who do well in their careers are the ones who see losing an audition as an opportunity to grow,” Massey says, adding, “Every rejection is a huge learning oppor­tunity.” Lydon even encourages dancers to look at an audition though a different lens. “You get to take a class with a teacher you’ve never learned from before and discover something new,” she says. “You get to be around amazing dancers. What a fantastic experience to have.” Though it may not be realistic to look for lessons like these immediately after an audition, once you’ve given yourself a proper mourning period, Massey recommends asking your regular teachers what they think you could do to improve for next time.

The truth is, every dancer has felt anxious about an audition before—even the professionals. “If you ask the top dancers what experiences they have learned the most from in their life, almost everyone will give you a negative experience rather than a positive one,” Massey says. “Even if they don’t feel good in the moment, those missed opportunities are really good for us.”

The post How to Feel Confident While Pursuing Your Next Summer Intensive appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Dandara Veiga

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Doña Perón, created for Ballet Hispánico, does not shy from darkness. Its portrait of Eva Péron devotes ample time to the shadowy aspects of the controversial Argentine first lady’s life. But such is the brilliance of Dandara Veiga’s charisma that, should you see her in the title role, you’ll inevitably come out admiring Evita. 

The kind of dancer who can make psychological turmoil legible in her body, Veiga brings us not just into Perón’s world but into her churning mind. Her dancing and acting share a clarity of purpose: Every element is well-defined, though free of melodramatic overstatement. In Veiga’s hands (and limbs, and face), Perón becomes a person rather than a caricature.

Veiga has been a standout since joining Ballet Hispánico in 2017. But Doña Perón, the company’s first commissioned full-length work, gives her room to expand into her artistry. It’s a star vehicle, and Veiga is a star. —Margaret Fuhrer

Cameron Catazaro

Steady strength and lyrical pliability put a bloom on Cameron Catazaro’s dancing. His carriage—at over 6′ 2″, he stands tall in the corps of Miami City Ballet—adds nobility and romantic magnitude to his portrayals, a combination that has earned him a bouquet of eye-catching roles, with Prince Siegfried in Alexei Ratmansky’s Swan Lake at the forefront. Catazaro credits his Swan Queen, principal soloist Samantha Hope Galler, with inspiring him to build, through a diligent work ethic, dramatic dimension. His knack for characterization has also heightened the father’s solemnity in Prodigal Son and put youthful vigor into an old legend through Prince Ivan in Firebird.

Canton, Ohio–born and trained, Catazaro spent a year each at Ballet Academy East and MCB School fine-tuning Balanchine-style technique, which sped him, after joining the company in 2019, to featured roles in “Emeralds” and Stravinsky Violin Concerto. And his repertoire keeps growing. Just this fall he took the lead in John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet. For the season ahead, he’s learning Jerome Robbins’ Afternoon of a Faun and is set to perform Martha Graham’s Diversion of Angels, in which he spread his first-timer’s wings at Jacob’s Pillow last summer. —Guillermo Perez

Guillaume Diop

Becoming the face of diversity at a venerable institution like the Paris Opéra Ballet is no small burden to bear—and can magnify the pressure of a high-profile debut. For a split second, early in Guillaume Diop’s first performance as Solor in La Bayadère last season, a flash of panic registered on his expressive face as the 22-year-old struggled to keep French star Dorothée Gilbert balanced in his arms.

Yet not only did Diop recover, but he improved as the evening went on, with supple elevation in Solor’s treacherous variations and unaffected poise. Born to a French mother and a Senegalese father, the young corps member—who trained at the Paris Opéra Ballet School, but credits a summer intensive with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as a personal breakthrough—has handled every challenge with grace in his four years with the Paris Opéra.

In 2020, he was among a group of Black employees who pushed for progress around racial issues at the institution. The following year, Diop, who was still a quadrille—the lowest corps rank—was given the last-minute opportunity to replace an injured principal as Romeo in Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet. Under heavy scrutiny, Diop’s joyful elegance won over the audience, a feat he repeated as Solor and as Don Quixote’s Basilio. This fall at the internal concours de promotion, he was promoted to the highest corps rank, sujet. The road to becoming the French company’s first Black étoile may be long, but Diop has all the makings of a trailblazer. —Laura Cappelle

Adelaide Clauss

As Terpsichore in Balanchine’s Apollo this summer, The Washington Ballet’s Adelaide Clauss mesmerized the audience—as well as Apollo—with adroit, sharp-edged dancing coupled with a flirtatious allure. Gifted with ribbonlike épaulement and an ardent work ethic, Clauss is a consummate artist.

A Buffalo, New York, native, Clauss trained at The Neglia Conservatory of Ballet and American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. Catching the eye of TWB artistic director Julie Kent shortly after joining ABT’s Studio Company in 2015, the now-24-year-old is currently in her sixth season with TWB and a bona fide company star.

“Adelaide has this mystery, imagination and luminous quality that allows her to lose herself in whatever roles she is performing,” says Kent. With Clauss having done so in plum roles including Odette/Odile in Kent and Victor Barbee’s Swan Lake and The Lilac Fairy in their The Sleeping Beauty, along with the Sugar Plum Fairy in Septime Webre’s The Nutcracker, Kent foresees her having many more opportunities to further develop as a storyteller in 2023 and beyond. —Steve Sucato

Andrew McShea

Rooted yet explosive, his wingspan like that of some ravenous bird, Whim W’Him’s Andrew McShea creates shapes that seem impossible. “His bones are like liquid,” says artistic director Olivier Wevers of this astonishing shape-shifter. McShea easily claims the focus onstage, evoking haunting narratives as he creates characters that are bold, vulnerable, unnerving. In Ethan Colangelo’s a vanishing thread, he’s a painter, the space is his canvas, and every part of his body adds color to his story and character. In Wevers’ Cannibalistic Sanctuary, it’s the torque of his torso, head, then limbs, all wildly flexible, that makes him become the crawling creature, the wounded son. The past three years with Whim W’Him have brought great leaps in artistry and confidence for this dancer, who is, more than anything, a storyteller. “He invites me into a dance fantasy,” says Wevers. “An incarnation of the contemporary dancer I wish I could have been.” —Gigi Berardi

Ishida Dance Company

It’s rare, in Texas, to witness the level of dancing and dancemaking that Ishida Dance Company consistently achieves in a single evening. Since debuting the company at the beginning of 2020, artistic director and choreographer Brett Ishida has recruited dancers with a flair for drama and rare movement qualities from top companies and choreographers from all parts of the globe. The result? One-of-a-kind shows in Austin and Houston, which project a boutique international festival vibe. Ishida, who has a background in literature, crafts evenings that alchemize into a cohesive whole. Creating a poetic structure that begins with her own work—which typically stems from a written script—and choosing guest choreographers and movers who complement the narrative thread, the gentle impresario orchestrates events that transcend what’s expected of the typical pick-up company model. The season ahead offers new works by European choreographers John Wannehag, Kristian Lever and Mauro Astolfi. Judging from the growth of audience enthusiasm, Ishida, who’s begun nabbing increasingly prominent commissions, and her eponymous company are enjoying a warm Texas embrace. —Nancy Wozny

Mac Twining

Choreographer Christopher Williams’ works often evoke both the immediate present and the mythical past, the earthly and the unearthly. While those oppositional forces might pull uncomfortably at some performers, Mac Twining, a dancer of great freedom and sweep, handles them with easy grace. As the Poet in Williams’ queer reimagining of Les Sylphides, Twining is a hero for both the Romantic and the modern era. Playful, breezy, open-hearted—shades of Timothée Chalamet—he becomes the perfect foil for the more introspective elegance of ballet star Taylor Stanley’s Queen of the Sylphs.

Twining also performs with Stephen Petronio Company, bringing the same relaxed naturalness to Petronio’s harder-edged, thoroughly contemporary works. Wherever he’s dancing, Twining seems very much himself, and right at home. —Margaret Fuhrer

Amanda Castro

Amanda Castro never wants audiences just to see her when she dances. “I want you to feel things,” she says. “It’s not about me. It’s about what you walk away with.” It’s a somewhat paradoxical desire for a dancer whose luminous stage presence is almost addictive—you fear you’ll miss a clever improvisation or a flash of joy if you let your eyes wander to another performer even for a moment. Her warmth, her vivacity linger long after the curtain closes. 

Castro usually practices her onstage magnetism in tap shoes, frequenting the works of the genre’s heavy hitters like Dormeshia, Ayodele Casel, Jared Grimes and Caleb Teicher. But that wasn’t always the case: Castro danced with Urban Bush Women for four years, taking tap classes whenever she could, before transitioning into musical theater (including a high-profile tour as Anita in West Side Story). It was while working on UBW’s 2015 Walking With ’Trane, inspired by the music of John Coltrane, that she had a realization: “The whole process, I just wanted to have my shoes on,” she says. It didn’t take long for Castro to become one of New York City’s most in-demand tap dancers (winning Grimes’ Run the Night competition in 2016 didn’t hurt). 

Recently, Castro has been expanding her “rhythmic storytelling,” as she puts it, through Soles of Duende, a collaboration with kathak dancer Brinda Guha and flamenco dancer Arielle Rosales that’s quickly amassing critical praise and institutional support. Broadway and an evening-length solo work are still on Castro’s bucket list—blink, and she’ll have already checked them off. —Lauren Wingenroth

Águeda Saavedra 

In flamenco it is not so much what you do as how you do it that is most important—and this is where Águeda Saavedra excels. She nullifies the need to perceive her movement as either contemporary or traditional; rather, she is a vessel of movement expression that recontextualizes time from moment to moment. Her deep backbend can go anywhere; with castanets it evokes an old style of decades ago, while with a head roll while seated on the floor, we are swept into today’s world. 

The 27-year-old has been described in the national Spanish press as the “present and future of flamenco.” Performing with top companies on international stages since her late teens, Saavedra has worked under the direction of award-winning contemporary flamenco choreographers Manuel Liñán, Daniel Doña, Marco Flores and Mercedes de Córdoba as well as the Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía, and regularly appears in Spain’s most prestigious tablaos. 

“I have a personal and artistic need to expose myself in a solo work, in a way that I have never done,” Saavedra says. With the coveted Best New Artist Award from the 2022 Festival de Jerez and what she describes as “an unbeatable team” in hand, it seems such a project is only a matter of time. —Bridgit Lujan

Vidya Patel

Following in the footsteps of Akram Khan and Shobana Jeyasingh, Vidya Patel brings together her knowledge of classical Indian and contemporary dance to mesmerizing effect. In a dance film created in fall 2021 as part of her two-year tenure as a Sadler’s Wells Young Associate, she executes quintessential kathak turns and gestural flourishes with her own personal twist. Delicate and intentional, she switches deftly between fluid, almost meditative motions and sudden staccato slices and foot taps. Performing an abstract piece of choreography, Patel’s earnest eyes follow each of her movements with an intensity that gives them narrative meaning. Her talent for storytelling is also evident in the film Trinity (2021), by visual artist Hetain Patel, where she was not only required to dance but also act.

Trained in kathak, Patel first caught the British dance scene’s attention when she represented the South Asian category in the Grand Finals of the 2015 BBC Young Dancer competition. Soon after, she was invited to work with a range of well-known companies and choreographers, such as Richard Alston and Gary Clarke. 

This October, she premiered Don’t Mind Me at Sadler’s Wells, using the children’s board game Snakes and Ladders—which originated in India—as a frame to explore themes of trauma and healing, luck and chance, power and society. It was her final piece as a Young Associate, and only whetted appetites to see how her work will develop. —Emily May

Ashton Edwards

A soaring jump, whirligig turns, refined pointe work, lines for days—Ashton Edwards has them all. But what makes the 20-year-old Pacific Northwest Ballet corps member an unforgettable performer isn’t their meticulous technique, musicality and apparently effortless physicality—it’s joy, pure and simple. Onstage, Edwards (whose pronouns are they/them) radiates a love for ballet that started at age 3, when they saw Brandye Lee dance the Sugar Plum Fairy. “I just wanted to be everything she embodied,” says Edwards. They started training a year later, and ballet quickly took on a deep personal resonance. “Growing up queer in the Black community, and also in a low-income community, it was this escape from reality,” they say.

Fast-forward 16 years and Edwards has garnered featured roles in Justin Peck’s The Times Are Racing and Dwight Rhoden’s Catching Feelings at PNB, and in Mango, adapted from Andrea Miller’s sky to hold, in Taylor Stanley’s Dichotomous Being program at Jacob’s Pillow. They’ve also had an impact as a nonbinary ballet dancer of color. “Ashton is so much more than their talent,” says PNB artistic director Peter Boal. “They are a thoughtful advocate for change within the company and in the world of dance.” Yet for Edwards, everything still comes down to The Nutcracker, and that magical feeling of ballet bliss. “Getting to perform the corps of Snow—my heart flutters every time!” —Claudia Bauer

Quinn Starner

Professional ballet isn’t where most comp kids—the contemporary-competition dynamos who dominate “So You Think You Can Dance” rosters—end up. But when they do turn their distinctive powers toward ballet, magic often happens.

Quinn Starner, an alum of the competition circuit, now cuts fearlessly through choreography of all styles at New York City Ballet. When she was a young teenager, her fantastically vivid solos earned accolades at both contemporary and ballet contests. In 2018, she changed tacks, enrolling at the School of American Ballet; last year, she joined NYCB’s corps. Professional ballet life has polished down some of her harder edges, but that has only enhanced her sparkle. As an original cast member in both Silas Farley’s Architects of Time last spring and Kyle Abraham’s Love Letter (on shuffle) last fall, she showed a new refinement in her épaulement and port de bras.

Starner seems more than ready for ballet’s technical challenges, and invigorated by its artistic ones—much like fellow comp-kid-turned-ballet-pro unicorns Tiler Peck, James Whiteside and Catherine Hurlin. That’s a good list to be on. —Margaret Fuhrer

Elijah Richardson

With quirky charisma and an infectious smile, Elijah Richardson burst onto Chicago’s dance scene in 2018. But it was last year that he made an indelible mark, delivering a masterful performance in South Chicago Dance Theatre’s smash hit, five-year anniversary concert at the Harris Theater—just two years and a pandemic after he worked there as an usher. The San Jose, California, native has long been insatiable, training in everything from figure skating to musical theater, ballet to Gaga. He booked a ticket to the Windy City the moment he graduated from Chapman University with a dance degree. Three seasons with DanceWorks Chicago solidified Richardson’s command of physical theater, but this dancer is as multifaceted as his interests: He pulls off impassioned lyricism and pinpoint precision as easily as slapstick comedy. Others outside Chicago have taken notice too: He recently guested with Memphis’ Collage Dance Collective and has had his work selected four times for the 92Y Mobile Dance Film Festival. —Lauren Warnecke

Dominic Moore-Dunson

“Urban Midwest storytelling” is how dancer and choreographer Dominic Moore-Dunson describes his approach to his works. The 33-year-old’s visceral, cross-disciplinary dance projects, themed around Blackness and social justice, pull from his personal experiences living and working in Akron, Ohio. Trained at Akron’s performing arts schools, Moore-Dunson performed with Cleveland’s Inlet Dance Theatre for 10 years. His 2018 The “Black Card” Project, billed as a “live-action dance-theater cartoon,” was developed during his time at Inlet; a solo work, CAUTION, was commissioned by Akron Art Museum that same year. A 2019 Jacob’s Pillow Ann and Weston Hicks Choreography Fellowship and 2019 Cleveland Arts Prize Emerging Artist Award for Theatre and Dance soon followed.

His current project, inCOPnegro, is a two-pronged exploration of the concept of “safety” and police relations in Black communities throughout America. “It’s me trying to understand what to say to my kids about police as Black people,” says Moore-Dunson, who has been wrongfully stopped some 45 times by police. The podcast inCOPnegro: Black and Blue, launched in April 2022, features the dance artist in conversation with individuals on both sides of the “blue line” as he tries to find answers to that question. The evening-length dance theater production, developed in part at the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron, is set to debut in June. —Steve Sucato

Becca Robinson

When given the chance to perform on national television, most dancers flaunt their most impressive tricks. But as a contestant on NBC’s “Dancing with Myself,” Becca Robinson chose instead to make people laugh, sniffing her armpit and dropping into a sudden split. That’s not to say Robinson lacks real moves: Her eye-catching versatility has earned her impressive credits, including assisting choreographer Bo Park in creating a Virgin Voyages dance show, as well as dancing in the movies In the Heights and Isn’t It Romantic, Taylor Swift’s performance at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, and a flash mob at the premiere of Jennifer Lopez’s documentary Halftime.

No matter the job, the San Diego–born, New York City–based Robinson lets her sense of humor shine through. In a hypercompetitive dance world, her unapologetic quirkiness is refreshing. “If there’s not some sort of comedic element in my improv, the dance or my facials, then I didn’t do my job of being authentic,” she says. “It’s okay to be different. There’s room on the dance floor for everyone.” —Kristi Yeung

Tendayi Kuumba

The Lady in Brown in Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf is the choreo-poem’s emotional center, bookending the show with her utterances of the famous lines that give the groundbreaking work its title. But in Tendayi Kuumba’s interpretation of the role, it wasn’t just her monologues that both catalyzed and grounded last year’s much-lauded Broadway revival, directed and choreographed by Camille A. Brown. It was her dancing—electric, free, fearless—that established her as the show’s driving force and the standout in a cast full of standouts.

Kuumba’s Chita Rivera Award–winning performance was just the most recent example of the 34-year-old’s striking ability to bring her full self to all the vastly varying stages she dances on, from David Byrne’s American Utopia—her Broadway debut—to her time with Urban Bush Women. The work she creates with partner Greg Purnell as UFly Mothership is as multi-hyphenated as she is, combining music, movement and technology to create expansive sensory universes. (Their most recent work, The Adventures of Mr. Left Brain and Ms. Right, for the Stephen Petronio Company, premiered last month.)

Next up for Kuumba: choreographing one-third of a shared program with Annie-B Parson and Donna Uchizono that will premiere later this year in New York City and tour in summer 2024. —Lauren Wingenroth

Mikaela Santos

It’s her imaginative spark—along with pristine technique and bright musicality—that makes Mikaela Santos one of Atlanta Ballet’s most captivating dancers. Last March, Santos breathed startling freshness into Giselle’s peasant pas de deux, catching the music’s quickening pulse with fleet footwork while her upper body revealed buoyant flourishes with warmth and spontaneity. In May, Santos enchanted in Sergio Masero’s Schubertiada. She tripped along Schubert’s rolling rhythms with swift attack—each change of focus revealed new facets and feelings as she caught her partner’s eye and drew out the music’s playful sensuality.

Born in the Philippines, Santos credits her teacher, Effie Nañas, for preparing her to study and compete at the international level, where Santos developed an “inner presence” and the confidence to show her individuality, and with nurturing her natural expressivity. Santos often imagines she’s dancing in wind or underwater. “Once you finish a step, it breaks the moment,” she says. “I want people to feel that it’s not going to stop.” After her recent tour de force performance in Justin Peck’s In Creases, with more opportunities ahead, it doesn’t seem she’ll have to. —Cynthia Bond Perry

Simone Acri

Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch has found a new muse in Simone Acri. In a jaw-dropping solo in Welch’s Sparrow, set to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Baby Driver,” Acri weaved through the driving beat, revealing the song’s bittersweet undercurrent. In Brigade, he nailed Welch’s tongue-in-cheek humor while dazzling with his freewheeling style. And it’s not just his artistic director’s work in which the newly minted soloist excels: He launched this season with a robust performance of Trey McIntyre’s Peter Pan, giving the hellion of a wild child ample charisma along with soaring flying skills. With an ability to both move with total abandon and mine the in-between places, Acri sources his spectacular technique to shape a choreographer’s vision. He’s like a fully charged battery—high-energy but precise, and solid with his bravado turns and jumps. But it’s how he does those things, with such nuance, joy and connection to the audience, that has him turning the heads of spectators and artistic staff alike. —Nancy Wozny

Elwince Magbitang

It’s not every day that American Ballet Theatre casts an apprentice in a soloist role. And yet, as Elwince Magbitang soared through barrel turns, 540s, tours and other feats in the second act of Don Quixote last June, it was clear that the company was introducing its audiences to a virtuoso talent. 

Powerful, musical and charismatic, the 21-year-old Magbitang has been creating buzz since he arrived in 2018 from his native Philippines to train at ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. As a student he was chosen to dance a small part in the premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s The Seasons. Shortly afterward, in 2019, he joined ABT’s Studio Company, where he impressed in bravura roles like the folk-inspired Gopak variation. This fall, as a newly promoted corps member, he made his debut as Puck in Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream.

“Elwince’s dancing shows strength and panache,” says former ABT principal Stella Abrera, a close mentor. She spotted Magbitang, then a student at Manila’s Steps Dance Studio, in 2018 when he performed in a fundraising gala she organized in the Philippines. Impressed, she and her husband, Studio Company artistic director Sascha Radetsky, arranged his audition for the JKO School. “It’s been such a thrill witnessing his journey,” Abrera says. “He’s an inspiration to his hometown and beyond.” —Amy Brandt

Erin Casale

A compact powerhouse as much at home in leotard roles as she is in tutu-and-tiara ballets, Erin Casale is every bit a 21st-century dance artist. In an excerpt from Marius Petipa’s Le Talisman while she was a student at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, her buoyant steps, turns and extensions evoked visions of an ebullient Disney heroine. As a featured soloist in Nacho Duato’s Duende, she contorted her body into shapes resembling symbols from some ancient civilization. “Erin is very daring and dynamic when she moves,” says former Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre artistic director Susan Jaffe. “When I needed someone with presence and power to dance the lead in my Bolero, Erin was the perfect fit.”

A Johnstown, Pennsylvania, native, Casale trained at Virginia’s Academy of Russian Ballet and Johnstown Concert Ballet prior to going to PBT’s school, where she rose through its levels to be handpicked in 2019 by then–artistic director Terrence S. Orr to join the company. Now in her fourth season with PBT, the 23-year-old says her career goal is “to experience everything.” —Steve Sucato

Gianna “Gigi” Todisco

Gianna “Gigi” Todisco’s resumé is the picture of versatility. In the six years since she graduated from Loyola Marymount University, she’s served as movement director for Post Malone, ZHU, Islands and NIKI; performed in a series of operas choreographed by Jacob Jonas and No)one. Art House’s Chris Emile; appeared in music videos and commercials for the likes of Tinashe, Vans, OnStar and Hennessy; and made waves in the concert dance scene with Micaela Taylor’s The TL Collective. She recently wrapped up a run as choreographer and performer with opening act Kali Uchis as part of Tyler, the Creator’s world tour. Through it all, Todisco leaves her unique stamp on everything she does, imbuing each project with her gritty, avant-garde, effortlessly cool sensibilities—whatever corner of the industry she finds herself in. —Sophie Bress

Jordan Demetrius Lloyd

On a balmy evening early last June, a public school playground deep in Brooklyn became New York City’s hottest proverbial club: Droves of people—an equal mix of experimental-dance who’s whos and Bedford-Stuyvesant residents—flocked to a free performance of Jordan Demetrius Lloyd’s Jerome, an enchanting, elegant work that seemed to both capture and converse with the particular magic of golden hour in the neighborhood. 

Lloyd—whom New York audiences may also know as a performer in the works of David Dorfman, Beth Gill, Tere O’Connor and others—was as surprised as anyone by the massive turnout. But in retrospect, underestimating Lloyd’s skill as a community-gatherer, a self-producer or an artist is a mistake. The 28-year-old, who’s been receiving growing support for his work over the past several years (a New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks residency, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, commissions from Issue Project Room and Danspace Project), leaves little to chance, crafting dreamy, highly detailed works full of unexpected gesture and pedestrian virtuosity.

Inspired by postmodernism, Lloyd positions his work at the intersection of that canon and other contemporary performance aesthetics. But don’t try to put his work in any kind of box, or category: “I feel a deep aversion to branding myself as the artist that does a thing,” he says. “A unidirectional career does not feel like the one I’m after.” We may not know where Lloyd is going next, but the masses are sure to follow. —Lauren Wingenroth

Musa Motha

Musa Motha came into his own in the September premiere of Rambert’s Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby. Equally at home in flamboyant jazz club scenes as in opium-riddled dream sequences and fast-paced fight choreography, Motha seamlessly switches between cheeky, staccato, hip-hop–inspired solos and intimate duets in the role of Barney.

Motha dances with crutches; his left leg was amputated when he was 11 after he was diagnosed with bone cancer. While such a surgery could have been seen as career-ending for anyone in a physical profession, it propelled Motha into the world of movement. After starting off as a commercial street dancer—most notably featuring in Drake’s “One Dance” music video—Motha, originally from South Africa, first transitioned into contemporary concert dance when he joined the Johannesburg-based Vuyani Dance Theatre in 2018, before debuting with Rambert last May. While the UK is home to pioneering organizations like Candoco, which hires a mixture of disabled and non-disabled performers, the former rarely secure positions with mainstream companies like Rambert. Now, as a member of Britain’s oldest contemporary-dance company, Motha is helping to shift perceptions in the country’s dance scene, and is perfectly placed to continue growing as an artist in his own right. —Emily May

Madeline Maxine Gorman

Madeline Maxine Gorman doesn’t just live her values, she choreographs and dances them. Navigating the dance world as a queer, disabled and neurodivergent creative, she incorporates material from her intersectional identities into her intellectually probing, politically minded and personally revelatory works. Between Myself, a developing solo show, draws from her childhood diary musings, memories of terrible first dates and her ongoing experiences with hearing loss. Bitten Tongue, created when she was studying dance and communications at Towson University, probes the inner psyche of a working woman rebelling against holding her tongue in a male-dominated corporate world. Filled with flings and forceful tumbles, its androgynous choreographic language leans in. New this year, her Tooth and Claw will examine “tall poppy syndrome” (when successful people are criticized for succeeding), pointedly blasting American exceptionalism to an original score riffing on ABBA’s “Money, Money, Money.”

Gorman, who was selected for Dance Place’s Dance and Disability Residency, created GRIDLOCK Dance to reflect her values as an artist and person. Foremost, that means paying dancers for rehearsals and performances, and deep collaborative work. She strives for what she calls “concinnity,” a concept akin to harmony. In practice, that includes planning around dancers’ schedules and valuing other parts of their lives. “Real life comes first,” she says. “Not a part-time gig.” —Lisa Traiger

STL Rhythm Collaborative

The professional tap scene in St. Louis fizzled when Robert Reed, founder of the St. Louis Tap Festival and lead ambassador for the form in the Gateway City, died in 2015. But Maria Majors took up the mantle in 2021, forming the STL Rhythm Collaborative by combining her pickup troupe, moSTLy TAP, with companion group moSTLy JAZZ to reconnect tap dancers with their jazz music roots. Its first full-length show, which premiered in October 2021, pulled apart music by the Dave Brubeck Quartet and strung it back together with indulgently satisfying taps layered on top. That same year, the company launched the STL Rhythm Fest, modeled after Reed’s illustrious festival and reinvigorating the local scene. This summer’s edition brought heavy hitters like Chicagoans Nico Rubio, George Patterson III and Martin “Tre” Dumas III back to the city to shore up professional-level training, but the company itself has some serious chops—proving that St. Louis’ ongoing legacy as a city for tap is secure. —Lauren Warnecke

Header photo credits, left to right, top to bottom: Alexander Iziliaev, courtesy Miami City Ballet; Mike Esperanza, courtesy Castro; Rosalie O’Connor, courtesy Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre; Michelle Reid, courtesy South Chicago Dance Theatre; Farruk Mandujano, courtesy Mandujano; Olivia Moon Photography, courtesy Moore-Dunson; Amy Gardner, courtesy Todisco; Paul Court, courtesy Richard Kornberg and Associates; Laurence Elizabeth Knox, courtesy Houston Ballet; Agathe Poupeney, courtesy Paris Opéra Ballet; Paula Lobo, courtesy Ballet Hispánico; Liv Battista, courtesy Robinson; Camilla Greenwell, courtesy Rambert; Whitney Browne, courtesy Lloyd; Rosalie O’Connor, courtesy American Ballet Theatre; Clarence Alford, courtesy STL Rhythm Collaborative; xmbphotography, courtesy The Washington Ballet; Bill Gorman, courtesy Madeline Maxine Gorman; Erin Baiano, courtesy New York City Ballet; Allina Yang, courtesy Whim W’Him; Kim Kenney, courtesy Atlanta Ballet; Spelman College, courtesy Kuumba; Angela Sterling, courtesy Pacific Northwest Ballet; Camilla Greenwell, courtesy Patel; Amitava Sarkar, courtesy Ishida.

The post Introducing Our 2023 “25 to Watch” appeared first on Dance Magazine.

National Ballet of Canada

Entering: Hope Muir

“If you ask any choreographer or friend I’ve known for years, they all say I’ve wanted to be an artistic director since I was 5 years old,” says Toronto native Hope Muir, age 51. And now she is, having begun her tenure as artistic director of NBoC in January 2022. Even after five years as artistic director of Charlotte Ballet and two years as assistant artistic director for the Scottish Ballet, Muir harbored self-doubts during her all-Zoom interviews for the role at NBoC. “I think like a lot of women working in dance at this level, there is a bit of the imposter syndrome—you can’t quite believe it when it happens to you,” she says. “But I’ve learned to really trust my experience and the work that I put into doing this job.”

Muir absorbed directing skills from those she worked with: Peter Schaufuss’ “tenacity and pioneering spirit” at English National Ballet; Christopher Bruce’s leadership, creativity and curatorial abracadabra at Rambert; and Christopher Hampson at the Scottish Ballet, who taught her “about the nuts and bolts of the job.”

Muir views NBoC as a hybrid company that balances classical and contemporary work that mirrors her eclectic dance career. In contemporary choreographers she looks for diverse, distinct voices with a “clarity of choreographic language,” similar to those she has engaged: David Dawson, Rena Butler and Alonzo King. She plans to continue longtime relationships with choreographers Helen Pickett, Christian Spuck, Crystal Pite and Dawson and to promote young Canadian talents, such as Ethan Colangelo and Emma Portner, and the company’s Choreographic Associates.

Recognizing the classics as essential to the company’s legacy, Muir feels a responsibility to stage both traditional and unconventionally original versions. Reaching out to new communities is vital, as is telling new stories, connecting digitally with younger people and continuing online engagement. Muir is drawn to dancers with musicality and stylistic diversity, those who are “brave in showing themselves onstage.”

The pandemic took a toll, but Muir is building NBoC back by hiring 15 new corps de ballet dancers and seven musicians. “We need to get back up to our fighting weight,” she says.

Directing NBoC, she says, is “a dream job. Everyone asks me how it’s going—I love it, I love coming to work every single day, love my dancers. This is just the best job in the world. I couldn’t be happier.”

Exiting: Karen Kain

Became artistic director of NBoC in 2005 and stepped down in 2021. Kain started her dance career with NBoC in 1969 and retired in 1997.

Proudest Accomplishments: Returning the company to the international stage, working with the very best Canadian and international choreographers and attracting top-notch dancers.

Most Challenging Aspect of the Job: “With so much time consumed by fundraising and planning, there are less opportunities to be in the studio,” says Kain. “You must balance what you want to do artistically with the reality of the financial pressures.” Although the pandemic delayed her retirement, NBoC presented its first digital season and continued to pay the dancers and staff through the support of donors and the Canadian government.

Regrets: None.

On Hope Muir as the New Director: “I could not be handing the reins to a more talented and capable leader,” says Kain. “I’m excited to see the new choreographic voices being introduced to the company.”

American Ballet Theatre

Entering: Susan Jaffe

“I love this company,” says Susan Jaffe, of ABT. “It’s really my home and I’ve been there for half my life.” Jaffe has experience in most facets of the company: She danced there for 22 years, 19 as a principal dancer, then served as an advisor to the board, taught in ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School and worked as director of repertoire for two years. Jaffe was dean of dance at University of North Carolina School of the Arts until 2020, when she was recruited as artistic director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.

At age 60, Jaffe is confident about her resumé. At UNCSA, she says, “I had to learn a lot about administration, business, fundraising and strategy. It expanded my mind as to what it really means to be an arts organization. I brought those skills with me to PBT.”

What she loves most about ABT—and why she wants to direct the company—are the story ballets, which stole her heart at a young age. “We at ABT have the capacity every year to tell these great stories,” she says. “It’s where you go when you want to be taken away through a story, where you’ll feel a lot of great emotion.” Jaffe also says she likes risk-taking in curating repertory, commissioning work from more women and artists of color, and telling new stories through contemporary ballet vocabulary. She mentions Alexei Ratmansky’s recent full-length Of Love and Rage and Christopher Wheeldon’s Like Water for Chocolate, making its North American premiere at ABT in 2023, as examples of ballets with new narratives that excite her. Jaffe wants to preserve the classics, but says “there are a few I’d like to give a facelift, give a redo,” as well as addressing cultural misappropriation in ballets like La Bayadère.

A focus on audience education, performing opportunities and digital media may count as Jaffe’s most significant departures from ABT’s current direction. “Digital programs are a place for people who’ve never seen ABT,” she says. “I’m excited to do shorter stories or ballets that are specifically for film.”

More touring, particularly bringing the ABT Studio Company to universities, would educate new audiences, through lectures and residencies. “The Studio Company and the main company could work together as we tour a city,” she says. “We’d have a longer and bigger presence.” Jaffe also envisions more repertory programs with innovative works at smaller venues like The Joyce Theater and university theaters. “It would be a good place to get a little bit more experimental than in a Met season,” she says.

And the dancers? Jaffe desires exciting performers and great movers, technically sound, clean, strong and coordinated, and comfortable dancing classical and contemporary ballets with “absolute precision, depth and musicality,” she says. “But on top of that, they have to be artists.” In short, combine the best of everything—just as Jaffe did.

Exiting: Kevin McKenzie

Leaving ABT on December 31, 2022, after 30 years as artistic director and 12 years as a principal dancer.

Proudest Accomplishments: Securing Ratmansky as artist in residence in 2009; overseeing the creation of the ABT JKO School with a curriculum suitable for the company’s repertory; boosting the technical proficiency and artistic level of the dancers.

Toughest Challenge: Battling with some executive directors not to downsize the company or productions in order to save money.

Regrets: “I wish that we could have had a presence in theaters all around the world in far greater numbers,” says McKenzie. “That for me is a disappointment.”

On Susan Jaffe as the Incoming Artistic Director: “You’ve got someone who had a major career as a performer, is a great teacher and coach, has experience in academia and the ballet world, has choreographed and has established relationships with choreographers,” McKenzie told The New York Times. “She worked under three directors at Ballet Theatre. It feels like the organic continuation of a line.”

San Francisco Ballet

Entering: Tamara Rojo

In October, Tamara Rojo bid farewell to her dancing career in Akram Khan’s Giselle with English National Ballet at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. On December 1, she relinquishes her role as artistic director at ENB and, 11 days later, starts as artistic director of San Francisco Ballet. Throughout the summer and fall, she has conducted both in-person and video meetings with SFB dancers and staff.

“I have achieved more than I imagined I could,” the 48-year-old Rojo says of her decade directing ENB. “When the opportunity of SFB arrived, I realized our mission is very similar—to bring the highest possible quality of dance to the widest possible audience. Helgi has consistently commissioned so many new choreographers, and I felt that was a very exciting opportunity to follow in his steps.”

Rojo has fixed her focus, as she did at ENB, on acquiring the works of female choreographers like Aszure Barton, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Arielle Smith (Crystal Pite is on her wish list), as well as welcoming masters like William Forsythe and Khan and young, promising American choreographers.

Mounting full-length classical ballets requires substantial investment, and Rojo prefers a hybrid approach. “Sometimes you need to balance whether you want to redo something that already exists and everybody knows,” says Rojo, “or do you want to invest those resources in new stories, new choreographers, newly commissioned scores?” She has found inspiration in the UK theater scene’s often unconventional approach to classics, allowing Shakespeare to speak to new generations; rethinking whose stories are told and what the people onstage represent as a company; and reaching out to diverse communities.

At ENB, Rojo acquired Pina Bausch’s gritty, primal Rite of Spring and would like to do similarly bold works at SFB. “I think she is an extraordinary choreographer that is not very often presented in America,” says Rojo. “There is a lot of groundwork to do in working with choreographers to get the company to understand a more European contemporary language.”

Apart from her husband, Isaac Hernández, who is returning to SFB, will she import dancers from ENB? “No, I am going to San Francisco to direct SFB,” she states. She will also not dance with the company.

Rojo encourages collaboration with her artistic team. “It takes a while to get to know and trust each other, but that’s something I would like to develop with the team at SFB. I don’t believe only one person has all the answers,” she says. “I am looking forward to getting to know the organization and starting slow so that when we run, we can run together.”

Exiting: Helgi Tomasson

Began as artistic director of SFB in 1985 after 15 years as a principal dancer with New York City Ballet. Retired as artistic director and principal choreographer in May 2022.

Proudest Accomplishments: Transforming SFB from a good regional troupe to a world-class company, touring to New York, Paris, Tokyo and London to show off superb dancers and repertory.

Where He Learned to Direct: “At NYCB, I saw how Mr. B did things. That sinks in,” says Tomasson. “I learned on the job what’s logical and what works, and to trust your artistic vision. From Robert Joffrey I took in a curiosity about what was possible in ballet, bringing in choreographers from the modern dance community.”

Regrets: “I felt like I had accomplished everything I set out to do, more than I ever dreamed,” he says. “But I would like to have choreographed an original full-length story ballet with a new theme.”

On Incoming Artistic Director Tamara Rojo; “She has done remarkably well with ENB. She has brought in choreographers that have enhanced the company and the dancing. I have no doubt that she will continue in that vein. She is a very smart, intelligent person and I really do think she will do well.”

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Read the (Rehearsal) Room

One particularly valuable consequence of being comfortable with speaking up in a dance space is the clarity it can offer you as a dancer and collaborator in someone else’s work. During her time with Hamburg Ballet, Madison Keesler witnessed older dancers who weren’t afraid to ask Hamburg Ballet artistic director and choreographer John Neumeier questions about the characters they were being asked to inhabit. She soon adopted that approach into her own character development. “The dancers would ask stuff like ‘What’s my character actually saying?’ ” she remembers. “With John, the first rehearsal would include sitting down and talking with him, articulating through words what the purpose of this ballet and these characters was. I found that really helpful.”

When she was dancing with English National Ballet, Keesler was a part of choreographer Akram Khan’s brand-new Giselle. “He had six months to create that ballet, including a workshop period, and he wanted us all involved,” she says. “We created a storyboard and took over a wall of mirrors with it. I remember it being challenging for some of the artists when he would turn to them and ask, ‘What do you really think about Hilarion?’ ” she says. “Most of us had never really thought about those questions.”

That’s not always the case with new works, however, and it takes a discerning eye to know when a discussion or interjected opinion is warranted and when it’s not. “With San Francisco Ballet, we didn’t have much time to create—usually, the choreographer has two weeks,” admits Keesler, who was a soloist with SFB and now works as a freelancer in New York City. “In those instances, the choreographer doesn’t have time to get into a discussion. I’ve seen dancers not read the room and over-ask questions, when it’s not the right time to have a conversation.”

Be Proactive—From the Start

Teachers are authority figures, but it’s important for dance students to speak up—advocating for your own needs, interests and personal boundaries will lead to a healthier studio setting and build the communication skills you’ll need in the professional world. In a classroom setting, Martín recommends practicing having (and sharing) an opinion about the material you’re working on, with the caveat that butting heads with a teacher over an interpretation or feedback deserves careful consideration. “Yes, sometimes you have to deal with a hard teacher who puts their ego in front of the material because of their own frustrations,” he acknowledges. “But feel the situation—try to understand where the other person comes from.” If you feel like your contribution to the dialogue is being unfairly ignored, Martín suggests checking in first with your peers and other teachers before having a more direct conversation with the teacher in question.

Early on in her career with SFB, Keesler learned how important it was for her to initiate meetings with then-artistic director Helgi Tomasson and discuss her goals. “I’m allowed, as an employee, to have a conversation with my boss where I can say: ‘I’ve always wanted to learn this role, and I know it’s up to you, but know that my desire to learn it is there,’ ” she says. “That’s always shocking to other dancers, who think you’re just asking for a part. But you can do it in a way that’s respectful of their decision. If you think about any industry, we have to inform our bosses about how we feel and what our objectives are as employees.”

That doesn’t mean that Keesler wasn’t nervous to have her first meeting with Tomasson. “I was terrified,” she remembers. But she came in prepared with notes, and her persistence and willingness to articulate her future worked in her favor. “I told him, ‘I wanted to let you know that my ultimate goal is to one day be a principal.’ He said, ‘I’m really glad you told me that, because not everyone wants to be a principal. I’ve learned over the years that there are dancers who don’t want that kind of pressure or responsibility and are happy doing the corps work. It’s valuable that you told me.’ ”

Practice Makes Perfect

As daunting as it might seem, putting yourself into situations that require you to speak up in front of others will help you develop the confidence, articulation and ease needed for public speaking. Keesler volunteered herself to SFB’s development team as an attendee for donor dinners, where she could practice conversation skills. “I was curious who these people were, and how they were supporting ballet,” she says. “I was always putting myself through situations where I knew I’d be asked questions I wouldn’t know how to answer, at first—it was good practice.”

That willingness to challenge and develop her speaking skills eventually led to Keesler being asked to participate in company interviews. “SFB has meet-the-artist interviews that are held onstage, in front of an audience,” she says. “I’ve done that a number of times.” She now welcomes the challenge.

The post How Using Your Words Can Benefit Both Your Artistry and Your Career appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The T-shirt and the smile are an apt segue into the conversation that follows. Directness and lack of pretense seem to be part of Trenary’s DNA, particularly at this time in her life. If you ask Trenary a question, she answers it as straightforwardly and honestly as she can. And she’s open about the things that bug her about classical ballet, her chosen profession: the unexamined conventions, the fact that so little of the repertory reflects the lives of people today, and the tradition of quiet obedience in the studio. But she’s also a welcoming interlocutor, engaging and engaged. Her thoughts come from a place of conviction and devotion.

Trenary loves ballet—“I love it very, very much,” she says—she just wants it to show a little more flexibility and openness to different perspectives. She wants it to move forward. “I’m desperate to bring more humanity to it,” she says, “and I want to see something that feels universal. I think it’s time we start talking about how we can tell these stories, and about how we can tell new stories, and different stories. I want this art form to survive.”

This past year was her 11th with ABT, where she became an apprentice in April 2011 and a member of the corps before the end of that year. She was named a principal dancer in 2020 and turned 29 in August of this year. By any measure, she’s in her prime, armed with the physical and mental tools to take on just about any role.

But despite the recognition, her emergence into the classical repertory has been gradual. She has yet to cut her teeth on Odette/Odile in Swan Lake or Kitri in Don Quixote, though ABT performed both ballets during its summer season at the Met. Instead, she had one very important debut during that season, as Juliet in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s a role Trenary says she’s been pining for since she first saw a video of it as a student. “It was the first time I had been moved by a ballet in the way I felt moved when I watched a movie or a play. And I thought, Oh, my word, that’s it, that’s what I want to do.” Telling stories through movement is central to how she sees herself as a dancer. “I want people to feel like they’re watching life happening in front of them and that the dialogue happens to be classical ballet.”

During ABT’s fall 2021 season at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater, she danced her first Giselle, a role that daunted her in part because of the character’s shyness in the first act. “I suppose I didn’t see myself in it,” she said a few weeks before that performance. As with her Juliet, she approached it by delving into the character and into the story and finding images and sensations she connected with. “She is such an interesting actress,” says Alexei Ratmansky, ABT’s choreographer in residence, who has cast her in a wide variety of roles, ranging from a magical bird in The Golden Cockerel, to a hearty spirit of the harvest in The Seasons, to the breathless young princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. For each, Trenary “dived into the role with her whole heart,” he says.

That total investment in whatever role she’s creating is one of the things that makes Trenary so compelling onstage. You’re less aware of each step and its execution, and more aware of the way a scene or passage makes you feel, what it’s trying to convey. Often, her take on familiar roles is different from what you’re used to, infused with aspects of her own spirit. Trenary puts thought and effort into these interpretations. In addition to working with an acting coach, Joan Rosenfels, she does a lot of outside research.

In the case of Romeo and Juliet, this hunger for information took her to London in 2019, where she met with Lynn Seymour, the ballerina on whom MacMillan created the role of Juliet in 1965. Seymour, who is now 83, invited her into her home. They discussed the ballet over several days while watching videos and running through the steps in a space they created in Seymour’s living room. Seymour shared what MacMillan had told her and how she had seen the ballet change over time. “One of the biggest takeaways,” says Trenary, “was that there was more freedom in the role than the way it’s danced now. She gave me permission to play.”

As with her Giselle, Trenary wanted her Juliet to be more forceful, to stand her ground more and to avoid the prettiness that creeps into some performances and takes the viewer out of the story. But when she returned to the rehearsal studio ready to apply what she had learned, she encountered pushback from the people staging the ballet for ABT. When a certain interpretation takes hold, it becomes difficult to change. “At first the reaction was, ‘Um, that’s one way to do it, but we do it this other way.’ And I would say, ‘Can I ask why?’ ”

“It took a lot of courage for her to take these roles and bend them,” Amanda McKerrow, a former ABT ballerina who recently began coaching at the company, said after a rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet. In a way, Trenary has made things harder for herself by not simply putting her head down and following a familiar path. “She has to work hard in order to convince the decision-makers that her interpretations could be valid,” says Ratmansky, who admires her tenacity. “I think she can get there.”

That drive, which was clear early on in her career—you could sense it even when she was simply leading a long line of Shades in La Bayadère—has blossomed more recently, particularly since the start of the pandemic. The early months were difficult. She moved back home to Florida, and experienced a major personal relationship change. “I had so much time alone,” she remembers. “I was writing, taking photos, challenging myself to do choreographic improvisation exercises every day. And I found that I was really, really happy doing that.”

Over the ensuing months, she made two short dance films, dove deeper into her interest in photography, and interviewed her grandmother for hours about her experiences growing up and, later, living on a farm in Colorado. “I dove down into a rabbit hole of family stories, informing myself about the women in my family, and why they are the way they are, and why I am the way I am.” At an April residency sponsored by Works & Process LaunchPAD at Chautauqua, she used some of that material as the basis for movement explorations that led to about 25 minutes of solo choreography and a series of self-portraits with a Nikon F camera (film, not digital).

Trenary is an eager collaborator, with a particular affinity for contemporary dance, which she describes as “my happy place.” Back in 2020, during The Joyce Theater’s digital seasons, she worked with the postmodern choreographer Molissa Fenley, performing her arduous 1988 solo State of Darkness. Here, her dancing revealed a rough edge, an aggressive, even punk, sensibility. It was the Johnny Cash coming out. Trenary didn’t look at all like a ballerina. More recently, under the auspices of Works & Process at the Guggenheim, she collaborated with Sonya Tayeh on a piece called Unveiling, full of muscular, fluid choreography and partnering. In it she shared a pas de deux with another female dancer, Ida Saki, something that seldom happens in her day-to-day practice at ABT. (Unveiling was performed as part of Restart Stages at Lincoln Center in June 2021.) “It was so hard at first for me to share my weight with her,” says Trenary. “I had to learn how to use my whole body to partner, not just my arms, like we do in classical ballet.” This summer and fall brought collaborations with choreographers Jenn Freeman and Twyla Tharp, including performing in Tharp’s company at New York City Center in October.

The more Trenary learns in outside projects, the more she brings back to her work with ABT. And the more her mind opens to new possibilities. She jokes that she would love to dance the role of Espada, the swashbuckling toreador in Don Quixote. “It’s one saut de basque and the rest is like jazz dance. I think I could accomplish that,” she says with her mischievous smile.

The past few years—the isolation of COVID-19, her promotion to principal and the immersion in multiple creative projects—have fueled a sense of urgency about her profession, and her place within it. She finds that she questions a lot of things. These questions have helped her emerge as an artist with not only a strong point of view, but also the willingness to do the work required to make interesting, informed artistic choices.

That work bore fruit in her Juliet debut. Her performance was intimate, vulnerable and unadorned. As an audience member, you almost forgot that these were choreographed ballet steps, and instead were caught up in the story as it unfolded. No pretty poses, no lying on the bed with her feet pointed or arching her back over the tomb in the Capulet crypt. “We weren’t trying to project or tell the audience to look at us,” says Calvin Royal III, her partner for the performance and a close friend. “It was almost like we were in a movie.” For Trenary, that’s a step in the right direction.

The post Cassandra Trenary Comes Into Her Own appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Company: American Ballet Theatre

Age: 23

Hometown: Paris

Training: Private training with Nicole Chouret, Conservatoire Municipal Camille Saint-Saëns, École Nationale de Danse de Marseille, Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, ABT’s Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis School

Alternate route: Fleytoux, who was born in Vietnam and adopted and raised in Paris, had hoped to attend the Paris Opéra Ballet School, but she didn’t satisfy its height requirement. So she went to Marseille’s École Nationale de Danse instead. “I went with my mom, and we stayed for three years, until I was 14,” she says, before moving back to Paris to continue her training.

Swift rise: In 2016, Fleytoux competed at the Prix de Lausanne, where Cynthia Harvey, then director of the JKO School, was the classical coach. “She offered me a spot in the top level at the school,” says Fleytoux, who spent three months there before being promoted to ABT Studio Company, then to apprentice in December 2018, and to the corps in June 2019. “Then the pandemic happened.”

Storyteller: “I love being a character in the story, actually interacting with the other characters and with the audience,” she says of Amour. “And of course there’s all the makeup, hair, costume, glitter.” ABT’s stable of classics is what first attracted her to the company.

What her mentor is saying: “Léa is tremendously gifted,” says ABT régisseur Susan Jones. “She absorbs everything you say to her. Every rehearsal shows improvement and progress. And onstage, she lights up!”

Living for the stage: “I love to try different things in rehearsal,” says Fleytoux. “But onstage I do things that I wouldn’t even think of in the studio. And I don’t get stressed, either.”

Taking initiative: Behind that spontaneity lies a lot of preparation. “When I was learning Amour, I watched a lot of videos. I looked into the lore of the character and tried to get all the information I could before making it my own,” says Fleytoux, who ran into Sarah Lane—“She was an amazing Amour at ABT”—at Steps on Broadway and asked if she’d work with her on the role, in addition to Jones and Harvey.

At home: Fleytoux shares two cats, Cleo and Thor, with her partner and fellow ABT corps dancer Jarod Curley.

On being petite: At 5′ 2 1/2″, Fleytoux­ is aware how shorter-than-average dancers risk being typecast into quick, brilliant roles. “I’m also an adagio dancer, and I love to do pas de deux,” she says, “and those often go to the taller dancers. I try to do things so that people don’t notice my height too much. If I have my arms in fifth position, I try to get my fingers higher and not let them drop, so that I match the others. I have to dance bigger.”

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Reclaiming East-Meets-West

NEW YORK CITY  Presented as part of The Shed’s Open Call commissioning program, Benjamin Akio Kimitch’s Tiger Hands reimagines dance’s East-meets-West stereotypes as the choreographer revisits his formative training in non-Western dance and close connection to Peking opera. Aug. 4–6. theshed.org. —Courtney Escoyne

A Smorgasbord in Scotland

EDINBURGH  Scotland’s capital is positively bursting at the seams as the Edinburgh International Festival descends. Among the highlights for dance aficionados: Scottish Ballet premieres a new take on Coppélia by Jess and Morgs (Jessica Wright and Morgann Runacre-Temple), using the classic to ask questions about artificial intelligence and whether real life can compete with technology; Alan Cumming stars as Scotland’s national bard Robert Burns in the Steven Hoggett–choreographed dance-theater vehicle Burn; and several works engage with themes of migration, among them Akram Khan’s Jungle Book reimagined, Farah Saleh’s A Wee Journey and Akeim Toussaint Buck’s Windows of Displacement. Aug. 5–28. eif.co.uk. —CE

Requiems and Reunions

NEW YORK CITY  Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City comes to a close this month with a range of events, including three powerhouse dance programs. Reunions, curated by Kyle Abraham, features the work of A.I.M alums Rena Butler, Kayla Farrish, Vinson Fraley, Nicole Mannarino, Chalvar Monteiro, Jie-Hung Connie Shiau and Maleek Washington, Aug. 6–7. Current A.I.M members take the stage with the New York premiere of Abraham’s Requiem: Fire in the Air of the Earth, which explores reincarnation and Black Futurism to a reimagining of Mozart’s Requiem in D minor by electronic dance music artist Jlin, Aug. 11–13. And the BAAND Together Dance Festival, Aug. 9–13, is back after last summer’s popular initial outing, with Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet and Dance Theatre of Harlem sharing an outdoor stage and a new commission for dancers from all five companies by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. lincolncenter.org. —CE

Doherty and Dread

HAMBURG  Oona Doherty’s critically acclaimed works, characterized by their gritty realism and visceral movement languages, have explored themes ranging from working-class masculinity to the impact of religion on her native Belfast. However, as she describes her latest, Navy Blue, as “a rebirth” and “a questioning of what to do next,” it seems the choreographer may be preparing to take a new direction. Featuring 12 dancers and a soundtrack created with British DJ and producer Jamie xx, Navy Blue promises to create an unsettling sense of dread while considering where we’ve been, where we’re going and how we can strive for societal change. The evening-length work premieres at Hamburg’s Kampnagel festival on Aug. 10 before touring Europe. oonadohertyweb.com. —Emily May

Under an Open Sky

TORONTO  National Ballet of Canada kicks off its season early with outdoor performances at the Harbourfront Centre. For Sharing the Stage, the company is joined by the soulful Holla Jazz, feminist dance theater troupe Rock Bottom Movement, kathak-trained artist Tanveer Alam and Indigenous dancer-choreographer Samantha Sutherland. NBoC’s contributions to the mixed rep will include choreography by artistic director emerita Karen Kain, Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon. Aug. 16–20. national.ballet.ca. —CE

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Chase was an original member of the company, which grew out of Mikhail Mordkin’s troupe in the late 1930s and gave its first season, under the direction of Richard Pleasant, in 1940. Though she was often misidentified as ABT’s founder, Chase was quick to correct the assertion in interviews: “Through the years people have persisted in saying that I did, but I cannot claim the honor,” she told us in the August 1971 issue. “In the thirties, I was young and irresponsible, and I was happy simply to be able to dance. I knew nothing about company administration, and I had no ambitions.” She became co-director with Oliver Smith in 1945, continued as a company member until 1960 (though she would still appear, memorably, in character roles for the rest of her directorship, particularly as the Prince’s mother in Swan Lake) and remained at the helm until her retirement in 1980.

She was one of ABT’s earliest and staunchest financial backers, and sought, in her 40 years with the company, to promote and protect the notion of a truly American ballet company with an eclectic and theatrical repertoire that had animated its founding. ABT had visited every state in the continental U.S. by 1954 (adding Alaska and Hawaii in 1965), was the first American ballet company to dance in the Soviet Union in 1960, and became a hub for both homegrown and international ballet stars.

“We have endured because of love and respect,” Chase said in 1971. She received a Dance Magazine Award in 1957 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. 

The post TBT: Lucia Chase, Who Was “Happy Simply to Be Able to Dance” But Became One of ABT’s Longest-Serving Directors appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Play Date

SAN FRANCISCO  ODC Theater’s annual summer festival is back with a new name: State of Play. Co-curated by Amara Tabor-Smith and Charles Slender-White with a focus on queer and BIPOC artists, the performance lineup (live and later via livestream) includes works by Riley Watts and Heather Stewart, MK Abadoo, SAMMAY Peñaflor Dizon, Rosanna Tavarez, Megan Lowe Dances, Erin Yen | Dragons Dance, Nicole Peisl, Kim Ip and Bianca Cabrera. Works-in-progress showings and discussions, debates, and panels are also on offer. June 2–11. odc.dance. —Courtney Escoyne

Update: Rosanna Tavarez’s performances have been postponed to Nov. 11–13.

Book to Ballet

LONDON  Laura Esquivel’s novel Like Water for Chocolate tells the story of a young woman with the power to magically infuse her emotions into her cooking, and the drama that ensues when she is unable to be with the man she loves. Christopher Wheeldon collaborated with the author to bring a full-length ballet adaptation to life, set to premiere at The Royal Ballet this month. A co-production with American Ballet Theatre, the ballet reunites the choreographer with composer Joby Talbot and designer Bob Crowley, the team behind literary blockbusters Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Winter’s Tale. June 2–17. roh.org.uk. —Julia Mary Register

Hometown Tour

ON TOUR  Dancers with and without disabilities come together in the three-company, three-city National Physically Integrated Dance Festival: Beyond Barriers, Boundaries & Belief! On offer are premieres by Donald Byrd, Mark Tomasic and Brian Murphy for Cleveland’s Dancing Wheels Company, a new work by Heidi Latsky for her eponymous, New York City–based troupe, and Miami’s Karen Peterson and Dancers in an excerpt from founder Karen Peterson Corash’s 2021 Lost and Found. The festival was conceived by Dancing Wheels founding artistic director Mary Verdi-Fletcher, who says, “I felt it was important that our nation recognize the distinct talents of artists that participate in physically integrated dance.” The tour begins in Cleveland, June 10, followed by New York City, June 14, and Miami, June 25. dancingwheels.org. —Steve Sucato

ABT Comes Home

NEW YORK CITY  American Ballet Theatre returns to the Metropolitan Opera House for the first time since 2019, kicking off the season with a Don Quixote featuring a starry triple cast of leads on June 13. In addition to its usual panoply of full-lengths, the company will present the New York premieres of Alexei Ratmansky’s evening-length Of Love and Rage (postponed from 2020) and Alonzo King’s recent Single Eye, and celebrate the 75th anniversary of George Balanchine’s seminal Theme and Variations. June 13–July 16. abt.org. —CE

Closer to Taylor

NEW YORK CITY  Paul Taylor Dance Company takes a break from the grandiosity of Lincoln Center to moonlight at the more intimate Joyce Theater. Curated by artistic director Michael Novak, the programming for the company’s Joyce debut demonstrates the connection between its origins and future, pairing early Taylor pieces, like Events II (1957), Fibers(1961) and Tracer (1962), with a new work from Michelle Manzanales and the New York premiere of Peter Chu’s A Call for Softer Landings. June 14–19. joyce.org. —JMR

Ballet Is Black

WASHINGTON, DC  Black ballet dancers and choreographers are front and center during the Kennedy Center’s Reframing the Narrative week. Dance Theatre of Harlem, Ballethnic Dance Company and Collage Dance Collective perform in two programs curated by Denise Saunders Thompson and Theresa Ruth Howard, showcasing classical excerpts alongside works from the company’s leaders and commissions from recent years by Amy Hall Garner and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. The centerpiece of both programs is a Kennedy Center commission by Donald Byrd, featuring a dozen Black dancers from companies worldwide (including Precious Adams, Katlyn Addison, Jenelle Figgins and Ashley Murphy-Wilson) and a new score by Carlos Simon. June 14–19. kennedy-center.org. —CE

Liberation Meditation

NEW YORK CITY  As part of The Flea Theater’s Juneteenth programming, Urban Bush Women artistic director Chanon Judson has crafted Time’s Up! A Liberation Ritual, a public performance meditation undertaken by Judson and community participants. June 19. theflea.org. —CE

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“What a profound honor it is for me to come back home to lead American Ballet Theatre,” Jaffe said in a statement. “[It] is truly a dream come true.… I look forward to working with everyone to bring ABT into its future.” Jaffe is first woman to hold the role in her own right—Lucia Chase (1945–1980) and Jane Hermann (1990–1992) shared artistic leadership with Oliver Smith—and she joins recently appointed CEO and executive director Janet Rollé as the all-female leadership of one of the world’s most important ballet companies.

Jaffe, a 2003 Dance Magazine Award honoree, brings a wide range of experience to draw from as she shapes ABT’s artistic future and contributes to the ongoing evolution of ballet culture. One of the most famous dancers of her generation, Jaffe was hired into the ABT corps in 1980 by then-new artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov, was promoted to principal after three years, and achieved international acclaim during her 22 years with the company. Her mastery of a richly varied repertoire—from Odette/Odile and Aurora to dramatic ballets by Agnes de Mille and Kenneth MacMillan and contemporary works by Merce Cunningham, Mark Morris and Twyla Tharp—presaged the versatility required of dancers today.

As a guest artist, Jaffe danced with The Royal Ballet, the Kirov (now Mariinsky) Ballet, La Scala Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet and many others. She has also held numerous roles within the ABT organization, including teaching in the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, and serving as director of repertoire for the company and advisor to the chairman of the board.

Most recently, Jaffe was appointed Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s artistic director in July 2020, helping steer PBT through the pandemic with digital and outdoor programming and choreographing a Swan Lake production that premiered this May. As a member of PBT’s Equity Transformation Team, Jaffe focused on diversity and inclusion in training, performance and hiring. Jaffe also served eight years as the dean of dance at University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

“I am so pleased that ABT will come under Susan’s care,” McKenzie said in a statement. “She is a wonderful teacher and coach, bringing the experience of an extensive and acclaimed performing career.… Susan comes equipped with her own expertise and the ability to get the best out of those around her.”

The post Susan Jaffe Named American Ballet Theatre’s New Artistic Director appeared first on Dance Magazine.

What’s next? Our annual list of dancers, choreographers and companies on the verge of breaking through offers several answers to the question of where our field is headed. We’re betting we’ll be seeing—and hearing—more from these 25 artists not just this year, but for many more to come.

Ogemdi Ude

If there’s a throughline to the genre-bending work of choreographer Ogemdi Ude, it’s how Black folks’ experiences—especially their grief—lives in their bodies. 

It shows up in Living Relics, a collaboration with visual artist Sydney Mieko King that asks participants to locate grief in their own bodies and then physicalize it by making plaster molds of those places, and in her tour-de-force solo Nothing Like That Is Ever Going to Happen to Me Again, where she searches for memories of those she’s lost, desperately piecing together bits of movement and text.

But there’s also joy to be found in Ude’s work: Though she claims she isn’t tech-savvy, she’s been playfully exploring video and multimedia since long before virtual work became the norm, and she often sources memories from her Atlanta upbringing, where her first exposure to dance was majorettes. Ude works as a doula, as well, which she sees as deeply interconnected to her dance practice—especially in the form of AfroPeach, a collaboration with fellow dancer/doula Rochelle Jamila Wilbun that offers postpartum dance workshops.

Through a pandemic defined by collective grief, Ude has been prolific—and she’s gotten her due notice. In addition to continuing to perform with choreographers like iele paloumpis and Marion Spencer, her 2022 and 2023 are stacked with commissions and residencies, including at Abrons Arts Center, Gibney, Danspace Project, The Watermill Center and BRIC, plus more to be announced.

—Lauren Wingenroth

Adriana Pierce

Adriana Pierce’s career thus far looks like a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-many laundry list of dream gigs: dancing in Miami City Ballet, the 2018 Broadway revival of Carousel, FX’s “Fosse/Verdon” and the new West Side Story movie, plus choreographic opportunities that continue to grow in scale. Though she came out while a student at the School of American Ballet, it wasn’t until she gathered a group of fellow queer women and nonbinary dancers over Zoom in 2020 that “I really felt a sense of community about my identity and sexuality through ballet,” she says. Pierce doesn’t want the next generation of queer dancers to have to compartmentalize their identities as she did. Enter #QueerTheBallet, an ambitious producing and education initiative she launched last year to get more queer stories onstage.  

Pierce’s own choreography interrogates what equitable partnering looks like and how pointe work might be divorced from its gendered history, research she put into practice in 2021 with a piece for American Ballet Theatre dancers and a virtual commission for The Joyce Theater, both duets for two women. Next up is a Carolina Ballet commission in the spring. Odds are, Pierce will continue pushing ballet forward in ever more eclectic ways—her bucket list items include creating immersive ballet work, directing and choreographing on Broadway, and creating a full-length queer narrative ballet: “I want people to feel as used to seeing queer stories on a ballet stage as they are used to seeing Giselle.” —Lauren Wingenroth

Ballet22

There was something special about the Odalisque pas de trois that Ballet22 performed in its summer 2021 digital season. It wasn’t the crisp pointe work, the crystalline turns or the vibrant musicality, all of which were abundant. It was that the Ballet22 dancers in the traditionally all-female variation from Le Corsaire were male—and not men in drag hamming it up for laughs, but, quite simply, male dancers expressing their artistry on pointe. 

Founded as a pandemic project by artistic director Roberto­ Vega Ortiz and executive director Theresa Knudson, Ballet22 invites male, mxn, transgender and nonbinary dancers to train and perform on pointe in their authentic gender identity. The company grew out of Zoom classes offered by Vega Ortiz and his close friend Carlos Hopuy of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo in early 2020, and gained an international following so quickly that Vega Ortiz and Knudson were able to launch the performing company in December 2020. Ballet22 has drawn dancers like New York City Ballet’s Gilbert Bolden III, Boston Ballet’s Daniel R. Durrett, San Francisco Ballet soloist Diego Cruz, and the Trocks’ Duane Gosa, and commissions by choreographers like Myles Thatcher, Ramón Oller and Ben Needham-Wood. As the greater cultural conversation around gender goes on, Ballet22 is overturning ballet’s rules about who gets to dance, what they get to dance and how they get to dance. 

—Claudia Bauer

Christina Carminucci

Although the pandemic limited the in-person audience to just 25 people, when Christina Carminucci improvised to Thelonius Monk’s “Bemsha Swing” last summer as part of The Solidarity Series, she performed with as much energy as if inside a packed theater. There’s no doubt that everyone livestreaming the show also felt the joy she radiated while mimicking pianist Michael King’s playful licks or executing tight turns on a narrow tap board. But her unbridled glee wasn’t just a result of her rhythm-making: She had produced the event herself. It was the second iteration of The Solidarity Series, an evening of live tap dance and jazz music that Carminucci, 27, conceived during the pandemic. 

The New Jersey native has also performed with Dorrance Dance and Christopher Erk’s Tap Factor, and in Tap Family Reunion at The Joyce Theater. Her burgeoning popularity comes as no surprise to those who have seen how she comes alive when the first notes of a jazz tune begin to play, dancing with the ease and control of a mature practitioner. She’s as comfortable with a sinuous, sultry Latin groove full of heel drops as she is with a rhythm time-step sequence garnished with multiple turns. There’s always an infectious grin on her face, and after a challenging year in which she still managed to find new opportunities for producing and performing, she certainly has many reasons to keep smiling. —Ryan P. Casey

Courtney Nitting

Courtney Nitting attacks choreography with catlike quickness. In Kansas City Ballet artistic director Devon Carney’s 2021 work Sandhur, her rapid-paced turns and leaps electrified. “I love speed,” she says. “Petit allégro is my favorite, and I feel it can never be fast enough.”

The 24-year-old speed demon was born in Lafayette, New Jersey, and began her training at New Jersey School of Ballet. She then attended School of American Ballet before joining Pennsylvania Ballet II in 2017 and Kansas City Ballet a year later. “Courtney is a force to be reckoned with,” says Carney. “She has a diverse dynamic range with spectacularly fast footwork. Every time she enters the stage, she lights it up with intensity and joie de vivre.”

Having already danced featured roles in Sandhur and in William Forsythe’s In the middle, somewhat elevated, Nitting’s career, which has also included choreographing for Kansas City Ballet, is beginning to switch into high gear. —Steve Sucato 

Maxfield Haynes

Illuminating possibility comes naturally to Maxfield Haynes. The nonbinary phenom has carved out a brilliant career for themself, demolishing machismo stereotypes while blitzing across the stage in pointe shoes or heels, and playfully partnering their fellow dancers with aplomb.

Haynes learned to embrace their multifaceted identity early on and came to reject the binary gender presentations they encountered during their classical ballet training. This “do-everything” spirit helped them juggle apprenticing with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo while studying at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. It continued to serve them well as they performed soloist roles with Complexions Contemporary Ballet—both on pointe and off—dispatched crisp batterie as the bird in Isaac Mizrahi’s Peter & the Wolf, and, this fall, made a triumphant return to the Trocks. But the Kentucky native had a true awakening this past summer as part of Ballez’s Giselle of Loneliness. Their solo blended bursts of traditionally feminine sweetness with soaring leaps, all while illustrating that dance is love—regardless of one’s race or gender presentation. —Juan Michael Porter II

Adriana Wagenveld

Grace, grit, athleticism and versatility are what garnered Adriana Wagenveld soloist roles in Trey McIntyre’s Wild Sweet Love and Alejandro Cerrudo’s Extremely Close in her first season as a full company member at Grand Rapids Ballet. They are also what have the 22-year-old on the cusp of company stardom.

Originally from Puerto Rico, Wagenveld began her dance training in Crete, Illinois. After attending Grand Rapids Ballet’s 2015 summer intensive on scholarship, she was asked to join the company as a trainee. She became a main company member in 2019. “There is a lot of emotion behind her eyes, and she takes on roles with verve and determination,” says artistic director James Sofranko.

Wagenveld has hypermobility in her joints from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which leads to exaggerated lines that she says are both a blessing and a curse. Countering that hypermobility with strength, she says, has made her project “more of a powerhouse-dancer vibe than a princess one.” —Steve Sucato

Imre and Marne van Opstal

Individually, siblings Imre and Marne van Opstal have accrued­ impressive performance resumés: Both danced with Nederlands Dans Theater 2, and Imre also performed with NDT1, Norwegian company Carte Blanche and Batsheva Dance Company. United, they’re an exciting brother–sister choreographic duo, creating work that is at once virtuosic and thought-provoking.

Having developed several works for NDT’s main stage, including Take Root (2019), which was nominated for a Dutch “Zwaan” award for most impressive dance production, it wasn’t until last year that the duo received their first commission from outside of the Netherlands. A piece about the politics of nudity created for London’s Rambert Dance Company, Eye Candy features eight dancers dressed in synthetic breastplates that make them look like Greco-Roman sculptures. Performing a mixture of fluid and rigid mechanical motions, the performers often look more akin to dolls, dummies or clones than thinking, feeling individuals, making a powerful statement about the paralyzing pressures of contemporary beauty standards.

The duo’s choreography is the perfect marriage of elements from the van Opstals’ respective performance careers: Notes of Ohad Naharin’s luscious Gaga movement language are infused with the classical lines and technical prowess for which NDT is known, all sprinkled with the siblings’ unique perspective and artistic flair. —Emily May

Arielle Smith

Whoops of joy greeted Arielle Smith’s Jolly Folly when it closed English National Ballet’s return to live performance in London last spring. The ballet bounced giddily along to classical pops remixed by a Cuban big-band, its tilting, tumbling ensemble dressed in black tie and tails. It was an absolute blast, delivering a genuine jolt of delight.

The Havana-born Smith, 25, previously honed a storyteller’s instinct under the mentorship of Matthew Bourne, who made her associate choreographer on his 2019 Romeo + Juliet. Smith’s early work has emerged with life-enhancing wit and assurance. Her voice is already distinctive—who knows how it will develop and where it will take her? She’s more than just a fistful of fun. —David Jays

Sienna Lalau

Sienna Lalau just turned 21, yet her “25 to Watch” nomination sparked some debate among the Dance Magazine editors: Did she qualify for this list of emerging talents? Was she already too…established?

Reasonable questions, given Lalau’s abundant choreographic credits. Born in Hawaii, she first earned national notice for her work with the Los Angeles–based creative arts studio The Lab, helping lead its junior team to victory on the TV show “World of Dance” in 2018. Since then, she has made internet-melting dances for Jennifer Lopez, Missy Elliott and Ciara, and become one of the K-pop world’s go-to choreographers. Her work for BTS’ “On” video, with its punk spin on the drumline, earned a 2020 MTV Video Music Award.

Lalau is also the first person you see in “On.” As gifted a mover as she is a maker, she often ends up sharing the stage or the screen with her famous collaborators, bringing a scene-stealing mixture of complete control and complete abandon to her own choreography. From both behind and in front of the camera, Lalau is shaping the look of the entertainment world. —Margaret Fuhrer

Bo Park

Bo Park is challenging the dichotomy between “masculine” and “feminine” with her hip-hop–inspired choreography. “What I experienced was that ‘female’ should be a certain way,” Park says. “I couldn’t really book jobs if I wasn’t giving ‘femininity,’ and I wanted to change that.” In 2017, she founded her own company to provide dancers with a safe space to express their authentic selves, unhindered by gender-­based­ expectations. The company’s name, SHINSA, is a play on Korean words. It means “gentleman” but also references the famous 16th-century artist Shin Saimdang, who left a lasting cultural legacy despite the restrictive gender roles of her time.

Pairing full-bodied and intricate movements with meticulous musicality, Park’s imaginative choreography resonates across diverse platforms. In 2019, SHINSA’s electrifying Mulan-themed number earned first place at the hip-hop competition ELEMENTS XIX. In 2020, its immersive production DAYDREAMERS was extended to a four-week run after selling out its first five shows. Park has also worked with pop music artists, such as LANKS and Loona, and choreographed theatrical productions, including Hideaway Circus’ 2021 show Stars Above. In every project, Park’s nuanced yet powerful choreography highlights the individuality of her performers—however they choose to express themselves. —Kristi Yeung

Ashley Green

Ashley Green was a standout dancer—and actor—throughout Whim W’Him’s all-digital 2020–21 season, her first with the company. Artistic director Olivier Wevers, who discovered her soon after her graduation from Point Park University, says her vitality is “a rare gift. She’s a creative soul, radiating joy, an extraordinary collaborator with an innate­ way of approaching movement that pulls you in.” The 23-year-old picked up a 2021 Princess Grace Award last summer, and shortly thereafter moved across the country to join Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. “Explosive, in a word,” describes Ailey artistic director Robert Battle. “She’s not trying on the movement, she’s living it. Even in a little Instagram improvisation, she jumps through the screen.” This unpretentious, passionate dancer has staying power, predicts Battle. “She’ll continue to grow.” —Gigi Berardi

Carter Williams

Ballroom phenom Carter Williams’ fluidity and striking stage presence have landed him accolades you don’t expect to see on a 19-year-old college student’s resumé. He’s already been a four-time World Latin Dance Finalist and a two-time National DanceSport Latin Dance Champion. On screen, his credits include the first two seasons of NBC’s “World of Dance” and three seasons of “America’s Got Talent.” His longtime private coach Afton Wilson says it’s not just Williams’ extreme versatility, but also his super-sensitive partnering and precision turns that make him stand out on a crowded floor. He’s racking up even more wins as a member of Utah Valley University’s dance team as he works towards a degree in marketing and aims for a professional career. With his easy, self-assured air and clean, quick moves, he already dances like a pro. —Gigi Berardi

Ilya Vidrin and Jessi Stegall

Ilya Vidrin and Jessi Stegall are experts both in the practice and theory of partnering. Vidrin has a doctorate in the ethics of care in relation to partnering; Stegall is an applied ethicist who works with performing arts organizations to facilitate healthy relationships among artists, directors and educators. The two collaborate frequently through the Partnering Lab, an applied research initiative that investigates emerging technologies of motion capture, art and public health projects, and creative pedagogies. The outcomes of this work range from the development of novel choreographic methods to writing in support of ethical practice. They also have individual careers: Vidrin was recently commissioned to create a new work for Ballet Des Moines, and Stegall’s dance film, Salty Dog, premiered at the Motion State Dance Film Series in the fall. Vidrin and Stegall’s shared, careful consideration of partnering seems apt for our COVID moment, wherein the relationship of our bodies to those around us is particularly fraught and tangible. Their work suggests that partnership is not an abstraction, but the embodiment of care performed repeatedly. —Sydney Skybetter

PARA.MAR Dance Theatre

PARA.MAR Dance Theatre bolted out of the gate fully ready to steamroll the status quo. Stephanie Martinez’s new contemporary ballet company debuted with performances of her fierce kiss. atop a red carpet in a Chicago parking lot in October 2020. With a cast of fearless dancers, the piece captured the restless angst of isolation and the languishing sensuality of pure explosive action, along with a hard to define quirky charm.

Martinez, who has created works for The Joffrey Ballet, Ballet Hispánico and Nashville Ballet, among others, formed her troupe in the midst of a pandemic when dancers desperately needed to work and the field desperately needed to diversify. With the motto “together, with, and for,” Martinez’s mission includes elevating BIPOC voices in contemporary ballet. PARA.MAR premiered works by Jennifer Archibald and Lucas Crandall in Chicago last spring and performed them at the inaugural Carmel Dance Festival last summer; next up are commissions by Robyn Mineko Williams and Keerati Jinakunwiphat, among others, along with a new work by Martinez. —Nancy Wozny

Baye & Asa

Dance duo Baye & Asa know how to land a surprise. It might be a droll little hip shimmy or a gentle moment of eye contact amid a whirlwind of propulsive, full-bodied movement. Using African forms and hip hop in an expansive view of “contemporary” dance theater, the pair’s choreography avoids falling into any predictable pattern.

Sam “Asa” Pratt and Amadi “Baye” Washington were both introduced to dance in their New York City grade school when African dance was offered as an alternative to gym class. They began collaborating professionally in 2015 in between jobs that have included touring with Akram Khan (Pratt), dancing with Gallim (Washington) and performing in Sleep No More (both).

Second Seed—a project responding to the 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation and interrogating America’s white supremacist lineage—blossomed over six years from a duet into a group performance and, in 2020, a bone-chilling 15-minute film. The pandemic gave them time to delve even deeper into their partnership; now, their 2022 calendar includes commissions for BODYTRAFFIC, Martha Graham Dance Company and BlackLight Summit, plus a residency and a main-stage production at 92nd Street Y, a duet presented by Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, and more.

—Jennifer Stahl

Sierra Armstrong

Back in her ABT Studio Company days, Sierra Armstrong’s luxuriant lines and keen emotional intelligence piqued the interest of ballet fans. But after joining American Ballet Theatre’s main company in 2017, Armstrong had few chances to develop those gifts, tasked with a slate of ensemble parts that kept her both busy and in the background. 

When the pandemic shut down the ABT machine, Armstrong found space for self-discovery. “I was in the studio a lot by myself, dancing by myself, doing all these things by myself,” says Armstrong, now 22. “It was a lonely time, but a time where I really came into my own, too.”

Featured roles in a series of small-scale, COVID-friendly projects showcased that growth. Last February, she brought a new depth of artistry to Adriana Pierce’s Overlook, a tender pas de deux with fellow female ABT corps member Remy Young. Armstrong became a particular muse to ABT star and choreographer James Whiteside, originating a lead in his bubble-residency premiere City of Women, and taking on a principal part in his New American Romance during an outdoor performance at Rockefeller Center. Here’s hoping those opportunities will lead to more, at ABT and beyond it, as the world reopens. —Margaret Fuhrer

Brianna Mims

During her sophomore year at University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, Brianna Mims found herself at the intersection of dance and abolition. She was part of the JusticeLA Creative Action team, led by Cecilia Sweet-Coll and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Cullors, where an installation work called “#jailbeddrop” was created in protest of an L.A. County jail expansion plan. Mims felt so passionately about the work that she decided to expand “#jailbeddrop” into a performance piece and interactive installation as her senior project—and it became a guiding light for her career, too. In the nearly five years since “#jailbeddrop” started, she’s presented it in venues across L.A. and moved the project online following lockdowns.

“I learned so much from my body about how to do abolition work, and so much around abolition informs the dances I’m making,” Mims says. She recently finished a Toulmin Fellowship with the NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts & National Sawdust Partnership, where she began developing a world-building game focused on abolition and community activation. Her other recent work includes a dance film called TriKe and Letters from the Etui, a digital platform and accompanying series of workshops that support abolitionist frameworks, from personal to political practice. —Sophie Bress

Simone Stevens

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago rarely hires from the Windy City’s freelance circuit. But former freelancer Simone Stevens made her company debut at Dance for Life last August, three years after moving to Chicago with her sights set on the company. Stevens grew up dancing in the Atlanta suburbs and began working with various choreographers in Chicago after graduating from Kennesaw State University. She has it all: flawless technique, impassioned emotional sensitivity and brazen versatility, the latter developed as she floated between wildly diverse projects. Katlin Bourgeois’­ contorted choreographic cryptograms suited her just as well as the full-throttled, jazzy style of Monique Haley, who created a feverish solo on her during a brief stint with Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre. Now, Stevens has gotten what she came for, and it’s Hubbard Street’s gain. 

—Lauren Warnecke

Darvensky Louis

Every move Darvensky Louis makes is multilayered and arresting. In Omar Román De Jesús’ Muerte Cotidiana, he breathes into a leisurely open stance, arms spreading as if yielding into the expansive feel of a sunset. Suddenly, he drops into rumba-flavored weight shifts, then spills to the floor and springs weightlessly to his feet. His legs restlessly turn in and out, hands wiping down his face and chest, torso rippling, as if simultaneously hating and enjoying the skin he’s in.

It’s this smoldering inner drive and visceral intelligence that have helped him secure roles in works by several of Atlanta’s leading contemporary dance groups, including staibdance, Fly on a Wall and Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre, within a year and a half of his graduation from Kennesaw State University.

The long-limbed, Haitian-born artist recently brought his electric blend of contemporary and hip hop to creating the dance movement for Bob Cratchit’s solo in Terminus’ Marley Was Dead, To Begin With. Terminus artistic director John Welker says Louis’ solo was so extraordinary they don’t know of anyone else who could perform it. “It was on another level,” Welker says. “It just blew us all away.” Louis is also creating his own company, Sequence One, intended to provide recent college graduates opportunities to perform and tour. —Cynthia Bond Perry

Johnathon Hart

“Naturally gifted” best describes Johnathon Hart. After being­ accepted to the Chicago High School for the Arts at age 15 with no formal dance training, he attended San Francisco Ballet School’s summer intensive on full scholarship, followed by two years full time at the school before joining BalletMet in 2020. “He is a huge talent,” says BalletMet­ artistic director Edwaard Liang of the 21-year-old. 

In Karen Wing’s 2021 Verbena, Hart coupled his enviable facility and squeaky-clean technique with a bold stage presence. He soared in leaps that devoured the space and swirled his body in artistic brushstrokes to riveting effect. While most at home in contemporary works, the versatile Hart says he is looking forward to dancing more classical roles in 2022. —Steve Sucato

Joya Jackson

Joya Jackson doesn’t hold back. She infuses each movement with texture and shading, never sparing a note of music. At only 21, Jackson has been featured in several performances that have made a big impact on recent pop culture conversations, including the music videos for Cardi B’s “Up” and Ariana Grande’s “34+35,” as well as the Savage X Fenty shows in 2020 and 2021. “In no way did I imagine that during the pandemic, I would receive the opportunities I did,” she says.

Her buzziest breakthrough came last summer, when Jackson was chosen to be Normani’s­ double, dancing alongside her in the music video for “Wild Side.” Appearing as an ensemble dancer in the rest of the video, Jackson shifted effortlessly between Sean Bankhead’s sleek, jazz-infused choreography and sharp, dynamic movement, her ability to absorb nuances while adding her own flavor making her a standout. —Lydia Murray

Darian Kane

Darian Kane hadn’t planned to choreograph. But when the pandemic hit, and Atlanta Ballet artistic director Gennadi Nedvigin called for company members to create works on fellow dancers, Kane stepped up and choreographed her first piece, Dr. Rainbow’s Infinity Mirror. She discovered what she lightly dubs an “indie-pop contemporary” style that’s worlds away from her regal classical ballet persona.

To nostalgic piano and eerie melodies reminiscent of early sci-fi movies, dancer Sujin Han appears in black tuxedo tails and rainbow toe socks—think Charlie Chaplin meets The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. With elastic développés,­ ­Han takes exaggerated strides forward and steps through an invisible frame. She whirls, leaps and moonwalks, her arms striking lines through the space around her as if painting a more vivid realm. Though light on the surface, Dr. Rainbow expresses a full range of human­ experience—especially struggles with mental health. 

Dr. Rainbow was so well received last spring that Atlanta Ballet is producing an expanded version, set for a February premiere. And Kane, now 25, has fallen in love with choreographing: “It’s the first time I’ve had a voice in my own industry.” —Cynthia Bond Perry

Mthuthuzeli November

Mthuthuzeli November is pushing the boundaries of whose stories are given a voice in ballet. Born and raised in Cape Town, he moved to the UK to join Ballet Black in 2015, creating his first piece for the company in 2016. The same year, he established M22 Movement Lab, his own choreographic platform, and devised Point of Collapse, an emotive solo performed by Precious Adams for English National Ballet’s Emerging Dancer Competition. It wasn’t until 2019, however, with the Olivier and Black British Theatre Award–winning work Ingoma, that November really started to attract international attention. 

Inspired by the paintings of South Africa’s Gerard Sekoto, Ingoma imagines the struggles of Black miners and their families in 1946, when 60,000 of them went on strike. Wearing a mix of wellies and pointe shoes, the dancers create percussive rhythms that drive the piece forward, their powerful motions poetically juxtaposed with moments of pleading, anxiety and vulnerability. Fusing ballet with African dance and singing, the work saw November develop a distinctive, gesture-filled movement language that is entirely his own. 

November has since been in increasing demand, even during the darkest days of the pandemic: He created an online version of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater for Cape Town Opera and a dance film for Northern Ballet. Ballet Black also returned to live performance in October with the premiere of his work The Waiting Game. With November’s unwavering motivation, abundant talent and timely topics, audiences shouldn’t have to wait long to see more from him. —Emily May

Genevieve Penn Nabity

National Ballet of Canada artistic staff, choreographers and fellow dancers alike heap praise on 21-year-old second soloist Genevieve Penn Nabity. “The joy she finds in movement is translated through every fiber of her being,” says choreographic associate Robert Binet, who has been casting her in his works ever since her days at Canada’s National Ballet School. Her full-bodied performance style and versatility have also been showcased in Skylar Campbell’s eponymous collective. He adds, “Her quality of movement, and ability to mold into any style thrown her way, is a constant source of inspiration.”

Penn Nabity joined NBoC as an apprentice in 2018, and was promoted to the corps de ballet and received the RBC Emerging Artist Award in 2019. Associate artistic director Christopher Stowell fast-tracked her career after seeing how she took possession of even minor roles in ballets like The Dream and The Nutcracker. “Genevieve connects movement with articulation and finesse while bringing a seamless ease to even the most challenging technical hurdles,” he says.

Penn Nabity has since danced in The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Études and, just before the lockdowns, Crystal Pite’s Angels’ Atlas. During the pandemic, she performed in the digital premiere of Binet’s The Dreamers Ever Leave You, reprising­ her role outdoors for a live audience last summer shortly after her promotion to second soloist. Next up is a new ballet by principal dancer Siphesihle November, set to debut in March. “I feel the stars have aligned,” Penn Nabity says. “Nothing is holding me back.”

—Deirdre Kelly

Header photo credits, left to right, top to bottom: Raina Brie, Courtesy Carminucci; Umi Akiyoshi, Courtesy Baye & Asa; Ray Nard Imagemaker, Courtesy Grand Rapids Ballet; Courtesy Mims; Kaylee Wong, Courtesy Green; Jennifer Zmuda, Courtesy BalletMet; Alexander Irwin, Courtesy Ballet22; Christina Massad, Courtesy Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre; Elizabeth Snell, Courtesy Kansas City Ballet; Brian Wallenberg, Courtesy Atlanta Ballet; Tom Clark, Courtesy English National Ballet; Frank Ishman, Courtesy Hubbard Street Dance Chicago; Sue Murad, Courtesy Vidrin; Todd Rosenberg, Courtesy PARA.MAR Dance Theatre; Banvoa, Courtesy Jackson; Skye Weiss, Courtesy November; Karolina Kuras, Courtesy National Ballet of Canada; Rose Lu, Courtesy Park; Chidozie Ekwensi, Courtesy Ude; Steven Vandervelden, Courtesy Haynes; Rosalie O’Connor, Courtesy Pierce; Alex DiMattia, Courtesy ABT; Rahi Rezvani, Courtesy the van Opstals; 24 Seven Dance Convention, Courtesy Williams; Joe Toreno                      

           

The post Introducing Our 2022 “25 to Watch” appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Larry Busacca, Courtesy ABT

The post News of Note: What You Might Have Missed in November 2021 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

VIPs in the Valley

VAIL, CO
Vail Dance Festival returns, headlined by a comfortingly familiar cast of characters. As the festival’s artist in residence, American Ballet Theatre principal Calvin Royal III will dance in new works created for him by Tiler Peck and Jamar Roberts. Other premieres on the docket include choreography by Michelle Dorrance, Lil Buck with Lauren Lovette, Justin Peck (for Tiler Peck and Herman Cornejo), Cleo Parker Robinson (danced by her eponymous company, which recently concluded its 50th season) and James Whiteside. BalletX performs as company in residence, while New York City Ballet MOVES makes its first Vail appearance since the touring company’s debut there in 2011, opening the festival with Jerome Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering. July 30–Aug. 9. vaildance.org.

Outdoor Opera

LOS ANGELES
Danielle Agami directs and choreographs Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, a dreamy operatic melodrama written to be sung by a single female soloist. Singer Kiera Duffy will be joined by the dancers of Agami’s Ate9 for the work on a double bill presented by Long Beach Opera at The Ford. Aug. 14–15. theford.com.

Chicago Comes Together

CHICAGO
Dance for Life, Chicago Dancers United’s annual fundraiser for The Dancers’ Fund, plans to make its return to live, in-person performance at Millennium Park with, for the first time in its history, free admission. The 30th-anniversary performance will feature DanceWorks Chicago, Giordano Dance Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Joffrey Ballet, Movement Revolution Dance Crew, PARA.MAR Dance Theatre, South Chicago Dance Theatre, Trinity Irish Dance Company and Visceral Dance Chicago, plus a film by Winifred Haun and a special finale choreographed by Randy Duncan. Aug. 26. chicagodancersunited.org.

Empire State of Mind

New York City closes out the summer with a spate of outdoor performances.

Open Air

Open Air, a summer performance series from four/four presents pairing choreographers and composers, continues at the Bushwick Playground Basketball Courts in Brooklyn. Dancer-choreographer Kayla Farrish and experimental-jazz musician Melanie Charles will debut a site-specific collaborative work after a 30-minute set from Charles and a 15-minute excerpt of Farrish’s choreography. The performance is free to attend (though ticket reservation is required) and will be livestreamed on Instagram. Aug. 8. fourfourpresents.com.

Update: This performance has been postponed to Sept. 12.

Picnic Performances

Picnic Performances is back in midtown Manhattan’s Bryant Park. The dance programming includes double bills pairing Limón Dance Company with Leonardo Sandoval and Gregory Richardson’s Music from the Sole; Paul Taylor Dance Company with EMERGE125 (formerly Elisa Monte Dance); and Ballet Hispánico with Jamel Gaines Creative Outlet. Events are free to attend, though advance registration may be required; livestreams of most performances will also be available online. Aug. 16, 20, 27. bryantpark.org.

BAAND Together Dance Festival

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Ballet Hispánico, Dance Theatre of Harlem and New York City Ballet will team up for the first time for the BAAND Together Dance Festival. Held on Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ transformed outdoor campus as part of the Restart Stages initiative, a different mixed bill, collaboratively curated by the companies’ directors, will be presented nightly Aug. 17–21. Performances are free, but tickets raffled through the TodayTix Lottery will be required for entry. lincolncenter.org.

Beach Sessions

After pivoting to TikTok last summer, the annual Beach Sessions Dance Series plans to return to Queens’ Rockaway Beach with Moriah Evans’ REPOSE. Twenty dancers will travel along 1.4 miles of beach in the course of a six-hour performance, drawing attention to the behaviors typical of beachgoing while being influenced by chance encounters. Aug. 29. beachsessionsdanceseries.com.

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So began the evening at Damrosch Park, with Robert Battle emceeing. It was the opening night of the free BAAND Together Dance Festival, a nifty collaboration between five of New York City’s top companies: Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet and Dance Theatre of Harlem. These companies, each representing a different cultural slice of the dance world, were willing—and eager—to share an evening. As Battle said, we celebrate “the glory of art and the power of unity.” He joked that he did a reverse rain dance to keep the rain away.

The best part was seeing dance live again.

The post The BAAND Together Dance Festival Celebrates Art and Unity appeared first on Dance Magazine.

During the height of the pandemic, New York City-based director and photographer Megan L.C. McNally teamed up with New York City Ballet corps member Gilbert Bolden III to create a COVID-safe project. With Bolden serving as choreographer and a dancer, the film brought together dancers from NYCB (Laine Habony, Mira Nadon, Spartak Hoxha and Kennard Henson), American Ballet Theatre (Joseph Markey and Remy Young) and Miami City Ballet (Ella Titus and Adrienne Carter) for three weeks of summer intensive-style preparation that saw the dancers living and training together to comply with CDC guidelines.

The result, “Missed Connections,” is a 16-minute short film that uses dance to highlight the importance of human connectivity (with a dreamy, palm tree-embellished West Palm Beach, Florida, as its stage). Through four movements, the dancers let us in on their separate struggles for freedom, love, friendship and identity, while reminding us all that we’re more connected than we think—even in times of isolation.

The post “Missed Connections,” Starring Some of Your Favorite Ballet Dancers appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Back to the Pillow

Grace Kathryn Landefeld, Courtesy Jacob’s Pillow

BECKET, MA, AND ONLINE Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival makes its much-anticipated return with a combination of outdoor, in-person performances and online programming. On-site performances, many of which the Pillow plans to film and subsequently stream, include a campus takeover by Dorrance Dance; the premiere of social dance legend Archie Burnett’s Life Encounters; members of Boston Ballet, Houston Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet dancing together in Alejandro Cerrudo’s Second to Last; new works by Brian Brooks for both himself and his eponymous company; and an imaginative premiere from Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born about a Black girl with hair so powerful she can communicate across time. Eastern Woodland Dances will highlight local Indigenous performance traditions. Additionally, online-exclusive programming will include Paris Opéra Ballet in Crystal Pite’s Body and Soul and the premiere of a film by Nrityagram Dance Ensemble. In-person performances run June 30–Aug. 29, with online streaming continuing through Sept. 23. jacobspillow.org.

Better Days Ahead

Jeremy Jacob, Courtesy Blake Zidell & Associates

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY Bard SummerScape kicks off with a bang with the premiere of a site-specific work from Fisher Center artist in residence Pam Tanowitz. I was waiting for the echo of a better day places the dancers outdoors, against the backdrop of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, as live musicians play new arrangements of chamber music by Jessie Montgomery, as well as pieces by big dog little dog, Montgomery’s collaboration with Eleonore Oppenheim. July 8–10. fishercenter.bard.edu.

When Tiler Met Alonzo

RJ Muna, Courtesy The Music Center

LOS ANGELES
The Music Center wraps up its outdoor Dance at Dusk series with appearances by Alonzo King LINES Ballet in King’s Radius Quintet, The Personal Element and excerpts from Rasa. They’ll be joined by New York City Ballet’s Tiler Peck and Roman Mejia, who will give the live performance premieres of Swift Arrow, a duet created for them by King, and The Child of Earth and Sky, a solo for Peck. July 14–18. musiccenter.org.

Life Finds a Way

Anne-Michèle Mallory, Courtesy Michelle Tabnick Public Relations

NEW YORK CITY You Are Here, a new sculpture, sound and performance installation, will unfold at Lincoln Center this month. Andrea Miller leads a team of collaborators in creating a shifting sound garden of audio portraits of artists and everyday people, offering a window into their experiences of the last year. The second half of the installation will see the portraits gradually replaced by Gallim dancers bringing them to life, with the final evening featuring all of the performers dancing Miller’s choreography live on site. July 14–30. lincolncenter.org.

The post 6 Festivals and Outdoor Offerings to Check Out This July appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Back to the Pillow

Grace Kathryn Landefeld, Courtesy Jacob’s Pillow

BECKET, MA, AND ONLINE Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival makes its much-anticipated return with a combination of outdoor, in-person performances and online programming. On-site performances, many of which the Pillow plans to film and subsequently stream, include a campus takeover by Dorrance Dance; the premiere of social dance legend Archie Burnett’s Life Encounters; members of Boston Ballet, Houston Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet dancing together in Alejandro Cerrudo’s Second to Last; new works by Brian Brooks for both himself and his eponymous company; and an imaginative premiere from Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born about a Black girl with hair so powerful she can communicate across time. Eastern Woodland Dances will highlight local Indigenous performance traditions. Additionally, online-exclusive programming will include Paris Opéra Ballet in Crystal Pite’s Body and Soul and the premiere of a film by Nrityagram Dance Ensemble. In-person performances run June 30–Aug. 29, with online streaming continuing through Sept. 23. jacobspillow.org.

Better Days Ahead

Jeremy Jacob, Courtesy Blake Zidell & Associates

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY Bard SummerScape kicks off with a bang with the premiere of a site-specific work from Fisher Center artist in residence Pam Tanowitz. I was waiting for the echo of a better day places the dancers outdoors, against the backdrop of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, as live musicians play new arrangements of chamber music by Jessie Montgomery, as well as pieces by big dog little dog, Montgomery’s collaboration with Eleonore Oppenheim. July 8–10. fishercenter.bard.edu.

When Tiler Met Alonzo

RJ Muna, Courtesy The Music Center

LOS ANGELES
The Music Center wraps up its outdoor Dance at Dusk series with appearances by Alonzo King LINES Ballet in King’s Radius Quintet, The Personal Element and excerpts from Rasa. They’ll be joined by New York City Ballet’s Tiler Peck and Roman Mejia, who will give the live performance premieres of Swift Arrow, a duet created for them by King, and The Child of Earth and Sky, a solo for Peck. July 14–18. musiccenter.org.

Life Finds a Way

Anne-Michèle Mallory, Courtesy Michelle Tabnick Public Relations

NEW YORK CITY You Are Here, a new sculpture, sound and performance installation, will unfold at Lincoln Center this month. Andrea Miller leads a team of collaborators in creating a shifting sound garden of audio portraits of artists and everyday people, offering a window into their experiences of the last year. The second half of the installation will see the portraits gradually replaced by Gallim dancers bringing them to life, with the final evening featuring all of the performers dancing Miller’s choreography live on site. July 14–30. lincolncenter.org.

The post 6 Festivals and Outdoor Offerings to Check Out This July appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Legends on Tap

Jayme Thornton

ONLINE
There’s plenty to celebrate whenever Dormeshia, Jason Samuels Smith and Derick K. Grant share a stage. But now the three are combining their powers to tip their hats to the legendary Bill “Bojangles” Robinson with the premiere of The Mayor of Harlem, just in time for National Tap Dance Day (and, not coincidentally, Robinson’s birthday) on May 25. New York City’s Joyce Theater plans to film this fourth annual Tap Family Reunion program on its stage and make it available for on-demand streaming May 21–June 3. joyce.org. —CE

Grief and Glory

Maria Baranova, Courtesy The Cooperation

NEW YORK CITY

Fueled by the intimacy and vulnerability of their 15-year partnership, the duets Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith collaboratively create and perform take the objectification of the female body and turn it on its head. Their latest, Gloria, explores resistance and survival in the context of a grieving world. Abrons Arts Center plans to present the work May 20–22 in its amphitheater to masked, socially distanced audiences. abronsartscenter.org. —CE

The post 7 Shows Hitting Screens, Stages or Scenic Settings This Month appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The hotel’s residency program is designed to cultivate artists, athletes and writers with ties to or interests in the Caribbean, aligning with Shayer’s goals to honor his African heritage and increase the visibility of Black stories in ballet. Due to the islands’ strict COVID-19 safety protocols and low number of cases, he’s been able to safely create in an environment reminiscent of the pre-pandemic era.

As only the second ballet dancer to participate in the program—the first being San Francisco Ballet corps member Kimberly Marie Olivier, who had told Shayer about the opportunity—his feedback will help develop the residency for future dance artists. During his mandatory 15-day quarantine upon arrival, Palm Heights built a studio for him and future dance residents.

Dance Magazine
spoke with Shayer about his new work and what it’s been like to live and create in the Cayman Islands.

The post Gabe Stone Shayer Is Creating an African Narrative Ballet in a Locale That’s Not Only Dreamy, but Informing the Work Itself appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Awards & Honors

John Melesaine, Courtesy Cultural Counsel

The post News of Note: What You Might Have Missed in March 2021 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

In an interview with The New York Times’ Rosalyn Sulcas, McKenzie noted that he began seriously considering retiring a few years ago, seeing his upcoming 30th anniversary as a good time to step away. He was also somewhat influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that the company could benefit from new leadership as ballet enters a more digital age. “We are dealing with a medium I don’t really like, but which we are going to have to rely on a lot in the future,” he told Sulcas about the recent shift to online performances. “It needs someone who likes the medium and believes in its value.”

Rosalie O’Connor, Courtesy ABT

The post Kevin McKenzie to Retire from American Ballet Theatre in 2022 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

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After moving out of the Met’s basement dressing rooms each July, she books sessions with her coaches, the former ABT stars Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky; finds a willing partner (“I usually go for the younger guys,” Brandt says, “who don’t mind lifting on repeat”); and heads back to the studio. It’s time to rehearse the principal roles she might be considered for the following season.

“Everyone else is on the sofa eating bagels,” Dvorovenko says, “and she’s with us two to three hours every day for weeks. ‘Let’s do Swan Lake for fun! Let’s do Corsaire for fun!’ ”

The post The Single-Minded Drive of ABT Principal Skylar Brandt appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Jones was first hired by ABT co-founder Lucia Chase when the company needed a short woman for the corps. She spent eight years as a dancer, performing roles like the Cowgirl in Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, and began transitioning to the artistic staff in 1976 while assisting Twyla Tharp in Push Comes to Shove. “Twyla believed in me from the beginning as a répétiteur,” Jones says. Later, Jones spent two and a half years personally reviving Tharp’s Bach Partita for ABT. She was also in the room while Natalia Makarova first set the epic Shades scene from La Bayadère on ABT, and Jones has since staged the ballet on other companies around the world.

Maybe more than anything, Jones has been a trusted right hand for three artistic directors, guiding and coaching multiple generations of corps dancers at the company. As she celebrates her 50-year milestone, Dance Magazine decided to pick her brain about what she’s seen as the key elements of success.

Rosalie O’connor, courtesy ABT

The post How to Succeed in Dance, According to a 50-Year ABT Vet appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The ballerina made international headlines in September 1970 when she defected from the Soviet Union while on tour with the Kirov Ballet in London. That December, she made her American Ballet Theatre debut, an association that altered the company’s trajectory.

“In ballet, stardom doesn’t come overnight as it does in Hollywood,” she told Dance Magazine in the August 1985 issue, “…because we work every single day of our lives to improve ourselves…So if a dancer becomes a star, that stardom has been won through the sweat of our brows.”

Makarova found success outside of ballet as well, winning Tony and Olivier awards for her performances in the musical On Your Toes. She continues to coach at ABT.

The post Celebrate Natalia Makarova’s 80th Birthday With These Rarely Seen Archival Photos appeared first on Dance Magazine.

In 2014, after eight years in the corps de ballet of American Ballet Theatre, he walked away. Even though he was a valued member of the company who had several principal roles under his belt, he felt unsatisfied. “You get to a point,” he says, “where you look at the schedule and you see you have one or two new ballets in a year that you may or may not be looking forward to.”

The post When COVID-19 Interrupts Your Career Comeback appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Courtesy Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

The post News of Note: What You Might Have Missed in September 2020 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“We wear platinum wigs for the third act of The Sleeping Beauty, and I always said I’d do that one day,” Trenary explains. She had never gone through with it, afraid blond locks wouldn’t suit her. But this June, stuck at home, she decided to give it a go.

Paired with her vintage wardrobe, her finished look is an effortlessly cool combination of classic beauty and ’90s street style.

The post ABT Principal Cassandra Trenary on Her Career Highlight, Style Secret and Going Blonde appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The post American Ballet Theatre Promotes 6 Dancers to Principal, 1 to Soloist appeared first on Dance Magazine.

From dogs who have decided that Pilates is actually cuddle time to cats who have declared grand battements their own personal obstacle course, here are some of our favorite pet interruptions brightening up our feeds.

Aurora the cat really, really, really had to get in on her human’s grand battement combination.

The pets of The Australian Ballet are collectively very concerned about their humans’ training.

Sasha really just wants to make sure that leg is turned out in fondu.

We thought this socially distanced excerpt from Rennie Harris’ Lazarus was incredible already, but then the canine cameo elevated it to perfection.

Ruben spiced up Derek Dunn’s ab series with a game of fetch. (At least, Ruben tried.)

Carmen is the Pilates assistant we never knew we needed until now.

Houston Ballet’s Chandler Dalton cleverly integrated cat toys into his warm-up.

Little Swans are made for chasing, right?

Trout has some very serious thoughts about standing-leg stability.

Ms. Bit, on the other hand, seems totally uninterested in James Whiteside doing adagio.

The post These 10 Pets Can’t Resist Joining Their Humans for At-Home Training appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The two had met shortly after Nureyev’s 1961 defection and were romantically involved off and on until Bruhn’s death in 1986 at age 57. As part of a tribute to Bruhn published in the June 1986 issue of Dance Magazine, John Gruen shared quotes from interviews he’d conducted for the late dancer’s biography. Of Nureyev, Bruhn said, “With all my acclaim of being the West’s leading male dancer, I had reached a dead end. Seeing Rudik move was an enormous inspiration. It was through watching him that I could free myself and try to discover that looseness of his.”

The post #TBT: The Summer Rudolf Nureyev and Erik Bruhn Shared a Stage appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The post Stella Abrera's Final ABT Season Was Cut Short, But She's Looking to the Future appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Part of Lincoln Center at Home, the organization’s new portal for digital offerings, the six-day fest will feature performances by Ballet Hispánico, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, School of American Ballet and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. What’s particularly exciting is that some of these—including the aforementioned Theme and Variations and Mozartiana—are legendary performances of yesteryear.

Ready to hear the lineup? Check it out below, then tune in to Lincoln Center’s website or Facebook page to watch the performances.

The post Lincoln Center's Dance Week Offers 7 Online Broadcasts—Including Vintage ABT and NYCB Favorites appeared first on Dance Magazine.

It’s going to be a huge hit to the company’s bottom line. Nevertheless, ABT decided to send its dancers a gift last week: a piece of vinyl flooring from Harlequin Floors. Although company members might be confined to dancing at home for the foreseeable future, at least they’ll have the proper surface.

Other major ballet companies have started similar initiatives, and Harlequin is busy fulfilling the influx of orders with a skeleton crew that’s keeping social distance inside its New Jersey warehouse.

ABT director of production James Whitehill says the idea to send its dancers flooring came from corps de ballet member Luigi Crispino, who found out that Harlequin was selling small sections for home studios. Crispino asked if company management could help the dancers navigate that process.

ABT polled the dancers to find out how many would be interested. Then they placed a single order for 68 pieces, paid for it all and shipped them out to company members isolating everywhere from Australia to Hawaii. They’ve also since offered a free code for ballet masters and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School faculty members to order floors from Harlequin directly.

The floor ABT sent is Harlequin’s Cascade surface—the same one the company uses in its studios and onstage. The total cost, including shipping, averaged out to about $100 per floor.

“The dancers will be able to keep them for good,” says Whitehill, “and use them hopefully not during another pandemic, but during happier times when they’re just looking for something to do on the weekends.”

The post ABT & Other Companies Ship Their Dancers Pieces of Harlequin Floors appeared first on Dance Magazine.

American Ballet Theatre’s Misty Copeland and her former colleague Joseph Phillips have launched the most recent fundraiser: Swans for Relief. They corralled 32 ballet dancers from 14 countries to film themselves performing Mikhail Fokine’s Le Cygne (often referred to as “The Dying Swan”) from wherever they’re isolating right now. The resulting film strings their movements together one after the other.

The post 32 Ballerinas From Around the World Perform "The Dying Swan" for COVID-19 Relief appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The post ABT Dancer Xuelan Lu on the Best and Worst Parts of Life in the Corps appeared first on Dance Magazine.

In her spare time, American Ballet Theatre corps member Kathryn Boren moonlights as a personal trainer. Certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine, she trains fellow ABT dancers and also teaches a weekly Conditioning for Dancers class.

While everyone is isolating inside, Boren shared her go-to home workout with Dance Magazine.

The post Try ABT Dancer Kathryn Boren's Go-To Home Workout appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The dancers’ faces popped up on the screen, each framed by his or her current living arrangements. Some were sitting in living rooms, between the couch and the TV. Others in the kitchen, or in a bedroom. For an hour and a half, they talked, listened, moved.

The post Learning the Principles of Choreography, Alone But Together appeared first on Dance Magazine.

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Watch American Ballet Theatre corps dancer Connor Holloway’s Euphoria-inspired makeup tutorial!

The post Makeup Tutorial with ABT's Connor Holloway appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I myself spent the better half of my high school years in Russia, where political correctness does not get in the way of progress. We were trained to use criticism as fuel to propel us forward. Everything said in class or rehearsal was meant to help better ourselves and not to be taken personally.

But where is the line between helpful advice and offensive language?

The post How I Deal with Racist Remarks as a Ballet Dancer of Color appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Camila Falquez, Courtesy American Ballet Theatre

The post Devon Teuscher's Ode to the Daily Grind of Studio Life appeared first on Dance Magazine.

James Whiteside’s Chicken Pot Pie

Jim Lafferty

The endlessly entertaining American Ballet Theatre principal learned to cook from his mom, and supplemented her chicken pot pie recipe with ones he found on the internet.

Ingredients

• 1 lb skinless boneless chicken breast
• 1 cube chicken bouillon
• 1 cup sliced carrots
• 1 cup frozen green peas
• 1/2 cup sliced celery
• 2/3 cup butter
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp celery seed
• 3 1/2 cups chicken broth
• 1 1/3 cups whole milk
• dash of hot sauce (Whiteside uses Cholula)
• 2 unbaked pie crusts (9 inches)
• 1 egg, separated

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375ºF.
2. In a large pot, combine chicken, bouillon cube, carrots, peas and celery. Cover with water and boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, drain and set aside. Remove chicken, cube or shred, and return to pot.
3. In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent. Stir in flour, salt, pepper and celery seed. Slowly stir in chicken broth and milk. Add a dash of hot sauce. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Add chicken/vegetable mixture and stir.
4. Place the bottom crust in a nonstick pie pan and fill with chicken mixture. Cover with top crust, seal edges and cut away excess dough. Brush top crust with egg white. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape.
5. Bake for 35–40 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Makes:
One 9-inch pie

Leah Ives’ Egg Strata

The Trisha Brown Dance Company member’s egg strata recipe might be meant for breakfast, but who’s judging? It’s easy to swap out different fillings to suit your tastes, or to throw it in a Tupperware if you absolutely have to leave the warmth of your apartment.

Ingredients

• 12 eggs
• 2 cups milk
• salt and pepper (to taste)
• basil and other herbs (to taste)
• dried-out bread, torn in pieces (enough to line the bottom of the pan)
• precooked chicken breast, torn in pieces
• feta cheese, in chunks
• cherry tomatoes, halved
• spinach, sautéed

Directions

1. Spray the bottom of a 9×13 baking dish with cooking spray, then line the bottom with the bread.
2. In a separate container, beat the eggs and milk, adding salt, pepper, basil and other herbs (or Dijon mustard) to your liking.
3. Evenly place the feta, tomatoes, spinach and chicken on top of the bread.
4. Pour the egg mixture over the fillings and bread. Some pieces might float up—push them down.
5. Cover with Saran wrap and leave in the fridge overnight.
6. In the morning, bake at 350° F for 45 minutes or until set.

Ashley Murphy-Wilson’s Lemon Turmeric Salmon

This Washington Ballet dancer didn’t leave her grandmother’s penchant for Southern soul food behind when she moved to the East Coast. But she did figure out ways to make her cooking healthier without leaving the comfort food vibes behind—like with this high-protein, anti-inflammatory salmon dish.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup very cold or frozen salted butter, plus more for greasing pan
• 4 fresh, skin-on salmon fillets, cut about 1 1/2 inches thick
• 1 tbsp. dried thyme
• 1 tsp. turmeric
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 large lemon

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F and butter the bottom of a baking sheet.
2. Rinse the salmon, pat dry and place skin-side down on the sheet.
3. In a small dish, mix the thyme, turmeric and salt. Sprinkle the spice mixture evenly over the top of the fillets.
4. Slice the lemon into 4 thin rounds, remove the seeds, then halve the rounds.
5. Top each fillet with two lemon slice halves, then grate the cold butter evenly over the top of the fillets.
6. Cover the pan with aluminum foil or parchment paper and bake for 15 to 20 minutes. (Cut into center to check doneness.)
7. Remove from the oven, uncover, spoon the butter sauce from the pan over the fish and serve.

Kevin J. Shannon’s Vegetable Borscht

Greg Birman

The Hubbard Street Dance Chicago member might use some homegrown ingredients in his take on the eastern European staple, but produce from your local grocery store or greenmarket will do just as well.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsps. vegetable oil
• 1 medium yellow onion (diced)
• 1 leek, top and bottom removed (diced)
• 4 medium beets (peeled and thinly sliced)
• 3–4 carrots (peeled and chopped)
• 3–4 parsnips (peeled and chopped)
• 2 tbsps. white vinegar
• salt and pepper
• 48 oz. beef, chicken or vegetable broth
• 1 small/medium head of cabbage (halved and chopped)
• sour cream or yogurt
• pinch of dill and splash of lemon juice (optional)

Directions

1. Heat oil in medium-sized pot over medium heat.
2. Add onion and leek. Cook for 5 minutes or until soft.
3. Add beets, carrots and parsnips. Cook another 5 minutes.
4. Add vinegar. Sprinkle salt and pepper.
5. Cook until beets are soft, about 10 minutes.
6. Add broth.
7. Lower heat to medium-low and cook for 15–20 minutes, then add cabbage.
8. Cook another 20 minutes.
9. Garnish each serving with a dollop of sour cream or yogurt. Add optional dill or lemon juice to taste.

Serves:
6–8 people

The post 5 Dancer-Approved Recipes to Keep You Warm This Winter appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Brief stints with Balanchine’s short-lived American Ballet, on Broadway and at Radio City prefaced her joining American Ballet Theatre’s corps for its 1940 inaugural season. She caught the eye of Antony Tudor (despite leaving his first rehearsal “screaming that she would never work with that Englishman again,” according to Tudor) and became an overnight sensation after leading the premiere of his psychological Pillar of Fire in 1942.

“Tudor changed my whole life—the way I moved and the way I thought,” she said. “He told me what to think and what to read, even what to wear and what to eat. We were inseparable. Sometimes he could really make me feel miserable; he could almost be sadistic. Yet he could be wonderful, too.” Their work came to define the “Theatre” part of ABT’s name.

The post #FlashbackFriday: Nora Kaye Left Her First Rehearsal With Antony Tudor "Screaming" appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Winner: Taylor Stanley in Apollo

The post These Are the Dance Moments Our Readers Loved the Most This Year appeared first on Dance Magazine.

This has never really been the case when it comes to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Last Wednesday, as dance world luminaries and patrons alike gathered to celebrate its 75th anniversary (which we highlighted in a print-exclusive feature in our August issue), this was more apparent than ever as brief dance performances unfolded in unexpected corners of the division’s home on the Lincoln Center campus.

The post The Most Magical Dancing in New York City Last Week Was in a Public Library appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Though what she’s listening to at any given time can vary dramatically, the through-line for Brandt is nostalgia: songs that take her back, whether to childhood, a favorite movie or a piece she’s recently performed. Brandt told us about her eclectic taste, and made us a playlist that will keep you guessing:

The post Skylar Brandt's Taste in Music Is as Delightful as Her Dancing appeared first on Dance Magazine.

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