You are doing so much these days. How, at this point in your career, do you choose which projects to take on?

First and foremost, does the project get me excited? Do I like the music or the people I’d be working with? Is it a medium I haven’t worked in before? The real problem is that I’m down for all of it. A lot of times I just do what comes up first, because I really love what I do.

For Awakening, the fabulous [producer/director] Baz Halpin is my good friend, and he invited me to rework the “Earth Section” of the show. When I saw the team that had already been assembled, I immediately said yes.

What was your approach to this big Vegas spectacle?

I watched the show before I went into rehearsal, and saw these humans in costumes that looked like trees. I thought it would be cool to create more of a structure and rework the staging so they could become a root system. I watched a lot of videos on YouTube about how trees move in the wind, and researched what trees do in both storms and sunlight so that I could picture shapes in my head. Then I tried to make a language of movement that matched. For example, a root system through the soil, or a branch shaking in the thunder—those analogies were really helpful. The dancers are a team of krumpers, lockers, and flexers who are hypermobile in their joints, so it was really cool to work with them and bring the vision to life.

How do you create a distinctive movement vision/vocabulary for each project you do?

A huge part of my job is researching and understanding the world I’m trying to create. A lot of time and effort goes into that. Is it a live performance? Is it televised? Is it a film? Is it in an intimate space? Is it vast? What are they wearing? It’s the who, what, where, when, and why. I have to be able to answer those questions before I create. If I can do that, I understand the lane we are in, and the work ends up being unique and the best it can be.

As an active member of the Choreographers Guild, what are your thoughts on the progress the group has made so far? And what are the most pressing issues that even well-established choreographers like yourself continue to face in the entertainment world?

There have been some big steps forward in terms of visibility. What comes along with that is the ability to have bigger meetings. We can go to SAG, or the press, or a studio and say, “Hey, this has come up for our community—are you willing to talk about it?” But there are many protections we still need—health, pension, residuals. We are at the start of the climb now that we are unified.

The post Choreographer Mandy Moore Brings Her Creative Vision to Vegas appeared first on Dance Magazine.

It’s all in pursuit of one goal: to win gold this summer, during the first time in history that the Olympic Games will feature a breaking competition.

Thirty-two dancers total—16 b-boys and 16 b-girls—will compete battle-style in Paris’ Place de la Concorde to sold-out crowds on August 9 and 10. Qualifying competitions have been going on since 2022, with the final two happening just this May and June. Choi and b-boy Victor Montalvo were the first to qualify for the U.S. breaking team. Last week, at the culmination of the qualifier series, another four dancers—Vicki “La Vix” Chang, Logan “Logistx” Edra, Jeffrey “Jeffro”­ Louis, and Miguel Angel Rosario Jr., aka “B-boy Gravity”—competed for the last two potential U.S. spots (one for a b-boy and one for a b-girl), with Edra and Louis ultimately earning them. 

The Olympic Games are by no means the first worldwide breaking event. But they do mark the first time that a breaking competition is being put on in a big way for the general public, not just the breaking community itself. 

That’s drawn its fair share of side-eye. Some people unfamiliar with breaking have questioned the idea of it being classified as a “sport.” And some in the breaking community worry that taking part in the Olympics will water down the culture. Dancers taking part, however, see it differently. “We’re always going to have our underground events, our local events for the community,” says Chang. “But this way, we can also show what we do to people who otherwise might not even know that it exists.” 

Or, as Edra puts it, “Sometimes we are seen more and sometimes we are seen less—it doesn’t change the way we are representing. It just adds to the type of motivation.”

Balancing Regimented Scoring and Artistic Freedom

Of course, some elements of a traditional battle have been tweaked in its translation for the Olympic stage. Most notable is the more regimented scoring. “In cultural breaking events, it’s based off of opinion—it’s super-subjective,” says Montalvo. But at Olympic competitions and qualifiers, there’s a structured points system. That rewards a slightly different strategy, Montalvo believes: “You have to be more explosive from beginning to end, getting straight to the point, doing big moves on the beat, ending off with a big freeze. And if you’re too complex, really being super-creative, I feel like you don’t get too far.” Because judges are ticking off particular boxes to tally the score, dancers need to be well-rounded, whereas, Louis says, in other competitions a breaker could just do one thing really well and win with that. 

Po Chun Chen, aka “Bojin,” head of the breaking division of the World DanceSport Federation (the organization helping to oversee breaking at the Olympics), acknowledges that it’s been a challenge to balance the sport and the culture in a dance form started by oppressed people looking for a way to freely express themselves. “We cannot lose the original soul of breaking, which is the freedom,” he says. One way in which the WDSF is attempting to honor the hip-hop roots of breaking at the Olympics is by starting out the competition with the judges showing off their own skills in a cypher as a way of celebrating the culture. Though the practice would be unthinkable in figure skating or gymnastics, “this is our culture,” says Chen. 

New Benefits and Growing Pains

Despite any debates over authenticity, one thing is clear: The Olympics are creating a high-performance support system for top-ranking breakers. The highest scorers from qualifying competitions are now part of Team USA, and have been flown to the Olympic facility in Colorado Springs a handful of times for training camps. They’ve been given strength and conditioning coaches, sports psychologists, dietitians, and health-care coverage. Some have also received grants, like the one from the Women’s Sports Foundation that Chang has used to rent studio space so she doesn’t have to dance outside. “There’s a lot of different resources that we, as breakers, have never seen before,” says Louis. 

That said, because breaking is brand-new to the Olympics, the infrastructure and monetary support lags far behind more established sports like rowing or swimming. “They’re being treated like the world’s greatest athletes. We’re being treated more like very talented dancers. That’s the disconnect right now,” says Ivan “Flipz” Velez, who will be the judge repre­senting North America in Paris. There’s reportedly been some scrambling involved as WDSF figures out the details of breaking becoming an Olympic sport. Dancers say they had to stay flexible and adapt quickly to changes as organizers decided exactly what the judging system would look like, how music would be handled, and what type of floor would be used. 

A Transformative Time

Many of breaking’s Olympic hopefuls have already seen their lives change dramatically. Montalvo shares that he’s had a slew of press requests and has sponsorship deals from major brands like Red Bull, Delta, Comcast, Jack in the Box, and Athletic Brewing. “There’s a lot of media that wants to know what breaking is all about,” he says. “This has been the busiest year of my life.” 

Choi says that juggling appearances and events along with corporate partnerships and media interviews has actually made it tricky to prepare the way she wants to. “It’s been really amazing but also challenging, because I know I need to be focusing on training for the Olympics,” she says. 

Even dancers who didn’t know whether they would qualify until June upended their lives for the possibility. Chang says she stopped working as a restoration ecologist to pursue breaking as a career. She now dances with her crew two to three hours a day, five days a week; cross-trains for an hour four days a week; does biweekly sessions with a sports therapist; and joins regional competitions for practice on some weekends. In addition to physical prep, Louis shares that he’s been studying his past competitions to analyze his strengths and weaknesses, dissecting videos of competitors, and watching footage from the 1980s to diversify his arsenal of movements.

The effort is worth it because these dancers’ dreams for the Olympics are about more than medals. Montalvo hopes the coverage will get a younger generation in the U.S. interested in breaking. Louis hopes it leads to more professional opportunities for breakers to make a living. And Velez hopes the Olympic spotlight gives breaking the same level of prestige as ballet.

“We’re flying as well, with the double air flares and multiple 1990s—and sometimes nobody trains us,” says Velez. “I want there to be this worldwide awakening to accept us as artists, not as ‘underground,’ these terms that suppress us and keep us from being seen in our biggest light. ’Cause this is the biggest light, the biggest stage we’re going to be on.”

A Longtime Dream Fulfilled

Insiders say that Choi, the first American b-girl to qualify for the Olympics, is a front-runner to medal at the Games. But for her, just the opportunity to compete marks a full-circle moment: When she was young, Choi was a serious, Olympic-track gymnast. 

“I used to draw pictures of me competing at the Olympics as a child,” she says. “To have this opportunity come back to me and to see it through, it’s really fulfilling and special. Little Sunny would be so proud of me.”

Breaking’s Olympic Future

Unfortunately, it’s already been announced that there will be no breaking competition at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. “Come on, it was born in this country! How is it not going to come back to its motherland?” asks Velez. But a successful run in Paris could pave the way for the sport’s return at the Brisbane Olympics in 2032. 

“We’re using the example of baseball as our guide,” says Chen, head of the breaking division of the World DanceSport Federation. Baseball was left out of the Paris Games, but it will be back in the 2028 Olympics. 

The post Breaking New Ground: For the First Time in History, Dancers Are Competing at the Olympics appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Company: Independent artist managed by Shannelle “Tali” Fergus

Age: 26

Hometown: Birmingham, England

Training: Urdang Academy

Origin story: “I was quite an athletic kid,” says West, who started with gymnastics and martial arts. “I watched all of the Jackie Chan films.” After b-boy Jovan Rumble came to West’s high school to guest-teach a Boys Dancing class, “he invited me to train with his crew, called Lab Rats, and, from there, I just fell in love with the energy of dancing itself.”

Turning point: In 2017, West had just booked Thriller Live, a long-running Michael Jackson revue on the West End. “I was excited about that, but my spirit wasn’t in it—it wasn’t my lane, it wasn’t my realm.” Without knowing that West was already committed to Thriller, Fergus saw West at an audition to perform with pop group Years & Years. “I was a huge fan of Tali’s when I came to London,” says West. “I watched all of her videos. I was obsessed, like, ‘Who is this human?’ ” Now West’s mentor and manager, she helped him get out of the Thriller contract so that he could join the Years & Years tour. “It was wild—a complete shift in my trajectory,” adds West. “Everything changed.”

Pressure cooker: Filming Jungle’s 50-minute visual album Volcano was a whirlwind. “We rehearsed for four or five days, got two days off, and then we shot 14 films in two days. But I love the thrill of being thrown into the deep end like that.”

West on Volcano choreographer Shay Latukolan: “When someone’s performing movement that genuinely feels good to do, it transcends the screen and the viewer gets to secondhand-feel that way, too. That’s the nature of Shay’s choreography.”

What his mentor sees: “I genuinely think that Will is a once-in-a-generation talent. He has a way of reaching past himself to people,” says Fergus. “That is true of him as a performer and a creative, but also as a human—and I think if he wasn’t inclined that way as a human it wouldn’t read in quite the same way.”

Finding his voice: Inspired in part by meeting Jungle’s J Lloyd and Volcano singer Lydia Kitto, West shares that “I’m looking for a vocal coach. The fact that I’m working on music is no secret.”

Wish list: West “would drop everything to work with some people” across the performing arts spectrum. “If you see Tyler, the Creator on the street, tell him I’m coming. I’d love to work with him—and with FKA twigs. Kojey Radical is incredible. Oh, and Daniel Caesar: That’s my guy. I listen to his music, like, every day. Jordan Ward is amazing. I want to be in a movie with Zendaya. LaKeith Stanfield.”

The post Get to Know Commercial Dancer Will West, a “Once-in-a-Generation-Talent” appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I dance because dance is home. Home as I have built it, home as it feels, and home where I find the people I love and who love me. Through dance I have tasted freedom, instinct, abandon, and trust. I have learned how to make mistakes, how to fail, how to collaborate, how to be disappointed, how to work hard, how to be proud of both myself and of others. This home has raised me and it has shaped the woman I am. I have found my voice. Dance has shown me that magic is real and this life we have is singular and spectacular.

From dancer to teacher to choreographer to stager to rehearsal director, my relationship to dance continues to evolve. Dance is woven into my being; it is how I see and traverse the world. I am dancing when I catch the train, when I hold your hand, when I am at my sewing machine, when I am grieving, crying, laughing, when the sun streams through the windows, and when the moon is full. I have learned through dance that everything matters, everyone matters, and everything is dancing with one another.

Even within the beauty and bliss, many times in my career I have lost myself. I have questioned, “Is this life in dance worth it?” “What am I giving up?” When these questions bubble up and begin to take over, I remind myself to return to where it all began. I return to the barre, I plié, and the reason why I dance comes to me. I am home. There is a pact embedded in the piano notes that we are in this together and that I belong here. To belong may be the greatest feeling in the world. More and more often these days, I am gaining opportunities to tell you, you belong here too.

The post Choreographer Ching Ching Wong on Finding a Home in Dance appeared first on Dance Magazine.

In his book The Map of Making Dances, the late Stuart Hodes wrote, “When you make a dance, you explore a landscape.” Part of the challenge of choreographing a short dance is establishing the landscape quickly. Where are we? Who is the person or persons dancing? What mood or mode are they in? The choreographer needs to get all that across in the blink of an eye.

How to do that? There is no foolproof method, but one option is to start the way artists start making anything: Try stuff out. Explore. Improvise. Janis Brenner, who teaches at Marymount Manhattan College and Steps Conservatory, advises, “You’re following your intuitive thread. Stay with your intention.” A particular landscape can be envisioned beforehand, or it can emerge while improvising.

The next stage is to pare down. Brenner puts it this way: “You distill your improvisational exploration down into essentials.” This requires having the discipline to dump the moves that are just about display. A short work will not be memorable if it’s just crammed with all the things the choreographer’s good at.

Does a short piece take less time to make than a long one? Sometimes. Michel Fokine spent only half an hour to make The Dying Swan for Anna Pavlova in 1905. The fact that they had danced together for years helped. He had a keen sense of her expressive abilities, so her dancing was already part of the landscape. With his clear image of a swan gliding on a lake, the dance almost made itself.

Of course, a dance can be so short as to be inconsequential. Going back to Hodes: “A complete dance may be short…but a dance that doesn’t take time to develop its ideas is too short.” The best ones create a sense of discovery while also knitting all the elements together—the landscape, the distillation of the exploration, and, of course, the power of the performer.

A good short work never overstates its point. Every move counts. The late Trisha Brown once said to me, while working on Watermotor, “I would go to the guillotine for every move.”

Masters of Brevity

Looking at the 20th century alone, there have been many iconic solos that are under eight minutes. Here are some
of my favorites.

Pizzicati (1916, about two minutes), aka The Shadow Dance, by Michio Ito, to music by Léo Delibes. A solitary figure, moving in a way that’s reminiscent of a puppet—or a dictator—projects a huge shadow. Ito’s biographer, Helen Caldwell, described it as having a “mystifying power.”

The Dying Swan (1905, just over three minutes), by Michel Fokine, to music by Camille Saint-Saëns. Fokine said of his iconic solo for Anna Pavlova, “This dance aims, not so much at the eyes of the spectator, but at his soul, at his emotions.”

The Stair Dance (c. 1918, about three minutes), by Bill Robinson. The tap dance legend developed this gem during his years in vaudeville. Elegant, relaxed, and upbeat, he ascends and descends a set of stairs, generating sounds like a clear, rippling brook.

Revolutionary Etude (c. 1923, about two and a half minutes), by Isadora Duncan, to music by Alexander Scriabin. Influenced by the Russian revolution, Duncan portrayed a woman warrior who gathers energy from the heavens and earth. Many Duncan dances are depicted as light and skippy, but this one brings out the fists.

Lamentation (1930, three and a half minutes), by Martha Graham, to music by Zoltán Kodály. “I wear a long tube of material to indicate the tragedy that obsesses the body,” Graham wrote in her autobiography, Blood Memory, “the ability to stretch inside your own skin, to witness and test the perimeters and boundaries of grief.”

Mourner’s Bench (1947, six minutes), by Talley Beatty, to the traditional spiritual “There Is a Balm in Gilead.” Inspired by Howard Fast’s historical novel Freedom Road, it features a dancer that cultural critic John Perpener describes as “an archetype of human suffering, perseverance, and ultimate nobility.”

Harmonica Breakdown (1938, three and a half minutes), by Jane Dudley, to music by Sonny Terry. Evoking the Dust Bowl calamity during the Depression, a woman strides with fierce determination in the face of grinding poverty and oppression.

Strange Fruit (1943, three minutes and 40 seconds), by Pearl Primus, to the poem of the same name by Lewis Allan, aka Abel Meeropol. As the protagonist leaves a lynching ground, “the horror of what she has seen grips her,” Primus said, “and she has to do a smooth, fast roll away from that burning flesh.”

Watermotor (1978, two and a half minutes), by Trisha Brown, no music. Although it is carefully choreographed, this solo captures the heady ride of free-wheeling improvisation, challenging the eye to see the initiation and follow-through of Brown’s intricate, elusive movement chains.

Little Ease (1985, under three minutes), by Elizabeth Streb, no music. The landscape is a small rectangular box that confines the dancer physically and psychologically. She stretches, pumps, knocks, and hurtles herself at its walls. Every move shows a fearless quest for freedom.

Caught (1982, six minutes), by David Parsons, to music by Robert Fripp. As Deborah Jowitt wrote, this solo “shows us, via meticulously timed flashes of strobe light, a dancer who can appear to fly.”

Slipstream (1985, three minutes), by Margie Gillis, to music by Johann Sebastian Bach. Gillis breathes along with Bach’s cello suite, expanding her lungs until­ she hits the high mark of the music. The effect is an ecstatic swirl of circling torso, trailing hair, and rising cello notes.

The post The Big Impact of Short-Form Choreography appeared first on Dance Magazine.

What drew you to Coppélia, and how does this work relate to your other reimaginings of classical ballets?

In 2017, I was working on a dance-based project inspired by the artist Greer Lankton. She was a trans woman, and she made these really incredible dolls that were versions of herself and her friends. It made me think about Coppélia, and the power dynamics that existed between Dr. Coppélius and Coppélia. Within the context of ballet, I’ve also felt like a doll my whole life—I’d put on performance makeup and experience this dysphoria or disembodiment when I looked in the mirror. I began to properly research Coppélia’s history as a travesty ballet in 2021, and I was like, “Of course I have to do this!”

The same themes always come up when I look back at my work: intense suffering and pain often caused by relationships to expectations, which is deeply intertwined with ballet. There are often these central characters going through something, whether it’s death, transformation, or reclamation. But there is also always joy—it’s very important that there is joy as a way out.

What has the choreographic process for the show looked like?

I started with a lot of improvisations with the dancers moving each other’s limbs around. I want to play these push-and-pull games where we get into positions, almost like dolls, to see what it feels and looks like, and we go from there.

The dancers also learned a men’s variation of their choice as an exercise, and the show’s version of the mazurka was born from that. Creating that section felt like a full fantasy to me—we were playing together, figuring out how we could make it weird and doll-like. I channeled John Jasperse and Cunningham a bit, thinking about the physics of movement in a mathematical way.

What were some of the inspirations for the costumes and makeup?

Karen Boyer, our costume designer, created this incredible look for the show based on concepts, eras, and photographers I’d researched, including Claude Cahun, a French surrealist photographer from the 1910s and ’20s whose work explored their gender identity; lesbian salon culture in turn-of-the-century Paris; the Weimar Republic era in Berlin—just queer extravagance and theatricality on display.

What were some of the takeaways from your research process?

Diving into the world of travesty ballets was so affirming. To know that these performers—who were considered to be women (I’m not sure how they might identify now in the context of our current time)—had fans and power and were honored and celebrated. I’ve always been really into “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” and I drew these parallels to modern-day drag and how much people love it. My own experience with drag was especially formative. I had just stopped ballet and had this huge,180-degree moment as a freshman in college where I felt really powerful and able to tap into these qualities of strength and power through drag, and it let me step into these parts of myself that I’d never felt like I was allowed to be in before.

How do you make space for joy when there are so many other heavy feelings present in your work?

I think they really go hand in hand. To share traumatic things requires a certain amount of safety, connection, and support, but these feelings also yield a lot of joy. If something isn’t fun for me in the studio, I won’t want to go, so I try to find the things that provoke this feeling of life force.

At the end of the day, I want to allow the dancers to feel really checked into themselves. That’s ultimately what I want to project into the ballet world—dancing from a sense of connection and embodiment versus stress and disconnection.  

The post Ballez’ Katy Pyle Creates a <i>Coppélia</i> Rooted in Queer History appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Roh’s dancing, whether onstage or on the court, radiates with sincerity and effervescence. She has tried everything from commercial jobs abroad (“Destiny,” MGM Cotai resort’s resident show in Macau), to backup dancing for Kylie Minogue, to dancing with Jessica Chen’s J CHEN PROJECT and Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company in New York City. Her Brooklynettes experience has been fulfilling in new ways: “To be part of the environment that’s been established by our coaches has been such a blessing,” she says. “From the moment I auditioned, I knew I was in good hands.”

At the Helm
“As a co-captain for the Brooklynettes, I try to both give myself grace and hold myself accountable. In this role, it’s important to develop one-on-one relationships with the dancers. I’m even taking a leadership coaching course, in order to consistently show up as my best self and help lead this group of amazing women.”

A Second Act
“Once I’m at an age where my body is no longer able to physically perform, I’d love to dive into dance therapy. My younger brother is on the spectrum and I’ve seen how movement is so innate to him. We’ve gone to BTS concerts together, and music fills his body—his smile in those moments is unreal. I’ve seen how powerful music and dance can be no matter if someone is neurodivergent or neurotypical, and I really want to explore that one day to help different communities.”

New Perspectives
“Pursuing a BFA in dance at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts challenged the ways I approach dance. In addition to many genres of dance, the program offered anatomy classes and music theory—courses that supplemented my dance education and helped me to become a well-rounded artist. It set me up for success.”

The post Step Onto the Court with Brooklynettes Co-Captain Hayoung Roh appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Ubeda’s performance snagged one of those Chita nominations; another went to Rachel Lockhart, making her Broadway debut as Morgan after joining the show before its January run at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and its sold-out stop at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory in March.

Despite the differences in their backgrounds—he’s the first artist in his Miami family, she started training “fresh out of the womb” in her mother’s Birmingham dance studio—and their career tracks—his began in a Broadway ensemble, she’d always expected to join a company—they talk about Illinoise in similar terms. He sees his younger self in the role of Henry, “a young queer man who is coming of age,” and she finds echoes of her own questions about ancestry and identity in Morgan’s searching solo to “Jacksonville.”

Peck’s history is reflected in the show as well. “Most people know me from ballet,” he says. “But I really got my start from musicals.” Inspired by regular family trips to New York City to see shows (Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk was the standout), he was a tap dancer for years before “broadening out.” “Ballet came last,” he says, and when he began choreographing, he “was always a little bit restless about staying in one particular lane.”

With its wide-ranging styles and stories, both on and off the stage, Illinoise travels in multiple lanes that crisscross in surprising (and unsurprising) ways. Tyrone Reese, one of the understudies, was a year behind Lockhart at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and followed her to Juilliard; Lockhart didn’t know cast member Kara Chan, but soon discovered she was also a Juilliard alum. Ubeda and Gaby Diaz have known each other since they were 10, and Ubeda and Ahmad Simmons, who plays his lover in Illinoise, have done four Broadway shows together. Lockhart and Byron Tittle, whose tapping augments her “Jacksonville” number, have both danced with Doja Cat. And Ubeda, Diaz, and Lockhart were also memorable contestants on “So You Think You Can Dance”; Ubeda won Season 11.

Among Ubeda’s “SYTYCD” prizes was a contract for On the Town. He’d never seen a show, much less envisioned a Broadway career. “I had to learn it in three days,” he recalls. He credits that experience for the “sense of community” Lockhart says she felt when she first walked into an Illinoise rehearsal. “What we do onstage has to do with a group of friends who are warm with each other,” Ubeda says. “And we’ve all been in those shoes, where we are the youngest and newest person. At On the Town, they made me feel so at home. We all make it a point to make sure newcomers have what they need to succeed, and with these, it wasn’t hard—they bring something new to our campfire.” And to the ecosystem.

The post Inside the Creation of <i>Illinoise</i>’s Onstage—and Offstage—Community appeared first on Dance Magazine.

How did you decide to bring this group of guests onboard?

Alan Cumming has been a longtime friend of the company, and of Paul, as well. I asked him if he’d be willing to play Paul Taylor, and he jumped at the opportunity. He’s going to make Paul’s voice come alive.

In 1957, Paul had just graduated from Juilliard, and then in 1959, he was a guest artist at New York City Ballet. We’re bringing back these excerpts that are very of a specific moment, so we wanted to acknowledge the community of artists that were all collaborating together at that time. Adrian represents New York City Ballet, and Damian and Alicia represent Juilliard. They’re all great friends in the industry, and it’s an acknowledgement that these institutions still do have close relationships.

Why is it important to you to revive Seven New Dances?

It’s really important that audiences understand that artists are multifaceted, and they grow and evolve and try things. And there’s an investment that needs to be made in an artist’s life and in their career and where they’re going. It’s beautiful to see this process of all the drafts that have to get created for a genius to truly emerge and find themselves. I hope audiences of all ages get to ask themselves questions about what dance is, and where dance is going now.

When Seven New Dances premiered, some asked whether it could even be considered dance. Having spent time reconstructing this work, do you consider it to be dance?

They’re one hundred percent dance. Watching them in the studio feels rebellious even now. The boldness that it took for Paul to create the duet Alicia and Damian are going to perform, that was inspired by John Cage’s 4’33”: The curtain goes up, two dancers are onstage in a pose, nothing happens, and then the curtain comes down. The only thing that happens is that we as viewers are confronted with myriad thoughts, feelings, ideas, questions. It feels very radical to me. What makes it all the more powerful, if my plan works, is that when you see those same [pedestrian] movements to Bach music in Esplanade, it will hopefully make people see Paul’s work in a new way.

The post The Paul Taylor Dance Company Revisits Its Radical Roots in a One-Night-Only Performance appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“By no means did it happen overnight,” he says. “It took years and years of hard work.”

That hard work is evident throughout Hanagami’s online presence, but especially on his phenomenally popular YouTube channel. Hanagami has harnessed the platform’s power in a singularly savvy way—and in doing so, has gained not just millions of fans but also a devoted inner circle of colleagues and collaborators.

An Unexpected Beginning

A career in dance wasn’t on Hanagami’s radar growing up. “I didn’t even know what a choreographer was,” he remembers. During his freshman year as a psychology and economics major at the University of California, Berkeley, Hanagami auditioned for the school’s hip-hop team for fun. Thanks to his innate musicality and sense of rhythm, he ended up making the cut. 

What started as a casual commitment soon turned into something more serious: “I fell in love with it,” he says. Hanagami returned to his native Los Angeles in 2010, built up his YouTube channel, and leaned into all opportunities that came his way, including dancing for the Black Eyed Peas and choreographing for “The X Factor.” “There was no roadmap back then,” he says. “I had to learn how to navigate a rapidly changing dance landscape.”

Leveling Up 

Hanagami quickly established himself as a choreographic force. His distinct movement vocabulary, abundant with musical flourishes and syncopation, drew dancers in droves to his classes at Millennium Dance Complex and Movement Lifestyle in Los Angeles. His sleekly edited YouTube content—which, early on, included not just choreography videos but also a look into the life of a professional dance artist—even caught the eye of a number of directors and actors, many of whom reached out to pursue collaborations. “YouTube has been instrumental to my career and cross-pollinating different parts of my professional life,” Hanagami says. 

Eventually he was choreographing for stars like Jennifer Lopez and productions including “Dancing with the Stars.” While the projects kept coming, Hanagami was eager for a different type of challenge. “I often came in halfway through a musician’s career, so I didn’t have an impact on who they were as an artist,” he says. “I really wanted to be involved from the beginning.”

Enter BLACKPINK, widely considered the most successful girl group in K-pop. BLACKPINK tapped Hanagami as their choreographer in 2016—a time when “they hadn’t even released a song,” he says. He’s worked with the group ever since, choreographing music videos that have been viewed by billions of people around the globe. “It’s been really- gratifying to see how far they’ve come, and also see the impact my choreography has had on shaping their overall vision,” he says.

In 2023, Hanagami signed onto Mean Girls, the movie musical adaptation of the Broadway production, both based on Tina Fey’s hit comedy from 2004. Putting a fresh spin on a beloved classic “really forced me to think outside of the box,” Hanagami says. “It was such a creative challenge and took my career in a direction I didn’t think was possible.” That direction? A credit line as a second unit director (he led a secondary camera and crew during filming)—and, as a result, admission to the Directors Guild of America.

People First, Dancers Second

The throughline in Hanagami’s extensive resumé is his ability to understand people. “Even in fast-paced, high-pressure circumstances, I love working with Kyle,” says actress Ashley Park, who originated the role of Gretchen in Mean Girls on Broadway and has worked with Hanagami on a Skechers campaign, as well as one of his viral videos. “He is a natural director and visionary when it comes to prioritizing storytelling, while elevating the spirits of everyone involved.”

Before exploring the choreography, Hanagami likes to explore the artist’s personality. “I want to know their strengths and their weaknesses,” he says. “All of this helps me make a connection before we work together in a professional setting.”

A Potential Pivot

As his career continues to boom, Hanagami has his sights set on a future in the director’s chair. “Directing feels like the next frontier for me,” he says. As an experienced video editor (thanks to all those years on YouTube), a newly minted member of the DGA, and a mentee of the choreographer-directors Adam Shankman and Kenny Ortega, Hanagami is well positioned to make a splash in the film industry.

But choreography won’t necessarily take a backseat. “I’ll still work on projects that touch dance in some way,” he says. That includes choreographing for the current season of “So You Think You Can Dance.” 

“Everything I’ve done up until this point—from my video-editing experience to my love for psychology—has prepared me for this,” Hanagami says. “I feel more than ready.”

The Company He Keeps

“If I were to give one piece of advice to someone in the entertainment industry, it’d be to surround yourself with good people,” Hanagami says. Charlize Glass, a professional dancer who worked with Hanagami on Mean Girls and has taken his classes for 13 years, says he lives by that advice himself. “Kyle creates an environment that is unlike anything else, largely because of the assistants around him,” Glass says. “It makes the work so much more enjoyable.”

One of those people is Hanagami’s close friend and collaborator, Haley Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald first crossed paths with Hanagami more than a decade ago and has been a fixture in his social media content and professional projects. “Collaborating with Kyle is like piecing a puzzle together—the combination of his technical eye and my dancing works really nicely,” she says.

Hanagami refers to Fitzgerald as his “right hand.” “I just like her as a human, and I want to be around her,” he says. “When you gel with someone like that, it makes the work better.”

Always Advocating

A prolific creator, Hanagami is a vocal proponent of choreographic copyright. He has secured copyrights for nearly all of his choreographic work, and recently pursued his own lawsuit against Epic Games and the video game Fortnite, in which he claimed that the company stole his copyrighted moves.

“I’m so passionate about this because choreographers are often women, or come from marginalized communities, or are people of color—systemically, it’s almost a given that they’ll be taken advantage of,” he says. “I’m lucky enough to be in a position where I can hold other parties accountable.”

Hanagami brings that same passion for advocacy to his work as a vice president of the Choreographers Guild, the labor union for choreographers in the entertainment industry. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he remembers Zoom meetings where it became clear that he and his Guild colleagues were all facing similar problems within the industry. “As choreographers, we rarely work on projects together. We’re usually on our own island,” he says. “But through our conversations, we’ve been able to establish what choreographers want and deserve, and how to get there.”

The post Kyle Hanagami, A Viral Sensation Across Multiple Forms of Media, Has Built a Dance Empire From the Ground Up appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Company: Pacific Northwest Ballet

Age: 20

Hometown: Atlanta, Georgia

Training: Debbie Allen Dance Academy, Colburn School, Pacific Northwest Ballet Professional Division

On her own: At 9, Wimpye relocated to Los Angeles, with mom in tow, to train at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy. By 13, she was on her own at the Colburn School. “I think that helped me to mature, both mentally and emotionally. I gained the independence and strength that I need to succeed in this industry,” she says.

Connecting with audiences: Wimpye has carved out time for high-profile gigs, appearing as a solo dancer on TV for a Mariah Carey holiday special, dancing for Michelle Obama at the White House, starring in an Hourglass Cosmetics campaign opposite Twyla Tharp, and acting in a principal role on the hit show “This Is Us.” The professional credits add to her artistry. “For me, a huge part of dance is telling a story, not just with your body but also emoting with your face—acting’s helped with that,” she says. “But onstage, I just let loose and enjoy myself.”

Growth and giving back: “I’ve been through big ups and downs in my life, but my mom has made sure that I was surrounded by great mentors.” Joining Brown Girls Do Ballet gave Wimpye support. “For 10 years, it’s allowed me to have Black and brown professional ballerinas as mentors—ballerinas that looked like me. Now, I’m a mentor myself­ and it’s still just as rewarding.”

What her director is saying: Still in her first season as a full company member, “Destiny can easily be picked out of the corps de ballet for her singular presence and clean technique,” says PNB artistic director Peter Boal, “and she’s starting to take on more featured roles,” including Swan Lake’s Neapolitan Dance in February. “I often refer to ‘that thing you can’t teach,’ and Destiny has it. It’s engagement, presence, and joy that jumps over the footlights. It’s evident the moment she steps onstage.”

Memorable performance: Dancing with PNB in the finale of Balanchine’s “Diamonds” as a student in the Professional Division. “I had learned a few months earlier that I was being hired,” she says. “I got thrown in at the last minute for that performance. It felt like the start of my career and I had the realization that I was living out my dream!”

Free time: “I love to have relaxing days at home with my puppy, and traveling and exploring Washington,” says Wimpye. Her favorite TV show? “The Office.”

Career goals: “I feel really grateful because I can see the efforts being made to make the organization more diverse and inclusive,” says Wimpye, whose goals include dancing in the works of Balanchine, William Forsythe, and Crystal Pite, and even on Broadway—“I’m a huge fan of musicals,” she says. “But my biggest goal is becoming a principal dancer.”

The post Meet Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Destiny Wimpye appeared first on Dance Magazine.

As a professional dancer I was fortunate to have a wonderful career filled with highs. I remember the opening night of A New Day… in Las Vegas, dancing beside Celine Dion for thousands of people. I felt like I was flying—I couldn’t believe this was my life.

With the highs there also came lows: injury, sickness, endless auditioning, being a Canadian trying to work in the U.S. But I never gave up. Even during the darkest times, I would go into the studio, turn some music on, and return to the real reason why I danced. I would tap into that “aliveness” that fills my heart and soul, and it always gave me fuel to continue.

As a choreographer and director, I now experience that aliveness through my dancers, through the work I create, and through mentoring the next generation of young artists. This alternate expression of this aliveness is an extension of what I feel inside, a desire to share that connection to the aliveness with others.

Now, as I get older, and the demands on my body through my career have changed how I can dance, I still know why I do it. I do it for the energy that comes alive in my body that doesn’t show up any other time. Filling every cell with pure electricity and allowing me to bask in sensation while everything else melts away. It’s like a secret superpower. And the beautiful thing is it doesn’t need me to be dancing like I did when I was 25. It can also be found in a slower movement, a gentle improvisation, a deep listening. It is an authentic connection to the truest part of me, one that brings me joy and whispers, “Stacey, you are alive.”

The post Choreographer Stacey Tookey Shares How Dance Makes Her Feel Alive appeared first on Dance Magazine.

My dream growing up was to have my own series of fitness DVDs. That was the epitome of fitness for me! What ended up happening was something that I couldn’t even envision.

For my first two years of Peloton, I was still performing six nights a week in Queen of the Night, which meant a lot of naps. When I started, I think Peloton was my 21st 1099 of the year.

Later, I found out I had an autoimmune disease. But at the time I just knew I was really, really tired, so I stopped pursuing outside things because I needed the energy for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I started with cycling—early Peloton didn’t have anything else. Now, I teach cycling, barre, Pilates, dance cardio, stretching, foam rolling, mobility, and strength. A lot of jobs can feel stagnant. But Peloton’s been that special bird where each year feels like the beginning of something. We’re constantly innovating.

I get a lot of pride from people telling me that their shoulders are back, their chest is lifted, they’re feeling lighter, they’re not feeling full of stress after taking my classes. I think that comes from my dance background.

When I am dancing and moving and celebrating myself in sweat, that’s when my mind is clear, my insides are full of joy. Being able to give that in class is pretty fun. The hope is that that comes across on the other side of the camera, where you can’t help but also feel the joy of movement and the celebration and sweat.

I want to combine this movement on camera with my love of theater. Now that my autoimmune disease is managed, I realized recently that I will regret not doing that because it is still such a love of mine. I will not be leaving Peloton. I’m just adding in some more naps.

It’s been fascinating to be in an audi­­tion room again. At Peloton, I spend a lot of my time talking to a camera, pretending like people are there. I’ve become masterful at envisioning the reaction that I want. If I’m teaching, the joke always lands, whether it was funny or not. It always works because it has to, right? There can’t be that moment of doubt or lack of self-confidence. Learning to trust that has really changed the audition landscape for me. When I was younger,­ it was a lot of “Oh, man, I hope you think I’m awesome.” And now it is entirely “Well, I am spec­tacular. You’ll either see it or you won’t.”

I don’t get nervous about a lot of things, and I’m a little nervous about going back, in a good way. But the Peloton community has been unbelievably supportive. These humans are taking my classes to be the best version of themselves, to make their future selves proud. So I think they understand it more than anyone.

For other dancers who’re chasing that performance career, my advice is to keep saying yes. It leads you to people and places that you maybe couldn’t have predicted but are probably the right place.

The post Star Peloton Instructor Hannah Corbin Returns to the Audition Circuit appeared first on Dance Magazine.

In making Chasing Canyons, I set out to choreograph a site-specific dance for a site so big it is impossible to see in its entirety. I began with my geologic knowledge of the Grand Canyon, built from my years of scientific training and the weeks I spent climbing up and down its walls. The resulting gesture phrase follows the canyon’s life cycle: the initial crush of its basement rocks, the tilting of overlying strata, the massive gap in time known as the Great Unconformity, subsequent deposition of layers upon layers of sediments, and, finally, the coming of the Colorado River to uncover it all. From there, I began to draw the parts of the canyon that I could see, tracing the terraces and side canyons, dragging feet and fingers from the tops of the cliffs to the shady hollows at the base. I worked in the positions of the stars above the canyon, which mark its location in space and time. Then I merged it all together to create a moving map, not just of the canyon, but of how humans relate to it.

Connecting the canyon to the stars raised more questions: How do we interact with beautiful spaces, here on Earth and elsewhere? When we land on Mars, will we be owners or caretakers? At the end of the piece, I answer these questions: I erase the map. Much like art and science, I think that “to boldly go” and “take only pictures, leave only footprints” are two complementary, not conflicting, philosophies.

My time as the Astronomer (and dancer) in Residence at the canyon has ended, but I will carry it in my body as well as my mind. It is my greatest hope that in making these kinds of dances, I can inspire audiences to expand their minds—to explore the different ways we can understand, learn, and appreciate the universe in which we live.

The post Dancing Across the Solar System as the Grand Canyon’s Astronomer in Residence appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Evans-Krueger, who graduated from Wright State University with a BFA in dance, possesses a magnetic presence, ethereal movement quality, and contagious passion. She will bring this winning trifecta to The Outsiders (which opens April 11 on Broadway) as both a performer and associate choreographer.

Food for the Soul

“The workload within this industry can be exhausting. But at the same time, when you’re performing as part of a show that you really believe in, night after night, it feels like it’s for a reason and a purpose. When a show sits right within your soul, even the hardest workdays are beyond worth it, and that’s what so many of us are searching for in life.”

Making the Space

“I am very observant. I’m good at reading a room and fitting into wherever someone needs me. I want to be open and I want people to feel free to express themselves in a space. To prepare for my leadership role with The Outsiders, I make sure I do what I need to do—like journaling, taking my morning walk—so that I am grounded within myself before I step into a space where I am expected to be a support system for other people.”

All the Right Questions

“I’m very curious about why I am the way I am, and why people are the way they are. Digging into my humanity and diving deeper into what makes me me is an inspiration for the work that I do. When it comes to choreographing, I ask myself: ‘What do I need to heal? What do I want to discover about relationships?’ I feel like my life’s work is about breaking down all of the things I grew up on so I was and am able to build a foundation that works for me.”

The post Broadway Dancer Tilly Evans-Krueger Seeks Authenticity Above All appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“There’s a little bit of everything,” he says. “Tap is probably the only thing we don’t have.”

It may be an exaggeration, but not by much. In the show’s ballet- and contemporary-inspired tornado scene, a storm of dancers destroys Dorothy’s home and sends her off to Oz. Once she gets there, she’s swept up in a New Orleans–style second line that leads her down the Yellow Brick Road, where she meets a Tinman who pops-and-locks. Eventually, she is ushered into the Emerald City amongst a dizzying array of dances from the Black diaspora, from street styles out of Atlanta to Afrobeats to the South African amapiano. 

Though The Wiz may have one of the most versatile casts of dancers on Broadway right now—and, in Knight, a choreographer who has shown from his expansive commercial career that he can do pretty much anything—the show’s pull-out-all-the-stops movement isn’t about showing off. Instead, it’s a form of placemaking, says director Schele Williams, grounding Dorothy in elements of Black culture as she journeys through Oz and back home again.

“I liken Dorothy’s journey to a walk through the woods,” she says. “You can turn a corner, and it’s a gorgeous meadow. And then you can go another 40 yards and all of a sudden there’s a lake. Every turn, you can be in a new location with its own set of rules. It gives us permission to fully immerse ourselves in a new location.”

Tapping into his encyclopedic knowledge of dance genres to create a unique vocabulary was nothing new for Knight, who has spent years choreographing for top pop stars, most notably Beyoncé. What was new for him: the genre of musical theater, and the task of using those dances to tell a story.

And not just any story. The Wiz, a retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and a staple of Black culture, was revolutionary when it premiered in 1975 with choreography by George Faison, winning seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Choreography. A film adaptation starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, with choreography by Louis Johnson, came three years later. Several efforts to reignite a Broadway production have been in the works since, including a revival in 1984 that only lasted 13 performances, and another attempt in 2004 that never got off the ground.

This time, The Wiz team predicts, will be different. Williams believes the world needs this show, with its joy-infused score and hope-filled message, right now. And by taking the production out of the ’70s and adding some contemporary innovations—in addition to Knight’s genre-bending choreography, there are updates to the book by comedian Amber Ruffin; costumes by Sharen Davis (of “Westworld,” “Watchmen,” and Dreamgirls); a dazzling set by Hannah Beachler, of Black Panther; and a modernized score by music team Joseph Joubert, Allen René Louis, Adam Blackstone, and Paul Byssainthe Jr.—they hope it will become timeless.          

“I really wanted to create something that didn’t feel super ‘now,’ ” says Knight, “but takes you on a journey of Black dance. Throughout the show you see how these people live, how they move, how they celebrate, how they mourn, how they support each other, how they find a family.”           

Knight began building the show’s choreography in October 2022. He workshopped movement in Los Angeles with some of his go-to commercial dancers. “I dreamed as big as I could,” Knight says. “For me, it was about, How do we keep the essence­ and energy of what George Faison did, and also bring JaQuel Knight to the table?”

Broadway veteran and The Wiz dance captain Amber Jackson says the dance call was one of the most intense she’s experienced, with long, fast combos that constantly switched between styles, and rooms jam-packed with a who’s who of Black dance talent. A dance workshop with the chosen few—many of whom were Broadway newbies like Knight—followed, then rehearsals, then the national tour, then another round of rehearsals and tweaks before Broadway previews.

Reviews of the tour seem to agree that the production is highly entertaining, if a bit flashy. But as far as the choreography is concerned, nothing is flashy for flashiness’ sake. “I think the movement does a really beautiful job of not letting the audience feel detached from it,” says ensemble member Maya Bowles. “It’s not so codified in technique that it’s like, ‘That’s so impressive.’ It feels familiar. It feels like home. It feels like something that’s inherently in us as a Black community. It’s something you can be a part of. The invitation is open.”

From Beyoncé to Broadway

Theater was already on Knight’s bucket list when he got the offer to choreograph The Wiz, a call that, he says, made him “lose his mind.” Moving from commercial dance to Broadway presented a new opportunity: Knight, who is so often tasked with executing the vision of another artist—whether Beyoncé, Megan Thee Stallion, or Britney Spears—had a chance to discover his own vision. “I feel like I’m given room to explore my creativity and shape my voice as a movement artist,” he says. “And I’m enjoying that.”

Being new to theater, and therefore not beholden to ideas of how things are “supposed to be” done, has given Knight freedom to push the boundaries of what dance on Broadway can look like, says Phillip Johnson Richardson, who plays the Tinman. “He has the audacity to reinvent the whole thing,” Richardson says, “and not think of it like, ‘We can’t touch that, that’s classic material.’ ”

A New Kind of Tinman

In most productions of The Wiz, during the song “Slide Some Oil to Me,” the Tinman shows off his newly lubricated joints with a tap dance. But in Knight’s interpretation, the dance break becomes a showstopping hip-hop moment that Richardson, who plays the Tinman, says revealed the whole character to him.

The movement—lots of popping, locking, and waving—felt familiar to Richardson, reminding him of dances he watched growing up. “It was like, ‘Oh, I know who this guy is,’ ” says Richardson. “ ‘And I know how I can approach this guy.’ It informed how I wear my hat—I was originally supposed to wear it to the front, and I was like, ‘Nah, he’d wear it to the back or the side.’ He’s a lot closer to me than I originally thought.”

The post <i>The Wiz</i> Returns to Broadway Nearly 50 Years After Its Premiere With More Dance Than Ever appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Company: Houston Ballet

Age: 21

Hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana

Training: Dance Creations Academy, Houston Ballet Academy, Houston Ballet II

Destination Houston: Best bonded with Houston Ballet during his first summer intensive there in 2018. “I improved so much and made so many friends. I felt this is a place where I can grow and learn,” he says. During his next summer, in Los Angeles at a Debbie Allen Dance Academy intensive, he met guest teacher Lauren Anderson, who is Houston Ballet Academy’s associate director of education and community engagement. “She said, ‘Oh, you need to get back to Houston, like, right away.’ So I did.”

Quick rise: After joining Houston Ballet II in 2021, Best apprenticed with the main company in 2022, and sailed into the corps in 2023. After a flurry of lead roles, he was promoted to soloist at the beginning of the season, a time he describes as “taking that leap of faith and going along for the ride. I’ve surprised myself with what I was actually capable of doing and because of Stanton [Welch] and Julie [Kent]’s support and faith in me.”

Midsummer doubleheader: Houston audiences got to know just how much Best was capable of when he landed major roles—Lysander and Puck—in both casts of John Neumeier’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the start of this season.

What the co-artistic directors are saying: “Eric has such physical intelligence, his mind–body connection is extraordinary,” says Julie Kent. “There’s a divine quality to his dancing. Also, he looks great at every angle.” Stanton Welch shares that “Eric is a phenomenal talent. He is so musical, and brings such detail to my ballets. I get to choreograph without limit, and he makes me want to be a better choreographer.”

Speaking the same language: Best’s affinity for Welch’s intricate choreography comes through in the growing list of Welch’s ballets he’s performed thus far. “Now I can go into his new works knowing what he’s going to bring and what he’s looking for,” says Best. “I just try to come in with the same energy, ready to work.” Clear, originally created after 9/11, made a profound impact on Best. “Every time I watch this ballet or I perform it or rehearse it, I always find something new that ties to the narrative of it.”

Beyond dancing: Best loves drawing and sketching. “Mostly self-portraits, people, sometimes superheroes. I’m very passionate about art and would like to take more classes,” he says. “I always want to make sure that I keep doing the things that interest me besides dance.”

The post Meet Houston Ballet Soloist Eric Best appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I always try to reflect all my experi­ences, and my way of seeing flamenco, when I am choreographing. I want students to be able to capture and see in the creative process how I feel about flamenco, because since I was a very young child it has been a way of life for me. I always remember my homeland of Granada and my teachers in everything I create.

Working with the musical accom­panists is a joint effort. I give my ideas to the musicians and they give me theirs and thus begins the teamwork for choreography.

Improvisation is central to flamenco. I try steps and choreographic material with the dancers until the desired result is found. Improvisation with musicians is also important because, depending on what they contribute, different choreographic ideas also emerge.

Emotion for me is essential, and I try to make it present in all my choreography.

Expressiveness of the face should come naturally, it’s not something that can be learned or practiced. It is important to imbue the choreography with feelings and the personality that distinguishes each one of us.

When working with students at the university, I begin by focusing on the palo [musical form of flamenco] we’re going to choreograph. I look for something with a similar origin that’s already within the students’ realm of understanding, to capture the essence of the land where the palo originates from. I have choreographed to Tangos de Granada and Alegrías de Cádiz, and I’ve tried to ensure that the essence of those two cities, Granada and Cádiz, is reflected in the choreography and interpretation.

It is important never to see yourself as an island and to seek input and inspiration from those around you. I often go and see the work of my colleagues.

Preparing to work outside flamenco, first I listen to the music that I will interpret. Since I am not in my natural environment, I need to identify and become familiar with it. I then go to the studio and start choreographing. I also seek feedback and advice from dance experts outside the project.

As a professional my schedule is often hectic, but the spontaneity of creation arises at any time because, as an artist, I am always restless.

The post Iván Vargas on Creativity and Inspiration in Flamenco appeared first on Dance Magazine.

As a single working mother, Mom’s dedication amidst the height of the 1970s feminist movement was resolute. The studio often became my sanctuary as she worked passionately for what felt like 24 hours a day. She and her colleagues were on a mission, inspired by Mr. Ailey’s fearless vision, on the verge of international flight. Their solidarity was palpable. It grounded me and many other aspiring artists in the New York dance community at the time.

Surrounded by dancers, from all over the globe—New York locals, talents from Baltimore, Brazil, Eastern Europe, Japan, and beyond—I found a surrogate family in the studio. As a child among them, my youth seemed to bring joy to many who were far away from home. The dancers became my guardians; they nurtured me and supported my development.

One of my most memorable guardians was Pearl Lang, who called me Strawberry Girl, because of my love for strawberry yogurt. Ms. Lang was a Martha Graham dancer who had her own company that my mother danced for at the time. She was also the co-director of The Ailey School alongside Mr. Ailey then, a powerful leading feminist voice in the modern dance movement.

Watching these dancers in their classes began to pique my curiosity. It was as if, through their unapologetic nature and fearless subtleties, they revealed unspoken stories. The more I watched, the more I learned. Their whispers became more tenable and refined. The power of this silent expression, and my developing understanding of unspoken narratives, started to awaken the artistry within me that seemed to transcend gender and race.

My witnessing during these early years laid the foundation for my artistic journey and identity. It anchored my practice in the profound humanity and activism that I saw through others. It evolved into a comprehension of human behavior, people at their most powerful moments and in their most vulnerable ones. It was through their silent eloquence that I began to understand the artistic language of the soul. It was not only seeing their development as artists that moved me deeply, but through watching their process as human beings. As I witnessed this personal process, they became the most beautiful human beings in my eyes. I can still see and feel them living out their dreams through integrity and perseverance, one day at a time.

The post Francesca Harper, Artistic Director of Ailey II, Shares How She Found a Surrogate Family in Dance appeared first on Dance Magazine.

With her elongated limbs and polished port de bras, Clark is a remarkably self-possessed dancer who uses her 5′ 10 1/2″ frame to fully inhabit every choreographic moment and musical note. She debuted in a slew of roles in 2023, including the Tall Girl in George Balanchine’s “Rubies” and the lead woman in Haieff Divertimento, which hadn’t been performed by NYCB since 1994. As more opportunities continue to come her way, Clark is determined to squeeze as much as possible out of each experience: “My overarching goal is always to continue growing—in my technique, my artistry, and my approach to new roles.”

Embracing the Unfamiliar
“I love exploring different movement styles, even if they’re not my forte. When I was rehearsing Justin Peck’s sneaker ballet The Times Are Racing, I had to tackle questions like ‘How does my weight need to be distributed differently in a sneaker versus a pointe shoe?’ or ‘How can I syncopate the steps and accent certain moments that reveal different aspects of the music?’ ”

Using Imagination as a Tool
“As an English major at Columbia University, I love storytelling. When preparing for a role, I imagine a character or story to inform my movement. Even for something plotless like Haieff Divertimento or ‘Rubies,’ there’s a certain flavor to each part. It’s helpful to think about steps in terms of analogies and images, ranging from moving my hands through water to embodying a strand of seaweed in the ocean.”

A Recurring Pinch-Me Moment
“Dancing Balanchine’s Serenade always feels like a career-reaffirming experience. I’ve performed it for many seasons, and every time, it hits me that I’m living in the tableau I dreamed of for so long. It’s such a community-based ballet, and one of my favorite things about this career is connecting with the dancers around me—they’re my best friends and greatest sources of inspiration. To dance as part of a group, especially in a ballet containing so much meaning and joy, will always be a highlight.”

The post New York City Ballet Dancer Christina Clark Is Celebrating Every Stage appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I’ve had to, and I still have to, overcome so many adversities in dance. But one thing I am proud of is that, no matter what happens, giving up has never been an option for me. As an artist you learn how to develop love, patience, space, and a deep understanding of why you do what you do.

How does dance make me feel? Is it even a feeling, or is it a moment, a dream, a reality? I only know that I am myself fully when I am onstage dancing. That’s where I feel safe and right at home.

As a Black Latina, immigrant, mother, and woman I carry so much culture and so many ancestors. I embrace all of them. They make me unique, and I bring them to my dance, making it unique.

Over the years my relationship with dance has changed drastically. There have been many ups and downs, disappointments and moments of great happiness, especially after becoming a mother. I can’t quite explain, but I feel more powerful when I am onstage, because onstage I can just be an artist. I don’t have to prove anything. Choosing this art form has given my life a new purpose.

Dance to me is connection, creativity, love, a way to tell a story, and that’s why I do it. But I also see dance as a type of transformation. I continue to expand my artistry on- and offstage. I’m working to change the future of dance.

The post Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Ingrid Silva Shares How She Feels Safe and at Home When Dancing Onstage appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Greta is not real. She’s the personification of the creative idea, as imagined by the Soles of Duende trio: Castro, Brinda Guha, and Arielle Rosales. Other times, a dancer might call out “parking lot,” to table an idea they don’t have time for, or “mangu,” which is the name of a mashed plantain dish and signals they’re too drained or overloaded to think clearly. 

Any group develops their own lingo after spending hours together. But for three dancers working in different physical languages—kathak (Guha), flamenco (Rosales), and tap (Castro)—this shared verbal lexicon streamlines the creative process. “They don’t share the same style, but they share the same kind of creative energy,” says tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith, who recently worked with the trio during a residency at the Chelsea Factory in New York City. “Some collaborations can feel forced. But with them, you feel the chemistry, you feel the camaraderie.” And at a moment when cross-cultural conversations can feel fraught, these artists are showcasing the power of embracing our differences.      

Distinct Voices in Harmony

Soles of Duende, or “Soles” as the dancers call it, started in 2016 when Guha and Rosales had an opportunity to perform at Dixon Place. The pair had met as colleagues at Broadway Dance Center and had already done a few projects together, and they wanted to weave in an additional percussive dance voice this time. “We needed a third sound so it wasn’t just a back-and-forth, but a conversation amongst a team,” says Guha. Then, at Run The Night, a commercial dance competition led by Jared Grimes, Guha watched Castro set the audience afire with a tap dance solo to an excerpt of “Winter,” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. She knew she’d found their third voice.   

The first time all three gathered as a group was for a publicity-photo shoot for the piece they hadn’t begun rehearsing for yet. Still, the vibes flowed. “It was like we were all long-lost friends,” says Guha.

The work they created was a hit, and they were asked to perform it again…and again. “People want to see virtuosity in music and rhythm that doesn’t include machismo and competition,”­ says Guha. By 2018, Soles was back at Dixon Place as artists in residence creating the first iteration of their full-length work Can We Dance Here? That work has since become­ a calling card, with the latest version taking the stage at The Joyce Theater this January as part of the American Dance Platform. 

In the audience of that 2018 run was critic and curator Eva Yaa Asantewaa, who, wowed by their vivacity and generosity as performers, would later commission Soles for Gibney’s Spotlight Series in New York City. “I was completely won over, not only by their individual technical and aesthetic capabilities but also by the seamless, joyful way they blended these discrete percussive dance styles and energies,” she says.

Experimentation and Negotiation

In Soles’ work, the dancers sometimes “pass the mic” back and forth, and sometimes dance in unison. But much of the magic happens when they each tackle the same rhythm in their own style, showcasing just how many similarities live within their differences. “We hear music very similarly often, but the way we physically execute the step is very different,” Rosales says. To get a better sense of each other’s weight distribution, the three will sometimes put on each other’s shoes, or Guha’s ghungroo ankle bells, and do traditional warm-ups in each other’s forms. 

Choreographing is a constant negotiation—with each other, and with how they represent their forms. “We have a Boricua from Connecticut doing tap dance. We have a Mexican Jew who grew up on the Lower East Side doing flamenco. We have a Bengali American who’s learning a North Indian classical dance form in New Jersey,” says Guha. “Are we even allowed to make these artistic decisions? And when do we move forward with and without blessings, and when do we experiment in good faith?” Those questions are part of what informed the title of Can We Dance Here? (The other part is more literal: The trio has often been offered residencies, but told they couldn’t make noise and wouldn’t have a percussive floor.)

All three are very aware that work in historically marginalized forms must be done with integrity. “Even when we have choreographic disagreements, we’re like, ‘Well, why do you feel like that?’ And then we end up having an hour-long conversation about history and why this step is this way,” says Castro. 

Yes, They Can Dance Here

Today, Soles also includes three live musicians. They’re treated as both a band and a dance group, which can open up opportunities at many types of venues but can also sometimes mean performing on small stages with amazing sound quality but little space to move. Now, with a 2023 Bessie nomination for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer and rave reviews in The New York Times, they’re hoping to get the best of both worlds soon. This year, the group is wrapping up the final performances of Can We Dance Here? and working on a new feature-length work to premiere in 2025. 

They’ve stopped asking for permission to dance because, wherever they are, they know they’ll find a way to do it. “Even when we wait for the train to go back home, we’ll hear the subway and we’ll just start clapping,” says Rosales. “And now we’re jamming and stomping and doing vocals to the sound of the train going by. That’s how we hang out.”

Meet the Trio: Amanda Castro

When people ask Amanda Castro what kind of dancer she is, she likes to tell them “I’m a storyteller.” 

She could also say she was that BFA student who choreographed tap dance numbers at the experimental California Institute of the Arts, even after the dean told her not to. Or that she followed four years at Urban Bush Women with stints in a regional production of In the Heights and as Anita in a tour of West Side Story. Or that she now works with heavy-hitting tap dance stars like Ayodele Casel, Dormeshia, Jason Samuels Smith, Jared Grimes, Caleb Teicher, and others. She could mention being one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2023, and winning a Bessie for Outstanding Performer later that year. 

But she sticks with what she sees as her mission as a dancer: to tell stories. “Yes, there are different languages, which are the different styles of dance,” she says. “But I’m here to provide a service to the people.”

Meet the Trio: Brinda Guha

Collaboration has long driven Brinda Guha’s work. It’s even why she fell in love with kathak itself. “I realized how kathak was a confluence of Hindu and Muslim cultures and religions, how it exemplifies how people actually work together and live together and express together and make music together,” she says. 

Today, in addition to her work as a dancer and company manager with Soles of Duende, Guha is the artistic director of contemporary Indian dance ensemble Kalamandir Dance Company, curator of arts showcase Wise Fruit NYC, and senior producing coordinator for Dance/NYC. Her main goals are to investigate what makes any art form contemporary and to work from a place that’s driven by the feminine divine, whether in the exploration of contemporary Indian dance in her personal dance practice or through collaboration. 

To better understand the essen­tial elements of dance, she’s sought out practitioners from other forms.  It’s why she first decided to collaborate with Arielle Rosales. “There was this dialogue around where our personal styles found a way to speak to each other cohesively, and when they were in dissonance,” Guha says. That dialogue has only grown deeper through her work in Soles. 

Meet the Trio: Arielle Rosales

On her website, Arielle Rosales calls herself a “social engagement performing artist.” It was a term she chose, she says, because she could never find the right words to describe her work: “Just saying ‘flamenco dancer’ felt inaccurate.” 

In addition to pushing the boundaries of flamenco, Rosales is a percussionist with an all-woman Afro-Brazilian band, and she once ran a multicultural dance school in East Harlem called House of Duende (which hosted some of Soles of Duende’s first rehearsals and led to the group’s name). The phrase “social engagement” also felt like it better encompassed her love of engaging directly with the audi­ence through site-specific work and the lecture-demonstrations she does with Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana. 

Still, Rosales admits that the term initially came out of a place of fear that her experimentations with the form meant she didn’t fully qualify­ as a flamenco dancer. But that’s changed. “Over the seven years with Soles, because we are so intentional about what traditional things we’re using, and when we’re breaking the rules, in that journey of integrity, now I will call myself a flamenco dancer fully,” she says. “I don’t feel any more like anyone can take that away from me.” 

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But attend a Company 360 Dance Theatre performance and the tables are turned. The Fredericksburg, Virginia–based company, led by choreographer Bailey Anne Vincent, who is Deaf, incorporates American Sign Language into all its productions. “If you’re a Deaf person, you’re in on the story more than a hearing person,” says Vincent.

For Vincent, using ASL in her choreography—which might mean incorporating a sign to emphasize an emotion a character is feeling, or to communicate what a lyric is saying—is both an artistic choice and an accessibility-related one. Though her audience is mostly hearing, “I still try to approach all our shows assuming there might be someone who is Deaf in the audience,” she says. But it’s also just a natural extension of the fact that ASL is Vincent’s preferred language. “When I choreograph, the way that my mind thinks is in my own language,” she says. “So even if I don’t want it to, sign finds its way into whatever I’m choreographing. It can’t really be extracted.”

Deaf actress and dancer Alexandria Wailes feels similarly. “Dance and using ASL are both so embedded in who I am, as part of my identity,” says Wailes through an interpreter. “I can’t really separate one from the other.”

For artists, like Vincent and Wailes, who are fluent in both the actual language of ASL and the proverbial one of dance, the intersection of the two embodied forms offers limitless creative potential, and the vital opportunity­ to make accessibility efforts less perfunctory and more integrated and enriching. Though incorporating ASL into choreographic work is not a new phenomenon—Deaf-led companies and Deaf artists have long done it—it’s becoming increasingly common on increasingly mainstream stages.

To get a sense of the deepening relationship between dance and ASL, look at choreographer and performer Brandon Kazen-Maddox’s career thus far. A GODA (grandchild of Deaf adults) and native ASL signer, Kazen-Maddox was long one of the New York City performing arts scene’s go-to interpreters, a reliable presence at performances, talkbacks, and more.

But in 2019, choreographer Kayla Hamilton asked Kazen-Maddox to join her New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks piece not as an interpreter but as an artist. “She asked me to represent all sounds in sign language, and also use my body as a dancer,” says Kazen-Maddox. “It was the most mind-shifting thing for me, because I was seen as an artist and a dancer and a performer, and was also representing in sign language everything that was happening.”

The experience was the beginning of a shift in Kazen-Maddox’s career, away from simply facilitating communication between­ Deaf and hearing individuals as an interpreter­ and towards an emerging genre Kazen-Maddox calls “American Sign Language dance theater.” But it was also indicative of a wider shift in the performing arts, one that is more artistically fulfilling for Deaf and ASL-fluent artists and that also repositions accessibility: Rather than something tacked on to and separate from the performance, it is something deeply ingrained and integrated.

Always key to this work, says Wailes: Deaf or Hard of Hearing performers who are “bilingual” in dance and ASL. “If you’re trying to be more inclusive, great,” she says. “Who are the people who are onstage? What are their lived experiences and how does this reveal itself­ in the work? We should continue to push towards­ the embracing of more people who have never been welcomed in these spaces.”

The Question of the Audience: Who Is It For?

Until recently, Betsy Quillen experienced performances for Deaf audiences and hearing audiences separately. “It’s one or the other—it’s very isolated,” says Quillen, who is a Hard of Hearing actor and theater director. “There are Deaf shows, and there are hearing shows, and very rarely do the two feel comfortable together.”

So when choreographer William Smith asked Quillen to collaborate with him on a piece for Roanoke Ballet Theatre that incorporated sign language, they had a clear goal: to make something that both Deaf and hearing audiences could understand and enjoy. “My specific role was making sure that Deaf eyes would understand it, and that we were making our Deaf audiences feel welcomed and included and respected,” says Quillen. “But we also made sure to show our hearing audience that this piece is made even more beautiful because we’ve included the Deaf audiences—that all of this ASL in every part of the production is enhancing the experience for everybody in the audience.”

The question of who a production is for, and how many in the audience will be fluent in ASL, isn’t always a straightforward one, says Alexandria Wailes, a Deaf dancer who blended dance and ASL in the recent Broadway revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. “Most of the time, it’s going to be people who don’t know ASL,” she says through an interpreter. “So what does that mean, in terms of what I’m sharing? I’m very aware that most of the audience is probably not going to quickly understand what I am saying. I just have to express it.”

But even that imperfect understanding can spur new ways of thinking. “The reactions I received from a lot of people after shows—their brains had shifted,” says Wailes. “For me, that was really exciting, because it means my work is encouraging people to think outside of what they’re used to experiencing with dance and signing.”

“ASL Is a Language, Not Just Something You Look At”

For artists and audiences who are not fluent in ASL, signs can sometimes be indistinguishable from choreography. And when hearing artists and audiences value how signs look over what they mean, the fusion of dance and ASL can become offensive rather than enriching. Antoine Hunter PurpleFireCrow, founder and director of Urban Jazz Dance Company and the Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival, gives the example of a hearing choreographer asking him to “reverse” a sign because it would look cool, which then made it meaningless or changed it into a distasteful word.

“When people who are not native signers see ASL incorporated with movement, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so beautiful,’ ” says Alexandria Wailes, a Deaf dancer and actor, through an interpreter. “Which is valid in its own right, but ASL is a language that is tied to culture, communities, and history. It’s not just something that you look at or do because it feels cool and it’s beautiful.”

That doesn’t mean ASL always has to be used literally, or that it can’t be an opportunity for experimentation. In fact, the expectation that ASL be completely legible in an artistic setting can limit Deaf artists, when there’s no similar expectation that spoken language in performance always be logical or straightforward. (For instance, it’s not uncommon for performers to say absurd sentences, or experiment with strange deliveries.)

“The forcing of it to be legible, or to be understood, is not allowing for the people who live it to speak their truth,” says Yusha-Marie Sorzano, a Hard of Hearing choreographer who collaborated on a 2020 solo for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performer Samantha Figgins that incorporated ASL.

For Hunter, this might look like using signs that are actually the total opposite of what the lyrics of the song are conveying. “As with any other language, ASL can be used poetically, rhythmically, artistically, metaphorically,” shares Hunter.

“I think it’s really beautiful when you begin to weave languages, because in the weaving comes the new word,” Sorzano says. “How fascinating is it that a sign that represents ‘I am’ can be woven next to a renversé? And does that become a new way of being­ ‘I am’? There’s this beauty in what happens when you build something new.”

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Figgins trained at the legendary Jones-Haywood School of Ballet (now Jones-Haywood Dance School) in Washington, DC, then danced leading roles as a member of Dance Theatre of Harlem and performed in the Broadway shows Motown: The Musical and Memphis, among others. Her focus now is on creating caring environments for dancers, and she’s guiding Ballet Tech’s recent initiative to make dance education more accessible in New York City’s public schools.

Dancing is important regardless of whether you’re going to do it professionally or not. Ballet Tech Across New York is about students having a truly enriching experience with dance. Obviously, our hope is that students will graduate from Ballet Tech and use their training to continue pursuing dance and the performing arts, but what about all the students who choose to not pursue performative arts? How are we engaging them? C​reating a safe environment for people to explore dance​ encourages people to remain involved in ​the dance​ community.

We’re giving something back to these communities that are allowing us to come into their schools to identify potential students for our program. These enrichment programs allow us the opportunity to see beyond what the physical body looks like to all the other components that make a dancer a dancer: creativity, musicality, coordination, and the ability to follow directions. An audition process could feel extractive, like we’re going in identifying students who have talent and taking them out of their communities. Now, we’re making sure all the students have a really great experience with dance.

Ballet Tech Across New York offers­ two different tracks. There are schools that already have dance built into their programming, and those schools might want something that’s a little more rigorous, our BT Ballet Basics. The second track, Dance for EveryBODY, lets everybody know that they can dance. The reality is that some bodies don’t want to ​have a straight​ened knee or a pointed foot, or turnout, and th​ose bodies should ​also be able to access dance. In the Dance for EveryBODY class, we do some creative movement, some improvisation, some isolations, and some ballet ​steps, as well.

I’m trying to provide students with what I would have wanted for myself and my peers when I was training. I grew up learning ballet in a predominantly ​Black ​dance community​. I didn’t have to assimilate and leave my cultural expressions of movement​ at the studio door, an experience I have heard time and time again from other Black dance professionals training in predominantly white ballet spaces. ​

When you are Black in ballet, it’s even more pressing to be able to have a critical, intellectual conversation about ballet, because you might not be taken seriously in certain spaces if you can’t. I want students to have as much language and as much learning as possible. Can ​we be critical about stories like Swan Lake? It’s a super-problematic story: Von Rothbart is keeping all these women against their wil​l. Being critical of these works allows us to breathe new life into them, making them more accessible and relatable to this generation.

Dance is not specific for any particular body type or cultural group. It’s something that all of us can enjoy. Sometimes people conflate “ballet” with “dance.” But ballet is just one way people dance, not the only way. I want to give students as much information as possible, so they have as many options as possible as they enter the ever-evolving world of dance.

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Current project: Madonna’s The Celebration Tour

Age: 30

Hometown: Layton, Utah

Training: Dance Impressions (Farmington, Utah), New York City Dance Alliance, Marymount Manhattan College

Accolades: Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Dancer in a Broadway Show, for Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’

Inspiring others: Andy Pellick vividly remembers noticing Love’s “special sauce” when she was around 12 years old taking his jazz class at NYCDA. Over the years since, when working on choreography “she gives you what you didn’t know you wanted,” he says. “She inspires a choreographer or a teacher or another dancer by doing moves in a way that you didn’t even know was possible. She’s able to be a muse for a lot of people, myself included.”

Swing success: Love was an ensemble dancer in the national tour of Wicked before the pandemic shutdown, and when the show returned, she rejoined as a swing. “The more tracks I learned, it was actually easier to remember them all, because I could understand where everyone was at any given time,” she says. “Swinging almost feels like an out-of-body experience. I can see things in slow motion.”

Dancin’ dreams: Love won a Chita Rivera Award for last year’s Broadway run of Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’. “That show is the dancer’s dream,” she says. “It’s so visceral but also nuanced, and it captured all the essences of what I want to be and portray.” She also loved her castmates. “It’s a game changer when you like everyone you work with and there is a real camaraderie. That’s the first show where I fully got to be myself. We all did.”

Exploring the world: When Love joined Madonna’s world tour—currently running through April, with 79 stops across Europe and North America—it took time to get used to the schedule, which sometimes includes rehearsals until 2 or 3 am. (The choreography is credited to a who’s who of creative minds, including (LA)HORDE, Valeree Young, Matt Cady, Damien Jalet, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Mecnun Giasar, Megan Lawson, and Nicolas Huchard.) Now that she’s up to speed, she takes full advantage of immersing herself in new cultures on tour. “I love to go to fitness studios, and I’ve been taking classes in different languages,” she says. “I’m also very interested in body language, so it’s been fascinating to sit in coffee shops and learn from the people in front of me.”

More than clothes: Love documents her funky, fun personal style on social media, and she’s found comfort in using fashion as another mode of expressing herself. She’s interested in eventually bringing some of that sensibility into costume design.

Growing and trusting: “Dance has saved me many times, gotten me through many heartbreaks,” says Love. “I’m now finding my voice more. I know I have things to offer, and I find that they’re being received. I’m trusting that even though I may not always feel like I fit in, I know that I belong.”

The post Meet Mattie Love, Performer With Madonna’s The Celebration Tour appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Theodore has been dancing with A.I.M ever since, bringing groundedness, fluidity, spontaneity, and precision. She’s also a presence elsewhere in the New York City dance world, teaching beginner house at Ailey Extension and deeply immersed in the house scene. Such a full plate might sound overwhelming, but it’s by design. “Dance brings me joy, so much so that it can be hard to decide which path I want to go down,” Theodore says. “But the one thing I know is that I want to continue to find newness in as many aspects of this art form as possible.”

New York or Nowhere

“There is no place like NYC. I love the street style scene—it’s so raw and beautiful. I attend many dance battles, including Battle 101, which is run by my friend Huu Rock. It’s a beginner battle, so you’re able to watch dancers grow over the years as they continue to participate, which is really inspiring. Battle events are a total party. Everyone’s dancing between each round, and the love of dance is palpable.”

A Eureka Moment

“In 2020, Kyle [Abraham] set the solo ‘Little Girl Blue’ on me, part of the full-length work If We Were a Love Song. It was one of my favorite moments. I loved performing something so true to Kyle’s art form, but also so true to me. I was able to find my voice and portray very real emotion. The process allowed me to investigate the role and figure out what I wanted people to feel while I was dancing.”

Student and Teacher

“When I’m teaching, I often say that I don’t feel ready to teach just yet—I feel like I’m still at the beginning of my dance career! I began teaching because I’m really passionate about house dance and teaching helps expand on that. I often teach for A.I.M, too. I learn so much about the dancers through teaching. I just love dance so much, so to transmit my love in this educational way is both challenging and fulfilling.”

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The Backstory

First things first. Harrell grew up in Douglas, Georgia; his family was part of a Southern, land-owning Black elite—educated and well-established for generations despite segregation and its discontents. The Harrells have a singular sense of history. Harrell explains that his godmother named him Trajal after the Roman emperor Trajan, and his father chose Aurelius as his middle name after the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. “It was funny being born in Southeast Georgia with this Roman namesake heritage!” Harrell says. 

In his youth Harrell was a gymnast and an avid learner, excelling in school and participating in “history day” competitions, a staple in many secondary school districts nationwide. He remem­bers that he “was kinda the leader—writing, directing, and performing with a group of other students. We won group performance statewide for six years. Clearly, this making performances based on history is still with me.”

At Yale University he majored in American Studies with a concentration in creative processes, thinking he would focus on theater and acting. However, once introduced to the embodied stagecraft of director Anne Bogart and Mary Overlie’s “Six Viewpoints” system of movement research, he felt “it was like coming home, coming back to my body,” and he claims that he “didn’t want to speak onstage anymore. I started making movement-based work.” Around this time a friend said that perhaps he was trying to be a choreographer.

After graduating, he gravitated toward dance and moved to New York City, having also touched down on the West Coast for a short stint in San Francisco. He studied briefly at the Martha Graham School and took composition workshops “with Trisha Brown, herself, and with Yvonne Rainer, herself,” he says. He also found his way to Harlem’s voguing balls and the runway culture of the city’s fashion district—and, later, to butoh, which he studied in Tokyo.

The Inspirations

Harrell cites history as “a way to enliven the imagination.” His repertory is full of historical “what ifs,” beginning with the now-legendary Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church. Between 2009 and 2017, this project was staged numerous­ times in, as he describes it, “various sizes,” nationally and abroad. His witty historical proposition explains­ the long title: What if the largely Black, queer voguing community—brought to mainstream attention by the 1990 film Paris Is Burning—came “downtown” and brought its expressive, glamorous, “over-the-top” genre to Judson Church, Greenwich Village’s temple of minimalist dance?

Many of Harrell’s evening-length works create spaces for different eras and philosophies to converge. Take, for example, these excerpts from the program note for The Romeo, which premiered in 2023:

Picture a dance. Let’s call it the “Romeo,” after Shakespeare’s young lover who, in ignited enthusiasm, believed he could conquer death…. [I]magine this dance that people of all origins, genders, and generations, of all temperaments and moods, dance when they face their tragedies and only dance. 

A Harrell dance named after a Shakespearean character will not restate that famous play. Instead, his aesthetic foundations and his personal conceptual scaffolding foreground choreography that is imaginatively wide-ranging, transcultural, intersectional, and futuristic.

Consider the artists Harrell cites as influences. “Sigmar Polke, the visual artist, blew my mind,” Harrell says. “The writer, theorist, and filmmaker Trinh Minh-ha changed my life. I have been inspired by the architecture of Tadao Ando.” Polke produced paintings focused on historical events and perceptions; Minh-ha theorized postcoloniality and feminism; Ando’s architecture reflects Japanese spirituality and Zen-like simplicity. Similar elements can be found in the themes, stage design, costumes, visual richness, and overall “architecture” of Harrell’s creations.

The Movement 

Although his work has evolved since its beginnings, Harrell’s movement vocabulary engages two central motifs. There’s the walking—dancing—on relevé, as though wearing stiletto high heels, while leaning, tilting, sliding, turning, sometimes teetering, yet remaining upright. It’s a challenging balancing act, and his dancers excel in creating character nuances within this limitation. A kick-up-your-heels, dance-till-you-drop, bacchanal “folk” dance is another leitmotif. These modes persist in works as different as Twenty Looks and the recent Monkey off My Back or the Cat’s Meow (2021). 

In Harrell’s universe, nothing is rushed, regardless of rhythm or tempo. Each work takes its time. The present moment­ is his friend, and he invites us to languish and breathe in the heady spaciousness of his vision. He shows a visual artist’s sense of stagecraft, props, and costuming. The floor design in Monkey off My Back… is a stunning rectangular grid of Mondrian-like colored blocks spanning the length of the performance space, with white platform modules set in sofa-like shapes at the center. The audience is seated lengthwise both sides. This longitudinal stretch is used as a catwalk, a dance floor, a showplace. 

Harrell’s self-created pop/rock/new music choices speak tropes of love, loss, tumult, and even trance. These elements add up to a repertory of elegance, passion, and compassion, with the dancers delineating their personal constellations in Harrell’s galaxy, in what he says is “a sharing of style, not a mimicry of my movement.” The ensemble is keenly adept at inhabiting this style while adroitly making it their own. The results are exquisitely poignant embodied portraits, including the characters elicited in his sensational Köln Concert, choreographed in 2020, during the pandemic—the first work made in his role as director of the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble. Other portraits, as in the poetically zany Caen Amour, explode with the wily wit and arch humor that Harrell uses to restore popular entertainment varieties to contemporary theater, as it had in ancient Greek and Shakespearean times.

Explaining that he isn’t “the kind of choreographer who can sit back and watch the picture,” Harrell generally dances in his creations. “It must go through my body,” he says. “The choreographer in me has ideas, but I don’t believe in them until the dancer in me signs the contract.”

A tradition that reflects Harrell’s respect for the audience begins before the performance itself. He sometimes stands onstage to greet the audience, who might find him watching with detached though friendly interest as they enter. This reminds us that we are about to see a presentation—that he and his dancers are real people, that performance is mindful artifice. He is intentional with this because, he declares, “I’m in love with my audience. I don’t discriminate. I just love them all, that’s the only way. I usually can’t wait for the opening night: standing onstage, watching them enter. I love that. I love them.”

The Next Steps 

Later in 2024, Harrell will conclude his successful tenure as director of the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble. In his five years there he created six major works and trained a sterling cadre of ensemble artists. He contemplates his next steps, musing that Zürich “is where I’ll change to the next period of my work: After runway/early-postmodern dance was the first phase, and then butoh/modern dance, now the third phase is coming.” In addition to continuing to develop his company, it may well involve visual arts and opera work. 

Fasten your seatbelts for the takeoff, dance lovers!

Butoh Mind

Trajal Harrell is deeply stirred by butoh. “My big inspirations now are Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata,” he says. With these forceful influences, a title is more than a name, and a dance event is a special meeting place unlike any other. It is a moment of what Harrell calls “butoh mind.” “Butoh mind is invigorating—where you show the things about yourself that aren’t beautiful,” Harrell says. “When you allow yourself to dance from that place where you can never be perfect, something else happens. People feel that. People recognize it. They know it’s inside them. That becomes beauty!”

In 2013 he first visited Tokyo to study butoh in its birthplace. “I am looking at butoh through the theoretical lens of voguing and voguing through the theoretical lens of butoh,” he says. The result is a deft interfacing of voguing’s glorious pageantry and elaborate flourishes with the guttural, visceral passion of butoh, widening the lens on both genres and creating a captivating hybrid. 

What the Dancers Say

Ondrej Vidlar and Thibault Lac began working with Trajal Harrell in 2010. Early on the three dancers worked in duos or trios, “touring from one gig to the other with costumes and set in a suitcase,” Lac says, describing this period as “a process of unlearning, in a way, an emancipation from certain tastes and values about dance learned in school.” 

Vidlar enjoys working with the mosaic of performers Harrell brings together, and is grateful that Harrell grants them “the freedom to express his ideas through their own understanding.” He and Lac have a “like family” relationship with Harrell, having developed professionally in and through his artistic vision. 

Nasheeka Nedsreal has worked with Harrell since 2018, in Maggie the Cat (2019), Monkey off My Back or the Cat’s Meow (2021), Deathbed (2022), and The Romeo (2023). She cites her admiration of the choreographer’s “subtlety and the delicateness and precision of his approach. Even though we work in the conceptual, there’s deep emotional expression that’s often required, and I appreciate that.” 

As an African American woman who, like Harrell, grew up in the American South, Nedsreal sees similarities in their aesthetic processes. “Though I’m not sure where this lust of ours for freedom and improvisation comes from,” she says, “I’m certain there are links to the music of the South, jazz and blues, as well as from the traditions of the church and Black families.” She concludes, wisely: “You can take us out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of us!”

The post Enlivening the Imagination: Trajal Harrell’s Rich Repertoire of Transcultural, Intersectional, and Futuristic Works appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But the art that I loved didn’t dependably love me back. As I got older, it was impossible to ignore that my Blackness quietly dictated what others in positions of control—teachers, friends, parents of dancers—believed I was capable of. That prejudice became more and more central to my relationship with dance and threatened to eclipse the joy it brought to me.

Nonetheless, I persevered. I applied and was accepted to the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance. I was almost immediately grounded with a serious knee injury that kept me from dancing for my first semester. It was an unexpected blessing: Because I could not dance, I spent hours in the dance library. I suddenly had the capacity to read and watch the history of modern dance unfold. As I was introduced to the art’s most important names, a determination gripped me. I emerged from my recovery with a clearer understanding of contemporary dance as a uniquely American art form, no less than jazz or rock and roll. The Americanness of modern dance inspired a surprising patriotism within me and a drive to add my own contributions to a legacy I had been previously told wasn’t mine to share.

The realization of modern dance as cultural birthright, not just pure entertainment, gave me permission to bring my full self to the art. My Blackness, my womanness, my muchness (even my too muchness!) all came out as an expression of freedom that has expanded my artistry. As I have transitioned to the front of the room, this epiphany has helped me empower my dancers to bring their cultures and full selves to bear inside the space. Twenty-five years of experience have changed what dancing feels like for me. Now, when I dance, I am whole. I feel expansive. I am joyful and I feel proud.

Dance is power personified. My hope is that the next generation of dancers can start where I’ve arrived: knowing that our art form gives us the tools we need to acknowledge we are important and we belong.

The post Tiffany Rea-Fisher, Artistic Director of EMERGE125, on How She Grew to Embrace Modern Dance—and Herself as a Black Woman appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Now in his 13th season with Houston Ballet, Watters, who was promoted to first soloist in 2021, has found himself in a position to help create a sense of belonging for others. He started a video series, “The Pre-Show,” in 2015. “I was starting to peel back the curtain on what it was to be a classical ballet dancer, and I was breaking the mold and shifting peoples’ perceptions of what a classical ballet dancer looks like, who they love, how they act, what interests them,” he says. That sometimes called for dancing in sky-high heels on a treadmill, and other times shining a light on the work of Black, queer dancers Watters has been inspired by. “If I authentically share the work that I’m putting into the roles I’m dancing, and the dancers who inspire me, and the things that I love, then my hope is that maybe that inspires others to advocate for themselves or other people who need it.”

The Initial Spark

“My love of dance actually started from watching the Olympics and seeing Dominique Dawes on the balance beam. And then one of the first gifts my parents got me was the New York City Ballet production of The Nutcracker with Macaulay Culkin on VHS. That inspired me to put on little shows in my living room, and the curiosity about dance and what it was led me to taking classes.”

An Eye-Opening Moment

“My dad was an English professor at the University of New Hampshire, and we would go see the touring companies that performed there. When the Alvin Ailey second company came, that was a big moment for me because I had loved dance, I had obsessed over dance, but I had never seen anybody the way that I looked dance. It felt natural to say, ‘Oh, I have to be a modern dancer, and that’s where I’m supposed to be,’ but I think that is somewhat limiting. The second that I came to Houston in 2009, that’s when classical ballet felt attainable, because I felt like I had one foot in the door.”

A Memorable Part

“I had never really thought I was a prince or embodied what a prince was, so the journey of dancing my first Prince in Stanton Welch’s The Nutcracker was a big moment for me. It’s also a great opportunity to lead a ballet, and I was promoted to demi-soloist during that time.”

A Dream Role

“Roles like Romeo that are of the human experience and you’re dealing with loss and telling a story, they were quite intimidating to me. But having danced in and kind of touched on roles that are very character-driven recently, I’d love to dance Romeo in Romeo & Juliet.”

A Piece of History:

“Every time I revisit Stanton Welch’s Clear, I discover new things. I’ve danced it with dear friends like Chun Wai [Chan], and now I’ve danced it with Naazir [Muhammad] and Eric Best in New York. With Julie [Kent], who originated the role, now being our co-director, it’s really special to have her in the studio working with us.”

His Pre-Performance Routine:

“I used to be someone, because of my age, where I could sort of walk into the show and just hit it. But over the past few years, I really need to get my body ready for what it’s about to do, and Pilates has been a big part of my routine. I like to do it in the morning, and if we have shows, I’ll go in about two hours before and do my Pilates warm up to really set my body up.”

The post How First Soloist Harper Watters Creates Community at Houston Ballet appeared first on Dance Magazine.

My dance journey has been inspired by countless performances and artists, each providing a unique perspective. But all roads, no matter how beautiful, are fraught with challenges, and I faced two great ones throughout my career. The first was my recovery from a torn ACL during a performance—an ordeal that challenged me physically and mentally long after my surgery and rehab. The support of fellow dancers was my beacon through uncertainty as I worked my way back to the stage. The second test came with the onset of COVID-19. Virtual classes, masked rehearsals, and an uncertain future gripped the dance world, yet my commitment remained unshaken. I took the initiative to create, connect, and share my knowledge through choreography, video projects, and unconventional collaborations, keeping myself immersed in movement in any way that I could.

Personal obstacles have also marked my dance path. Growing up in poverty, enduring bullying for being a male ballet dancer, and navigating identity complexities within the dance world presented daunting hurdles. Yet, these challenges forged my commitment to self-discovery and advocacy for my art. I continue to draw inspiration from others. Sorella Englund’s mentorship accelerated my growth. More recently, I have been moved by the magical storytelling of Johan Inger’s Carmen.

Stepping onto the stage brings me an unparalleled sense of calm. It’s where I breathe, shine through roles, and connect with the energy of an audience. Every choreographer brings a unique approach, but the stage remains where my love for dance is rekindled. In the studio, my work has evolved, especially as a father of two boys. It’s my sanctuary for wholeheartedly perfecting my craft.

In moments of exhaustion, my loving family, energetic kids, and close friends remind me of life’s joys beyond dance. Over time, my relationship with dance has deepened. I’ve embraced the transformative power of movement and its impact on others. Even on the toughest days, I find strength to face self-doubts and cheer myself on onstage. Sharing extraordinary ballets with fellow artists and acknowledging the passage of time has led me to appreciate the choices in my dance career.

Being a dancer has defined my life profoundly. It’s taught me the power of inspiring others through authentic narratives. It’s molded me into the person I am today, allowing me to overcome adversity, experience the full spectrum of emotions, and ultimately thrive. Dance has granted me the opportunity to explore, understand, and shape a rich tapestry of human experiences, for which I am eternally grateful.

The post Boston Ballet Principal John Lam Shares the Challenges He’s Overcome in His 20-Year Career appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Natalio has joined the teams of operas and immersive productions, choreographed the hit Pyer Moss Couture fashion show in 2021, and led the movement vision of multiple new musicals. Following her 2022 role as associate choreographer on Broadway’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, this month her own choreography hits Broadway in How to Dance in Ohio, a story of seven autistic young adults preparing for a spring formal.

For Natalio to effectively work with different types of artists—from professional dancers to actors with little to no movement experience—she’s had to fine-tune her communication skills and develop a clear way to make everyone feel safe to explore.

I always want to make the company feel like I’m one of them, that we are peers, and that I’m learning from them just as much as they’re learning from me. Even though I may be the one in the front of the room, their voices are just as important as mine. I want them to feel comfortable honestly expressing what feels good and what doesn’t. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll change something every time there’s an opinion about it, but I might be able to teach it differently or make a modification.

When I’m initially generating new material, there’s room to make mistakes and for things to be muddy. But when it’s time to teach choreography to a new group of people in a rehearsal process, I need to come in with clarity. My tendency is to move quickly, but the key is to slow down, teach steps in small chunks, and have patience while going over it multiple times.

I pride myself on pushing people to step out of their comfort zones and do things they wouldn’t normally do. But for that to happen, they have to feel safe and not judged. I try to avoid comparing performers to one another or singling people out to demonstrate, because that can lead to unnecessary self-consciousness or even stunt someone’s personal breakthrough.

Working with actors has definitely made me a better storyteller. Actors need a reason. If they’re invested in their character, they need to know why they’re doing something. So it creates a beautiful opportunity for me to lean into that and not just teach steps, but teach the intention behind them. If I can tie the choreography to the story or to a particular emotion, it helps the actors find texture and dynamics in their movement.

I can tell when things are landing, when things are not, when I’m losing people. I can tell when we need to go over a step again, and I can also tell when something is becoming stale and we need to switch gears. I try to learn how each person receives notes and adjustments most successfully—one artist welcomes a lot of notes, I might need to whisper them to another, and someone else might get overwhelmed quickly and I recognize when they’re at capacity.

I like rigor, I like hard work. I like to drill and push and make people sweat, that’s all good. But it’s important to pair that with humor and levity. We can’t always be too serious!

In all genres, you’re going to get great performances when the people onstage are proud of what they’re doing. As the choreographer, sometimes I need to sacrifice a move I thought was fierce in order to be more mindful of what the performer is actually best at. It’s a collaboration.

The post How Choreographer Mayte Natalio Tailors Her Approach to the Artists in the Room With Her 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.

The post Introducing Our 2024 “25 to Watch” appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Pam started dancing when she was in fourth grade and “it just stuck,” she says. At Steffi Nossen­ School of Dance in Scarsdale, New York, she “sponged” as much dance knowledge as she could from her teachers. She started with modern and then took on jazz and ballet, with a brief stint in pointe class. “I was a good dancer, not a great dancer. I could only go up [on pointe] on my right foot. It was weird.” While she may not have excelled in the execution of the steps, Pam’s work now borrows from each of these genres expertly.

At Ohio State, she realized she was more interested in making work than trying to fit into someone else’s mold. After college, she moved right to New York City. From then until I was born in 2000, her work went relatively unnoticed. She acknowledges the frustrations of this time in her career, but, in hindsight, she’s extremely grateful for it.

“It allowed me the time to work when no one was watching me,” she says. “That was invaluable. I just did things and I didn’t think. For better or for worse, I had a nice group of friends who helped me. You have to learn to create yourself with those around you.”

I hardly remember a time when her work wasn’t at the forefront of dance conversations. But after I was born, she tells me, was when good things started happening for her.

“You made me a better artist. I felt like I made better work after I was a mother. I realized that it’s not just about me—there are bigger things. Having a child makes you see that fast.”

“This is a good interview,” my mom tells me, laughing—always encouraging my passions and allowing me the space to explore them. She’s always just wanted me to love what I do, as she does. My writing is a reflection of that.

My friends and I, as young artists in New York City, are always picking her brain and asking her how she did it. She tells me that, as an assistant professor at Rutgers University, all of her students constantly ask her the same question.

“There’s no real formula,” she says. “You just have to love it enough that even if nobody ever sees what you make, you’re still happy.”

The post Why My Mom, Pam Tanowitz, Dances appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I call the second room the “performance room.” You have these ballet dancers in these beautiful costumes, embodying perfection, but once you walk around, you realize that there’s something going on—and that’s where you encounter the injured ballerina, and the ballerina smoking in the corner. I hope people feel like they’re walking through a narrative.

Can you discuss your use of white plaster, which is a trademark of yours, and its context within the historically white world of ballet?
I want to put into the world what I don’t see all the time, and that is Black sculptures. For me, there is no color—instead, it’s in the gesture, and the face, and the structure that you see it. And with this exhibition, there is also the added layer that the ballet world is a white, elite, European environment, and Black dancers have to conform and sacrifice to thrive in it.

What are the biggest takeaways you hope visitors will have?
Pay dancers more! Support your local dancers, or your local dance schools. A career in dance requires so much money—a single pair of pointe shoes can cost you $100! I think there needs to be more knowledge around these details. I want people to walk away with a deeper appreciation for dancers and everything that goes into the final product you see onstage.

The post Artist Karon Davis’ New Exhibition Grapples With the Physicality and Grit of Ballet appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Mayara Magri has, indeed, done it—and at her dream company, no less. In 2021, during Magri’s 10th year with The Royal Ballet, director Kevin O’Hare promoted her to the company’s highest rank. But Magri’s work is far from done.

“I used to always say I wanted to be a principal with The Royal Ballet. I wouldn’t think about after that,” Magri says, smiling to herself. As she continues, her hands fill with an energy that reveals her determination and straightforward sincerity: “Now, I really want to establish myself here.” 

For Magri, ballet is an all-encompassing lifestyle. “You can’t just walk into an office and ‘That’s what I am’ for six hours, and then walk away,” she says. She’s all in, with a resoluteness of character she’s had from a young age. 

Now 29, Magri was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to a family with no known dance history. That changed when a school friend suggested dance classes. Magri and her two sisters soon began studying ballet on scholarship at Rio’s Escola de Dança Petite Danse. Without that scholarship, she says, ballet would not have come into her life, as the cost of putting three girls into classes would have been too much for her family. 

By age 12, Magri was practicing full variations on pointe. She explains that in Brazil, it is not uncommon for teachers to challenge their students with complex choreography at an early age. It was also standard for young dancers to perform onstage frequently to nip stage fright in the bud. Magri remembers dancing outside of shopping malls on a dance floor her teacher had laid down. Evidently, it worked: “I am not scared of the stage,” she says. “I actually really love it.”

That early comfort with being onstage, combined with Magri’s inherent pluck, helped develop the attack and solidity that would come to define her dancing. Those qualities also came in handy when she began competing around age 12, eventually leading to her winning turn at the Prix de Lausanne in 2011. After the competition, her teachers encouraged her to train in the U.S., arguing that the country’s schools would be a better fit for her style and Vaganova background. But Magri had her heart set on The Royal Ballet School. 

“I was just obsessed with the Royal Ballet DVDs,” she says, laughing. “Especially the one of La Bayadère with Darcey Bussell as Gamzatti. And YouTube videos—I used to watch them over and over again. I was just like: I want that.” 

O’Hare, who had just begun his first year as director, remembers her arrival in London clearly. While sitting in on the school’s classes and performances, “I remember just being bowled over by her dynamics,” he says. “She really looked like somebody that had the potential to go far within the company.” After a year in the school’s uppermost level, Magri was one of the first academy dancers to receive a contract for the 2012–13 season. 

But the transition to The Royal’s style was not without its challenges. For some time, she felt confused about her teachers’ emphasis on subtle details and lower, rather than up-to-the-ears, legs—a “less is more” approach that conflicted with the “always more” mentality her teachers encouraged in Brazil. Now, Magri believes that perspective shift was crucial to her success. “I carry both with me,” she says. “I can still do a massive grand jeté with split legs, but with a well-placed upper body and delicate fingers.” 

For several years, Magri kept her head down and steadily worked to master The Royal’s finesse. She was promoted to first artist in 2015, soloist the following year, first soloist in 2018, then principal in 2021. While climbing the company ranks, Magri approached her career with a balance of verve and patience—much like the happy marriage of power and subtlety she continued to foster in her dancing. “She is a real company member, someone who will always be there for the company and her colleagues,” says friend and fellow principal dancer Marianela Nuñez. “She’s a generous soul…something that comes across when you see her on the stage.”

Olga Evreinoff, a coach at The Royal who has worked with Magri on major roles like Princess Aurora and Gamzatti, admires Magri’s intellect, resolve, and capacity for integrating feedback. “I think her strength is herself,” says Evreinoff. “It’s just how she is, like the airplane that goes and goes faster, and then it takes off. She’s at that point where she’s taken off.”

Recently, Magri has leaned further into her artistic development. In her downtime, she and her partner, fellow Royal principal Matthew Ball, enjoy attending operas and classical concerts to connect with the opera house’s other artists. She’s also a fan of the TV show “Friends” (“I’ve probably seen it through six times now!”), which helps her wind down from particularly taxing days. 

Magri and Ball motivate each other both inside and outside the studio. “We can be really honest and help each other with our weaknesses,” she says. “For me, that’s partnering—Matthew reminds me I can’t be too much in charge.” The duo performs in galas around the world during breaks, opportunities Magri relishes for the chance to travel and to practice repertoire. One example is the role of Kitri, which she brushed up on earlier this season for the 2023 Prix de Lausanne gala, then danced in The Royal Ballet’s fall production of Don Quixote.

Going forward, Magri hopes to expand her reach in the company’s repertoire, with Manon being a dream role. “I think one of the challenges for Mayara is that she loves being onstage,” says O’Hare. “And as a principal, you perform less than you do as a soloist.” But when she is onstage, “She hits you between the eyes,” he says. O’Hare also hopes Mayara will be able to create more original roles that showcase her versatility, as she did with Rosaura in Christopher Wheeldon’s Like Water for Chocolate and several solo roles in the company’s contemporary repertoire. 

Eventually, Magri plans to transition into full-time coaching and education, citing a great desire to give back. She points especially to the people in Brazil who have shared their pride and supported her throughout her career. 

“I just need to keep going forward, inspiring people to keep on doing what I love to do, and to help them find the joy that I found,” she says. “The career I’ve had is giving me so much that can help future generations.” 

The post Mayara Magri’s Intellect, Resolve, and Versatility Have Powered Her High-Flying Career appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Perel earned a BA in international comparative studies while also maintaining performance commitments with LAB. “During Nutcracker season, I would fly out to L.A. to do weekend rehearsals, then fly back to Durham,” she says, recalling flights filled with writing essays and preparing presentations. Perel’s minor in dance introduced her to Carolina Ballet ballet master Debra Austin, resulting in an invitation to perform with that company as a student and a contract after her 2020 graduation. “College enhanced my dancing, and it gave me an incredible ability to balance multiple projects,” says Perel, who also served as the artistic director of Duke’s student-run ballet organization. “Sometimes you have to go with the less traveled path—just keep pushing, and don’t doubt yourself.”

Her First Move:

“I had never been to California when I got my corps contract at LA Ballet. My best friend at the time also got a contract, so he and I went online and found an apartment near the studio—we didn’t even look at it in person.”

A Very Hollywood Show:

“At LA Ballet, we performed The Nutcracker at the Dolby Theatre, where the Oscars are held. I danced the Rose lead in the Waltz of the Flowers, a dream role for me since I was a child. It’s a huge theatre, 3,200 seats, and the stage is humongous. But I remember I had no nerves; I was beaming from ear to ear.”

Her Pre-Performance Ritual:

“I go up to the stage very early, when it’s quiet and the house lights are on, so that I can engage in the movement and the emotion of the piece. I like to walk around the stage and think about where I’m going to focus my gaze, so that I can engage with as many people in the audience as possible.”

Being Present:

“As a dancer, I’m enjoying the moment that I’m having in my career. With ballet and Duke, I was always thinking about that next step. But for the past few years with Carolina Ballet, I have felt myself mature into my dancing so much more because I’m taking the time to say, ‘What can I do today? How can I fix these steps or make my body feel the best that it can in this moment?’ And that is what’s helping me grow as a performer and grow as an artist.”

The post Carolina Ballet’s SarahAnne Perel is Pursuing a Career Without Limits appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Age: 31

Hometown: Bangkok, Thailand

Training: Cala Dance, Studio Zoom, Broadway Dance Center’s International Student Visa Program

Tricked into dancing: At 10 years old, Kasamatsu thought he was being treated to a shopping spree when his mom revealed that his new clothes were for a hip-hop class taking place in the mall that day. “I was so embarrassed, but I came out of it feeling like I was on top of the world,” he says. He continued taking the weekly class and supplemented it by teaching himself from YouTube videos.

Starting a studio: After high school, Kasamatsu founded Studio Zoom with his mom to address the scarcity of dance classes in Bangkok. Today, the in-person studio offers classes for all ages and skill levels, hosts workshops with international guest choreographers, and connects dancers with professional opportunities.

Going global: At 20 years old, Kasamatsu moved to New York City to pursue dance professionally, performing for artists such as Jennifer Lopez, Ne-Yo, Daddy Yankee, and Mark Ronson. He then pivoted his focus to teaching—at Peridance, Broadway Dance Center, and conventions—and choreographing, founding his troupe, akompany, in 2018.

Making moves and music: While creating his first full-length show, 2022’s one, two, three., Kasamatsu was dealing with a back injury. “I started recording my breath and other sounds to create a rhythm,” he says. Once in the studio, “we created phrases to the sounds I made and continued with movements that felt good given my body limitations. Then, it was a reverse process where I’d watch the videos and voice sounds to match the movement phrases we came up with.”

More than dance: Kasamatsu’s second full-length show, ka•zoku (2023), which means “family” in Japanese, reflects­ akompany’s mission “to con­nect with people on more than a dancer level, but on a human level,” he says.

Fighting burnout: “I’m passionate about film and photography, but they can be so closely tied to dance that they become part of the burnout,” he says. “So tennis is a big part of my de-burnout process. It really helps me mentally and physically.”

Putting it all together: “I see him as an entity, not just as a dancer, because he has his hands in so many different aspects of the entertainment industry,” says New York City–based choreographer Neil Schwartz, who taught Kasamatsu when he was a student at Broadway Dance Center and continues to serve as his mentor now that they are both on faculty there. “To see someone create their own lane and set trends that came from the depths of their brain is truly remarkable and a breath of fresh air.”

Looking forward: While Kasamatsu’s choreography is often complex, his vision for his career is simple: “My goal,” he says, “is to forever not love dance any less when I wake up the next day.”

The post Meeting Kenichi Kasamatsu, the Choreographer Turning Dance Brain-Teasers Into an Art Form appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Expanding Her Artistry

After dancing in New York for over 20 years, Struxness made the move to Los Angeles in 2019. She had worked all over Broadway, but always on other people’s projects. She wanted to start creating her own work.

She started with improvisational dance videos. They led to a realization: “I didn’t feel like I could maneuver with my voice with the same sort of alacrity and awareness,” she says. “I wanted to be able to do that.”

The album, she explains, is “that assignment that I’ve given myself so that I can start getting to know my voice as an instrument the way that I know my body as an instrument.”

Creating the Album

Despite her musical background—she played violin as a kid—Struxness doesn’t consider herself an instrumentalist. But, alongside producer Sam Perlow and co-songwriter Ella Poletti, Struxness helped craft the sound and orchestrations of her songs by tuning in to her dancer brain. When listening to the tracks sent to her by her producer, Struxness would dance to the music to see what beats were missing, what sounds she wanted to highlight, and where she wanted “more meat.”

Now that the album is out, what is next for Struxness? “Music videos, music videos, music videos!” she says. “I basically made the music so that I could create music videos.” In the meantime, Struxness would love to see dancers dancing to Physical Attention.

The post <i>Hamilton</i>’s Betsy Struxness Shares Her Journey to Creating Her Debut Album appeared first on Dance Magazine.

McFadden Herrera grew up in northern New Jersey, traveling into New York City to train at Steps on Broadway and Broadway Dance Center. At 17, she booked her first job in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, then performed with Mia Michaels’ New York City–based dance company. Meeting soon-to-be Wicked choreographer Wayne Cilento in 1999 at an audition for the Broadway production of Aida sparked a long creative partnership. Fast-forward three years and the two were collaborating on what would become the enduringly popular musical.

With a recently mounted production in Sydney, Australia, 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of Wicked’s Broadway debut. Even after all these years, McFadden Herrera says the show is never performed the same way twice.

At this point, Wicked is part of my DNA. Wayne and I had worked together in Aida and on a cruise ship show when he asked me to help with the choreography for Wicked. It was very collaborative; movement would come out of me and he would shape it. He’s a master at staging. The show’s initial success was unbelievable.

The show is a living, breathing thing, and it’s never performed the same way twice. That’s the beauty of live theater, but it’s also very difficult to maintain.

There’s a lot of choreography, but it looks deceptively simple and seamless, almost cinematic. Dancers can watch and just mimic what you’re doing physically. To attach meaning to it, so that we’re collectively telling the same story, is something else entirely.

When I teach the show, I don’t teach it in order. The opening is so difficult, it’s all individualized musical staging, and very acting-based, so you have to understand what your subtext is. I generally skip ahead and start with the stuff that moves more, like the Ozdust ballroom section, and then start adding additional layers once the dancers are acclimated to the show’s style.

We’re now two generations down the line, and some of the dancers we’re teaching the show to now weren’t even born when it first went up. Many of the dancers are so physically talented, but they’ve never had to act in this way before, so it’s very gratifying to help them grow in communicating their passion.

It’s a never-ending process. The show’s principals generally stay about a year here in the States, and then we try to turn them all over at once. But the ensemble is like a revolving door because of how the contracts work. I really feel for my dance captains sometimes, teaching track after track to get everybody in. They don’t always have time to watch the show, which is when I need to step in and make sure the company feels cohesive.

It’s always amazing to have director­ ­­Joe Mantello come talk to the performers. The way he speaks about storytelling and his vision­ of the show, even 20 years later, always teaches Wayne and me something new. And that helps us stay fresh and on our toes.

The show is this kind of fairy-tale fantasy, but it’s rooted in real human emotion and predicament. And I think that’s why people love it so much.

The post How Corinne McFadden Herrera has Maintained <i>Wicked</i>‘s Choreography and Staging for 20 Years appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“The novel is so powerful, and so plausible,” says York. “The loss of liberty depicted in the book really jarred me. It wasn’t my job to politicize it. All you can do, as an artist, is put out a warning signal.”

York is among a growing number of ballet choreographers turning to modern literature as a basis for their work. The weaving together of movement and language into art seems natural and inevitable, given ballet’s long history as a narrative art form, and our current cultural infatuation with visual storytelling as a means of communication. Yet choreographers’ interest in tying ballet directly to literature is a notable turnaround from the 20th century’s Balanchine-influenced rise of abstract, plotless ballets.

Using ballet vocabulary to retell the works of great writers is fraught with potential pitfalls. But the medium of dance can also illuminate a book (or short story, or play) afresh, encouraging new dialogue, questioning, connection, and, yes, hope.

Ballet as a Storytelling Art

The history of ballet as a storytelling art reaches back to even before the French Romantic era, and continued under Petipa, when ballet “began its transformation from popular to high art,” says dance historian Elizabeth Kendall. “You could argue that Sleeping Beauty was based on written text—tales collected by Charles Perrault—and the gestures of Vaganova training are somewhat narrative.”

But ballets inspired by contemporary literature (rather than classics, myths, or fairy tales) were rare. Notably, in 1952 Valerie Bettis choreographed A Streetcar Named Desire for the Slavenska-Franklin Ballet (later performed by American Ballet Theatre and Dance Theatre of Harlem), breaking new ground by using the symbolism and idiomatic language of dance to present a visually gripping take on the complex social themes of Tennessee Williams’ play.

Translating Books Into Dance

Cathy Marston was idly browsing in a British bookstore when the cover of Charles Webb’s The Graduate caught her eye. With a commission from San Francisco Ballet on her agenda, the concept of reworking the story with a different light on the iconic character of Mrs. Robinson sprang to mind. The story and its film version had painted a picture of her as a pitiful, lonely alcoholic, but Marston wanted to go deeper. “What if Mrs. Robinson had read and been inspired by the feminist movement? Would she have joined the revolution?” Marston asks. “I love investigating characters from a different perspective, looking at who they are and what they stand for, and turning those ideas on their head. There’s a lot of freedom, actually, to fill in the space between the words that have been written.”

But why make a ballet based on the book instead of simply choreographing a piece about feminism? Marston finds that character specificity encourages empathy. “If you have a pas de deux about love, I want to know who’s in love and why,” she says. “It’s about joining the dots and creating something that takes you on a journey. For me, choreographing a single idea or set of ideas doesn’t do that.”

Respecting Plot While Speaking to the Present

In 2020, after taking part in a roundtable discussion on the relevance of ballet, choreographer Iyun Ashani Harrison came away wondering how he could continue making work that mattered in a time when racial, social, and cultural pre­cedents were being vigorously challenged. One of the reasons he decided to choreograph an adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room was that he resonated personally with David, its main character.

“One of the things that came out of 2020 is that the stories we tell are important,” Harrison says. “Giovanni’s Room is one of Baldwin’s strongest works, yet one that people are least aware of. I thought, Let’s elevate that.”

Scholars admire the book for its poignant representations of queer life at a time when such depictions were all but verboten in mainstream U.S. literary culture. In his adaptation for his company, Ballet Ashani, Harrison saw a chance to create dialogue about the book’s themes by situating Baldwin’s characters in a world that reflects his own—and many others’—experiences, without losing the specificity of its plot.

“I’m stepping away from the text to make sure certain things make sense in the medium of dance,” he says. “I use theatrical tricks as metaphor to suggest, to imply, versus being more literal and using props as in classical ballets. I want the audience to have a sense of suspended belief.” The musical score, which includes compositions by Maurice Ravel and original electronic music by Aaron Brown that incorporates spoken dialogue from the book, links the past and present, and dancers of color are cast in roles written as white.

“I want people to see inside the book, but also see my creative shifts,” he says. “The work gets into the idea there can be so much more fluidity in how people love or desire, and to keep creating understanding about people who might feel marginalized or ‘othered.’ ”

“It’s Not a Movie, It’s a Ballet”

As marketing departments have long understood, a familiar literary title tends to attract audiences. But preconceived notions of what a popular book “should” look like can cloud viewers’ impressions when they see it in movement form. On the other hand, adhering too closely to the complexities of a written narrative, where multiple characters and subplots may lack physical action, can also backfire.

With The Handmaid’s Tale, York (whose ballet preceded the TV series) didn’t want to graphically represent the violence in the book, even though she knew certain audiences expected it. “The book has three rapes and two hangings, but I made it in a way that was stylized, that adults would understand but would not upset children,” York says. “To make it too dark and literal would not have accomplished much in the way of my goal, which was to awaken people. It’s not a movie, it’s a ballet!”

Val Caniparoli took the opposite approach with Shirley Jackson’s famously disturbing short story “The Lottery.” He used the built-in uncertainty of live performance to intensify the story’s messages about the devastating consequences that can result from societal pressure, conformity, and ritual. In Caniparoli’s self-described “experiment,” the casting of the principal character, who performs a fiendish solo before being stoned to death, is decided each night by the dancers in an actual, onstage lottery.

“The uneasiness the dancers had onstage, I knew the audience would also have,” he says. “It was shocking to everyone—you could hear the audience gasp every night. There’s a lot of power in that.” Blending the literal—an actual lottery—with a metaphorical climax pulls the audience that much closer, casting them as witnesses and players complicit in the tragic outcome. Caniparoli says that’s what makes a dance adaptation work.

“You have to get the audience invested, to really care about and feel for the characters onstage,” he says. “If you don’t feel for these people, it’s empty.”

Why Literary Ballet Adaptations Matter

Choreographers like Marston, Harrison, Caniparoli, and York have discovered that presenting a writer’s work through the medium of dance—where, unlike reading a book that can be set aside, they’ll take in the entire experience in one sitting—makes a special sort of impact.

“The body can say more than one thing at a time,” says Marston. “Dance gets to an internal world more easily than through words, which are something that live in our outer world. Very often, you feel one thing and think another thing, or want two things at the same time. In movement, you can layer those things even within one body, amplifying and playing with them.”

The legalities of getting the rights to adapt a literary work, finding or creating a musical score, and securing a commission or backing to produce the work can take years. Both Caniparoli and York said their pieces were more than a decade in the making. But in today’s visually obsessed world, dance can revitalize a work of literature more than ever before. And while choreographing literature can regenerate excitement about a writer’s work, it’s also important for the dance world, Kendall says.

“Dance has to stay alive, to keep up with the times, to have people using this language to tell a story,” she says. “It’s the lifeblood of the art form. People should ask themselves, ‘What book would I like to see danced?’ ”

The post The Pleasure and Pitfalls of Creating Ballets Based on Contemporary Literature appeared first on Dance Magazine.

You get the sense that Sykes, who arrived in New York in a U-Haul 20 years ago at 18, sees himself as something of a group enterprise. He studs his narrative with the names of people who’ve helped and shaped him, from his septuagenarian babysitters to the Broadway professionals who taught him the ropes.

His talent? It’s a Sykes-family thing. His career? A series of surprises. Pal Joey? More on that later. First, his story, after the parents fall in love. 

Sykes’ parents—a Baptist pastor and a schoolteacher—raised him in St. Petersburg, Florida. “Growing up in the Black Southern church,” Sykes says, “we were heavily immersed in the arts. Everybody sang, everybody danced, everybody played instruments.” He loved it, but it was his younger sister, Martina, now touring in The Lion King, who was the born performer. He “kinda tagged along and would peep in on some of her dance classes.” 

Music was his first love, and his mother, who plays the drums, started teaching him when he was around 5. His father plays piano, French horn, and trumpet, and Sykes remembers the music that filled their home with a nostalgia that sets him aglow. “I was singing and playing and dancing since I could walk and talk,” he says. “And on the weekends doing our chores, they’d throw on all the old Motown records.”

Then a ballet teacher came to his fourth-grade band class in search of more toy soldiers and mice for The Nutcracker. “They forced me to go to this audition, and that became my first ballet class,” he recalls. Surprise number one: He was told he “had a natural talent.” So he went through the Pinellas County Center for the Arts’ arts magnet school program all the way through high school, studying both music and dance, and attending summer intensives at The Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia and at The Ailey School in New York City.

He didn’t get into Juilliard or any of the other colleges he was hoping for, and instead accepted the theater scholarship he’d been offered at Tennessee State, planning to join the marching band. Still, he couldn’t resist one last summer at Ailey, “just to dance and hang up my shoes.” Surprise number two: At the end, he was invited to join the incoming class at Ailey’s joint BFA program with Fordham University. “Just like that,” he says, snapping his fingers, “change of plans.” 

After graduating, Sykes toured with Ailey II for a second year, but didn’t get into the main company—or any others. “All these auditions, I’d do really well, but I never crossed that boundary. It’s like God was shutting the doors to the concert life on me, and I didn’t know why, or what to do,” Sykes says. His father came to the rescue. “He said, ‘Hey, stay a little longer,’ and he put a little more money into my bank account.”

Within that week came another surprise. James Brown III, who’d assisted when Darrell Grand Moultrie choreographed on Sykes at Ailey II, was now the dance captain at The Little Mermaid on Broadway. “He said, ‘Hey, there’s a guy leaving the show,’ ” Sykes remembers. “ ‘You’ll fit the costume. Why don’t you audition?’ ”

Broadway musicals were not on Sykes’ radar. “I had no clue,” he says, “no interest.” Then he went onstage in Little Mermaid. “I was like, ‘Oh, wait—this feels almost like a home.’ ” The company took him under their collective wing, teaching him how to manage his voice, how to manage the tap choreography, how to manage his salary, just how to manage. 

With all that on-the-job learning came another realization: “Much as I love the Ailey choreography and the company, not being able to sing, not being able to play instruments, I always felt I was missing parts of myself.” He went on to exercise those parts in Memphis, Newsies, Motown: The Musical, Hamilton, and, of course, Ain’t Too Proud, while getting film and television work, too.

Choreographer Sergio Trujillo remembers Sykes’ Memphis audition distinctly. “I was like, ‘Who is that boy?’ He was like a colt, so athletic, with long limbs—when he took flight, it was beautiful to watch.” Working with him, Trujillo became equally impressed with Sykes as a person and as an artist. “We had the relationship and the trust where I could just lean into him and say, ‘Can you try this? Can you try that?’ That’s special.” 

​​In 2019, Ain’t Too Proud earned them both Tony nominations. Trujillo won, Sykes didn’t. But Sykes’ tour de force performance as the Temptations’ most notable lead singer, David Ruffin, copped the Chita Rivera Award for best male dancer on Broadway. Trujillo says Sykes was more than dancing, singing, and acting the difficult role. The “quadruple threat,” Trujillo says, also brings “that other thing”: unmatched charisma.

Sykes’ magnetic presence helped him win the Michael Jackson role in 2019, right before COVID-19 taught him and everyone else in theater that surprises aren’t necessarily good. By the time MJ was getting back on its post-pandemic feet, Sykes was involved in another project—a film that has yet to be made—and he opted to stick with it, instead of returning to the role he’d done in the MJ workshop. 

Which brings us to Pal Joey, giving seven performances November 1–5 as City Center’s annual benefit presentation. In 1940, despite the glorious Rodgers and Hart score and the presence of then-newcomer Gene Kelly in the title role, the musical opened to mediocre reviews—the usual explanation being that Broadway wasn’t ready for the cynicism and bad beha­vior of its sleazy hero. Since then, the show’s bumpy history has included a hit revival in 1952; a 1957 film starring Frank Sinatra; limited-run City Center revivals in the early ’60s with Bob Fosse as the heel; and a 2008 production with a new book that fared little better with the critics than the original.

Goldwyn and his friend and partner Richard LaGravenese­ got permission from the Rodgers and Hart estate to do yet another version, and to subtract or add Rodgers and Hart songs, which they did. Their idea, Goldwyn says, was to change Joey from “just a cad who sleeps with a lot of women” to “a true artist, a genuinely gifted man.” As they tinkered, Joey evolved into a Black jazz singer struggling to be heard in 1940s Chicago. But the show’s theme, Goldwyn notes, goes beyond race to “explore the human need to be seen. When your story is not being heard and you are invisible, that is a very painful way to live your life.” LaGravenese enlisted Daniel “Koa” Beaty to work with him on the book, and Goldwyn asked Glover—his “dream partner”—to choreograph and co-direct.

They chose Sykes to play this Joey because, Goldwyn explains, they needed someone “to be the star that everyone talks about him being in the story.” Then there was the dancing: “We needed a man who could hang with Savion Glover.”

Glover says Goldwyn’s name alone got him interested. But, he adds, “I was thinking the old Pal Joey. When I found out what was really going on, it turned into me having the opportunity to once again be part of a narrative that has been a part of my life. My story that is the story of Sammy Davis Jr.; my story that is the story of Chuck Green, Jimmy Slyde, Ben Vereen, Picasso, Frank Sinatra. This iteration of Pal Joey is a lot of cats that I know.”

Sykes says Joey hits “very close to home” for him, too—“a young, hungry Black man out of the South trying to make it as a performer.” When he was asked to audition, he’d never seen Pal Joey and knew nothing about it, so he did some research. He feigns nonchalance as he describes his reaction: “Oh, there was a movie. Oh, Gene Kelly did this. No pressure.”

Needless to say, the dance in this production is pivotal. Glover promises it will “look like nothing I’ve seen myself or heard myself do,” while also including “everything” he knows. Sykes is a little less elliptical, but admits the choreography is hard to describe. “It feels like a coming together of a lot of different languages,” he ventures, “the main one being Savion’s hoofing and tap language meeting the world and the movement of that time period‚ especially Black folks. How we moved, how we walked, that whole energy, those steps that were popular in the ’40s in the Black community, in the juke joints.” 

Talking about the show, Sykes is clearly awed. “Savion is teaching me this entirely different language, tying back to my ancestors, his ancestors, our African roots,” he says. “He’s able to communicate with his feet the thoughts that are in his mind. He’s one of the greatest to ever do it, and I’m having one-on-one sessions with this man!”

Sykes will probably stay a student always, but he also has something to teach. He and his sister, Martina, have started a college scholarship fund at their high school: the SykesKids Scholarships. When he goes back to give talks, he cites the unexpected turns his life has taken. “See the blessing in the closed door, and just stay open to where God is leading you,” he urges them. “Don’t get tunnel vision on your dreams.”

The post Ephraim Sykes Is the Toast of Broadway and Beyond appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Company: Complexions Contemporary Ballet

Age: 19

Hometown: Austin, Texas

Training: Joyce Willett School of Dance, Rise Dance Company, Dance Industry Performing Arts Center, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

Accolades: 2022 Clive Barnes Awards dance finalist

Charting a course: Burse was introduced to Complexions at 12 years old while taking class from Mia Michaels at JUMP Dance Convention.­ “She called me out and asked if I knew who Desmond­ Richardson was,” Burse says, referencing Complexions’ co-founder and artistic director. “She said the way I danced reminded her of him, and that I should Google him.” After researching the company, she auditioned for Complexions’ intensive and attended six summers in a row.

A teenage prodigy: At just 17, Burse joined Complexions as an apprentice. “All of those years attending their summer program acted as an audition for me. They had seen me grow,” she says. Not only did Burse move to New York City away from her family, but she finished her senior year of high school virtually while on tour. During the summer of 2022, she was offered a full company contract.

Digging deep: For Burse, the Complexions repertoire requires vulnerability. “I’m working on going to a deep, connective place when I dance so that I can have an impact on the audience,” she says. Rhoden’s WOKE has helped her hone this particular skill. “WOKE is one of the most challenging pieces I have ever done—physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s about what is happening in the world with Black Lives Matter and the Me Too movement.”

What her director is saying: “Christian­ is an extraordinary young artist,” says Rhoden, who leads Complexions with Richardson. “She has the uncanny ability to morph into any style of movement. In many ways, she reminds me of a young Desmond with her passion, intelligence, work ethic, natural instincts, masterful ability, and poetry in her movement. She bursts onto the stage with an unforced charisma and never fails to move audiences.”

After hours: Once rehearsals wrap, Burse finishes most days with class at Broadway Dance Center or Steps on Broadway. “I want to expand my versatility,” she says. Some of her favorite teachers are Marguerite Derricks, Teddy Forance, Martha Nichols, and Ebony Williams.

Her dreams for the future: Though she’s dazzling in contemporary ballet, Burse aspires to perform in a variety of styles over the course of her career. “At some point I want to do commercial dance, I want to dance on tour with an artist like Beyoncé, I want to do musical theater,” she says. “I’m open to anything and everything. This is just the beginning.”

The post Meet Complexions Contemporary Ballet’s Christian Burse appeared first on Dance Magazine.

My mother, Michelle Ramos, was a dancer herself, and swears that once I heard the music start for whatever show she was performing in, she would feel me ball up tight in her stomach, ready for the thrashing to begin. Apparently, she danced so full-out that people thought I was a pillow stuffed in her costume. No! No, I was in there dancing too! In fact, my father was also a dancer, so naturally it’s in my blood. Dance is pas de bourrée-ing up and down my veins as you read this.

Later on in life, I would discover that I loved making dances rather than performing them, but that doesn’t stop me from turning on my favorite playlist and busting a move while I clean my apartment. For me, inspiration can strike at any moment. I apologize to all the commuters who have to witness me dance while on the 1 train in New York City, or while in line for an iced coffee, or while grabbing drinks at intermission during a Broadway musical. I literally cannot stop dancing.

I really try to keep a childlike joy in my approach. Even during those hectic months last year when I was working as the principal choreographer on both Mr. Saturday Night and the revival of Funny Girl—two Broadway shows that opened within three days of each other—even then, as I was sprinting the 11 blocks between the August Wilson and the Nederlander, shoving a tomato-and-cheese Pret sandwich into my face, I never forgot how wonderful a life full of dance can be.

Every job I take on is a way for me to learn more about dance, movement, and my relationship to them. Dance is truly the longest and most stable relationship I’ve ever had. She has been there for me during my highest of highs and my lowest of lows. She can make me cry or make me laugh, and I truly feel like I was put on this earth to learn as much as I can from her. For that, I am forever grateful. I cannot stop learning, I cannot stop moving, and I cannot stop dancing. That is why I dance. Periodt.

The post Ellenore Scott, Choreographer, Director, and Content Creator, Shares Her Lifelong Relationship with Dance appeared first on Dance Magazine.

In 2016, a performance of Serenade after Plato’s Symposium inspired her to start. “I was so excited by that work,” says Harss. “It felt like he had reached a new level of mastery in the way he was able to depict conversation and thought.” She wrote to him that very night. Ratmansky was generous with his time and access, so Harss dove into research. In 2019 she received a fellowship from the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University that allowed her to begin writing.

Just as she was wrapping up her book, the COVID-19 pandemic, and especially the Russian invasion of Ukraine, upended Ratmansky’s life and forced Harss to recalibrate—and even retitle—her text. Her biography, now called The Boy from Kyiv, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is scheduled for release on October 3.

Your book was nearly due when the world fell apart—Ratmansky’s world in particular. How difficult was that? 

It wasn’t difficult, but it did require a complete rewrite! I waited a while, until the situation of the war became more clear. Then I realized that it wasn’t just about writing a new ending, because the war clarified something about his identity that had never been clear to him before. It was a significant internal shift. Every time we’d had a conversation about “Where do you feel like you’re from?” the answers had always been this idea of being an internationalist and “My world is ballet.” But then, suddenly, home meant where his parents are, where his sister is, where his wife is from. And I realized it was a theme I had been wrestling with earlier, because I felt that there was more to his Ukrainian identity than he was letting on. In fact, it was lying right below the surface. He didn’t even fully comprehend it. So I had to go back through the whole thing and basically listen to it. The weight of certain things became more apparent. 

You show how Ratmansky’s been working in multiple ballet languages his entire life. You speak several languages and have an extensive background in translation. Did writing this book tap into a similar process? 

I feel that my background does “translate” [laughs] into my dance writing because I’m translating what I see onto the page for a reader. Though I think one of the interesting things about dance is it doesn’t require words. What’s wonderful about it is it communicates across linguistic and cultural barriers. That said, I do believe that Ratmansky translates what he learns in one place and applies it in another. Bright Stream is both a translation of his Bolshoi training and a translation of Bournonville—what he learned in Denmark about mime and about being natural onstage and about petit allégro. Because he’s been so multinational, he can draw on all these dance languages and combine them into a new one. I guess you could say it’s like Esperanto—a new language that contains all the old ones.  

You mention his big, recent move to the New York City Ballet in your epilogue. Is it hard to let go at this point? 

Everyone who has seen his work at different stages in his life knows that stage, but almost nobody has the whole picture because he’s moved from place to place. I hope the book will be helpful for people to understand where these different stylistic elements come from and how they fit together. Who is this person who wants to and is able to create this weird combination of humor and humanity and warmth and structural solidity and bravura? It’s a mosaic that then becomes a portrait. It’s the perfect time to end because it’s the end of Act III, we’re entering Act IV. I’m not going to stop being interested in his work, for sure, and I’m going to keep writing about it. I think following the career of a person so closely is one of the most interesting things you can do as a critic and a writer. It’s a profound and stimulating process.

The post An Inside Look Into Author Marina Harss’ New Biography on Alexei Ratmansky, <i>The Boy from Kyiv</i> appeared first on Dance Magazine.

In addition to adding a sense of freedom to her impeccable technique, dancing with the Chicago-based company has given Assucena the opportunity to perform on some of the world’s most famous stages—from New York City’s David H. Koch Theater while on tour with The Joffrey to the historic Bolshoi Theatre during the Benois de la Danse competition. Still, Chicago remains her home, the city where one of her most memorable performances took place: Assucena’s debut as Giselle with The Joffrey Ballet. “I felt like I could fly in every step,” she says. “I had never been so calm onstage before, especially for a debut in a classical ballet,” she continues, adding that Giselle is her “absolute favorite ballet.”

An Early Interest in Performing Arts:

“My first memory that is connected with any kind of performing is when I was 5 years old and my parents took me to watch the opera Aida back in Brazil. The next morning, I was reenacting as many scenes as I could with my dad. I remember only walking around on demi-pointe, doing the splits, and putting my arms in fifth position any chance I got. After that my mother looked for a good school and signed me up for ballet class.”

Moving From Rio de Janeiro to Florida at age 14:

“My biggest challenge was adapting to a new culture and making new friends when just becoming a teenager. Not having family there to pick me up when I was down and tired was brutal. It wasn’t until later that I learned who my true friends were—they became my family away from home.”

Her Pre-Performance Routine:

“I used to have a ritual of doing everything exactly the same each time I had to perform a lead role, but I’m trying to change that since it’s become too stressful. One thing I still do is have a moment to myself before curtain to get connected to a higher power. Then, I knock on the stage three times, give it three kisses, and touch my shoes, and costume, and headpiece—as a teacher of mine once told me to do. I then do three little sautés in first position to shake the nerves off, and it’s showtime!”

A Favorite Stage:

“I truly loved performing at the Koch Theater in New York City. It brought this sense of intimacy with the audience, but also total freedom—a stage where I didn’t feel nerves.”

The Power Of Music:

“I also love any time I get to share the stage with an orchestra, instead of having them in the orchestra pit. Having them play right behind us completely changes the space and fills it with passion, like you’re enveloped in that one single moment, and nothing can take you out of it.”

An Unforgettable Performance:

“Performing Christopher Wheeldon’s Nutcracker pas de deux in Cancun this past July will stay in my heart forever. I had the honor of being accompanied by Alondra de la Parra and The Impossible Orchestra, and to perform it alongside my longtime partner on stage and in life, Alberto Velazquez. It was a genuine, passionate, and emotional show.”

The post How Joffrey Ballet Company Artist Amanda Assucena is Dancing With Abandon appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Age: 21

Hometown: American Fork, Utah

Training: 24 Seven, Radix, NUVO, DancerPalooza, Chapters Intensive

Accolades: Senior Male Best Dancer (Orlando), The Dance Awards 2021; Senior Male Core Performer, Radix 2019

The “World of Dance” spotlight: In 2018, Willard competed as a soloist on “World of Dance,” making it all the way to Divisional Finals. “It gave me a platform and helped me to understand my voice better, and I learned how to navigate a professional space,” he says. Willard’s mentor, contemporary dancer and teacher Chaz Buzan, saw potential in him early on: “He’s a powerhouse mover, but is just as impactful when he goes still and looks out to the audience—that’s something you cannot teach.”

Performing with the stars: Willard’s resumé already reads like a who’s who of the entertainment industry, and he soaks in as much as possible from each experience. “In those rehearsals, not one dancer is lacking,” he says, “so I get to learn from everyone, including the artist, and also see other parts of production, like directing and filming, which I’m interested in pursuing someday.”

Improving from within: Willard considers his artistic development deeply connected to his personal growth. “For a long time I was holding on to anger and stress from my past, but once I let that go, I had to navigate a lot of change in the way I moved and how I used dance as a creative outlet,” he says. Buzan considers him “a beast of a dancer, but also one of the most loving, fun, and empathetic humans. His dancing is full of honesty and truth the more life experience he gets.”

Defining success: For Willard, success is being able to do what he loves, and that requires striking a balance between dancing for work and for play. “It’s the constant pressure to dance that’s exhausting, so taking breaks keeps me in a healthy relationship,” he explains. He also likes painting and journaling and prioritizes taking time to “dance the way I want to outside of my work.”

Next up: Currently performing on Madonna’s The Celebration world tour, Willard’s future goals include working with Doja Cat and Beyoncé. “I’m into reggaeton, contemporary, dembow, and Afrobeat, so I’d love to work with any artist of color whose music and life I can feel connected to.”

The post Meet Rising Commercial Star, Jaxon Willard appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But that outwardly spectacular performer has always nurtured her inner voice, too. In her post-performance life, Boykin has begun to share that voice through choreography, spoken word, and writing. Her Joyce Theater choreographic debut in New York City this month—during which her company, HopeBoykinDance, will premiere the evening-length, scripted dance-theater work States Of Hope—promises to reveal yet more aspects of Boykin’s distinctive creative language.

“It almost doesn’t feel real,” Boykin says. “[The Joyce] stage is so important to me. I’ve been able to work for so many names that have put me on that stage—but now it’s my name.”

Boykin grew up in Durham, North Carolina, where she began to nurture her creative vision as early as the fourth grade, helping to choreograph her school production of Willy Wonka. “My teacher told me she knew that I danced and asked if I wanted to help her make some steps,” Boykin remembers. “I have loved making things since then.” 

She started classes at Howard University but left to take a leap of faith, moving to New York City in pursuit of her dance dreams. She now refers to that period of her life as “sacrifice vs. need”: She lived on a friend’s couch, running from classes and work-study at The Ailey School to her part-time job at Capezio on 51st and Broadway. “I have done things that looked like sacrifice, but looking back, I see that it was a need,” Boykin says. “I didn’t understand the reason—I just knew that there was a reason.”

Boykin was invited to perform in the first Complexions concert by co-artistic director Dwight Rhoden, after he saw her in The Ailey School’s annual January performance. The next day, she took a bus to Philadelphia, where she auditioned for Philadanco. She danced there for six years under director Joan Myers Brown, who gave Boykin tools she would later use both inside and outside of the studio. “I learned so much from her about how she did her business, from working in the offices to steaming costumes and more,” Boykin says. 

While at Philadanco, Boykin also joined the faculty of University of the Arts, where she assisted the legendary Horton teacher and former Ailey dancer Milton Myers. She started honing her choreographic voice, too, creating works for Philadanco’s company choreography showcase. “It was here that I really started to get the ‘Hope-isms,’ ” Boykin says—the signature components of her dance language.

Boykin never let go of her desire to join Ailey. “It was the ultimate dream,” she says. In 2000, Boykin auditione­d for the company and was invited to join by then-artistic director Judith Jamison. During her tenure at Ailey, Boykin performed in a wide variety of works, a standout figure every time she walked onstage. Matthew Rushing—then an Ailey dancer and now the company’s associate artistic director, who has choreographed multiple leading roles on Boykin—describes her as explosive, timeless, and impactful. “I just remember her being able to articulate my dreams,” Rushing says. 

Though Boykin prioritized her performance work, she believed­ her time at Ailey served a bigger purpose. “By the time I left, I wanted to make sure that whoever crossed my path, whether a new artist, new choreographer, or guest teacher, that they felt welcomed and protected,” Boykin says. 

The ups and downs of a dance career don’t always foster self-love and reassurance. While performing, Boykin at times felt underappreciated due to her body shape and complexion. “I’m a petite woman that’s bald and undeniably Black,” she says. “I was up against a measuring stick that wasn’t even mine”—that measuring stick being the dance world’s problematic beauty standards. 

One of Boykin’s gifts to the dance world, and to those around her, has been her determination to never alter herself to fit a mold. Rather, with tenacity, resilience, and humor, she’s carved out her own space. Her uniqueness has become her superpower; her boldness has empowered the many dancers coming up after her. And her confidence to be unapologetically Black in every space has liberated others to do the same.

Despite the challenges of her performing life, “I was supposed to be there, and everything was on purpose,” Boykin says. “The time I spent hurting and growing was all organized. My steps were mapped out, decided, and ordered.”

Boykin’s deep passion for creation led to her founding HopeBoykinDance in 2016. Since then, she has made works for Ailey, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, BalletX, Philadelphia Ballet, and American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company. In 2018, Damian Woetzel and the Kennedy Center commissioned Boykin’s MomentsUponMoments, which she choreographed, wrote, and performed with then New York City Ballet principal and current Paul Taylor Dance Company resident choreographer Lauren Lovette. “Hope is the sort of artist whose light fills a space,” Lovette says. “She knits a tight physical bond to what you are saying with your body, and that force feels nothing short of cathartic after the curtain closes.”

Boykin’s dances often have a personal dimension. But States Of Hope—which features seven characters that represent her inner world, coming together like a memoir of sorts—is both personal and universal. “The parts of my life that have made me uncomfortable are fueling the creativity to share a story that I know is not just my own,” Boykin says. “I’m supposed to tell this story. I have to climb on top of this uncomfortable mountain and scream.”

Like much of Boykin’s choreography, States Of Hope also includes both an original score (by Ali Jackson) and Boykin’s own poetry. “I like to see movement through the music, like the nuances of trumpet, or a drum,” Boykin says. “I also tend to choreograph like I talk. And because I use my words in my movement, when setting it on a dancer, the choreography and text come together. It never fails.”  

Boykin’s future options seem endless, given her versatility, talent, and determination to leave a mark on this world. One definite goal? “I want a Tony or an Oscar,” Boykin says, with a chuckle. The two-time Bessie Award winner also recently received a New York Emmy Award nomination for her PBS ALL ARTS special “Beauty Size & Color,” which considers beauty ideals in the first two decades of this century.

Awards aside, Boykin’s most deeply held aspirations are characteristically generous. “I want to walk into a room and change the environment to the most productive, truthful space possible,” she says. “I want to carve away the things that didn’t work for my spirit, give the things that did, and leave that space with a little more hope.”

The post First As a Performer and Now As a Choreographer, Hope Boykin Has Nurtured Her Unique Voice appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The once-shy Leney has flourished with Scottish Ballet, tackling dramatic roles, like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, and becoming a principal in 2022. During the pandemic she became a certified personal trainer and established Balanced With Rosi, to encourage a balanced approach to fitness and food. “I’ve been very adamant about not doing things like ‘What I eat in a day’ videos,” Leney says. “Everyone is different and everyone’s body is different, so I just try to be the kind of person that I’d want the younger version of me to see on social media.”

Her Pre-Performance Routine:

“I like to have calming music playing in the dressing room, and I like to have a good meal a few hours before. I don’t tend to have coffee if I’m doing a main role because I find sometimes it makes me a little bit shaky or heightens the nerves, and I like to feel very in control.”

Becoming Blanche DuBois:

“That was a standout role in my career because it’s really up to her to tell the story. It’s quite a dark story, but it was quite liberating to feel so free onstage—I’ve not felt that before.”

An Unexpected Promotion:

“It was my first performance of The Snow Queen. After curtain call, Christopher Hampson [Scottish Ballet’s artistic director and CEO] walked onstage, which doesn’t usually happen unless it’s a promotion or someone’s last show. I remember being like, ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Rosi.’ When he said my name, I was stunned—it was a bit of an out of body experience.”

Dream Roles:

“Every girl says Juliet, but it’s such a gorgeous role. And I’d also have to say Odette, especially because Scottish Ballet’s Swan Lake is by David Dawson, and he’s a dream choreographer to work with for me.”

Training in Health and Wellness:

“I’ve always had an interest, and when I moved to Poland, I started a nutrition course because I had a little bit of spare time. And then during the pandemic, I signed up for an online personal training course, with in-person exams.”

The post Scottish Ballet Principal Dancer Roseanna Leney is Redefining the Wellness Space appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Over the course of 37 years, I have devoted myself to the practice of dance to develop worlds that harness and contain the multiplicity of my bodily reactions, dreams, sense of power, vulnerability, and desires. There has not been one day since I was 7 1/2 years old, studying at the Dance Theatre of Harlem School and The Ailey School, that I have not danced or communicated with others through the dance. The relationships formed through my movement practice have been an extension of family and a map of my evolution as a woman.

Dance is a vehicle to navigate personal rituals and translate the exquisite rawness of being alive. Human feeling is beyond language and is amplified in the complicated web systems of the body. Our bodies are ever-changing networks of tiny spirited dances that collect and manage our memories; the corporeal, mysterious, and cognitive. When I dance it allows the thunderous echo of my heart and constant oscillation of my breath to spread to others.

In the swelling of the body there is an endless peeling back of my human layers while never reaching the core. As I shed the skins of being, I feel healed and restored—reborn without fear. Our movement patterns shift the platelets and constitution of our being and soften the borders of our edges and fears. The language of the body expands and contracts our capacity to feel, empathize, and evolve dimensional understanding of the world we live in. I love the idea of the body’s technology as a way to experience the process of developing and aging. Our bodies make sense. They fold into and echo the natural world’s ability to rebuild and multiply.

Whenever I am grappling with change, dance is an old and trusted friend that I can confide in to decipher clear pathways and make meaning. Double consciousness is cultivated through dance’s ability to allow one to look at oneself transparently and come home to the body’s abundance. My other face is revealed through the many surfaces of reflection that dance offers. A dance is a space to both hold on and let go inside of—to embrace the possibility of transformation at all junctures of life.

Having recently returned to performing as a soloist, I am rediscovering the feeling of adrenaline and abandon that is the exchange between the witness and the dancer. It is a beautiful sensation to be seen imperfectly, shape-shift, and explode into action. Performing again has allowed me to reconnect with the daily commitment to the practice, care, and regimen of the body.

It is humbling and exhilarating to continuously negotiate the body’s limits and limitlessness. To connect with feeling again and again. Remembering: the soft touch of a mother’s hand, your warm embrace, the cold aftermath, dislocation, a restless feeling, coming to the surface from the dark depths, the resurgence of blood to the flesh, laughter, delirium.

One breath is the beginning and the end of one’s life cycle. These breaths weave together to create a cacophony of feeling as I dance—little births and deaths. I keep regenerating within the cycle of breath again and again, with gratitude to the form.

The post How Sidra Bell Uses Dance to “Navigate Personal Rituals and Translate the Exquisite Rawness of Being Alive” appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Their plight is understandable. You could situate Batten Bland amongst the icons she’s danced for, like Pina Bausch and Bill T. Jones. You could list the varied settings in which she works: with her own troupe, Company SBB//Stefanie Batten Bland; in buzzy, immersive shows like Sleep No More; on commercial projects for brands like Hermès and Louis Vuitton; in her game-changing classes at Montclair State University. Or you could highlight the elements that animate her transformative dance-theater pieces: the balance of abstraction and narrative, the dazzling theatricality, the shifts in space and time.

All of those descriptions are accurate. But no list of adjectives or accolades or resumé highlights can fully capture Batten Bland and the entrancing worlds she creates on stages and beyond. 

For Batten Bland herself, it’s not so com­plicated: “I’m a professional collager,” she jokes. “I put a lot of stuff together and it works out.”

Though Batten Bland is talking about the micro—the way she blends genres and mediums and influences in her choreography—the same could be said for the macro of her life: how she moves through the world, weaving together her disparate artistic and personal experiences and forging connections through her preternatural charisma.

To collage is an inclination that Batten Bland comes by naturally. She grew up in a former paper factory in New York City’s SoHo, the daughter of a writer and a jazz composer. “The neighborhood was a cacophony of colors, sound, texture, scent,” she says. “It’s not at all lost upon me why I do what I do now, how I can inhabit a single space and yet turn it into so many at the same time.”

When Batten Bland was 9, gentrification pushed her family out of SoHo, and they relocated to Los Angeles. She spent her teenage years immersed in political activism and studying dance at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, trekking back to New York City during the summers to train at The Ailey School and the Joffrey Ballet School.

After two years at SUNY Purchase, Batten Bland left to pursue professional work with choreographers like Seán Curran, Kraig Patterson, and Jones. It was while on an international tour with Jones that Batten Bland connected with Bausch’s company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, which was also touring. When visiting Wuppertal, she received a last-minute request from Bausch to audition to replace an injured dancer. Batten Bland learned a solo over the course of a few hours, then performed it for Bausch, who sweetly asked if she could do it again, but “better.”

Guesting with Tanztheater Wuppertal unlocked­ the European dance scene for Batten­ Bland. “I came out of that feeling like I had cracked the door into a space that had different types of making that I hadn’t had access to before,” she says. She relocated to France, and danced for artists like Hungarian physical-theater giant Pál Frenák and modern African choreographer Georges Momboye. She also began to choreograph. Her first evening-length work, Let’s Hang Out Like Wet Clothes, was a success and toured Europe. “The joy that I got from actually seeing that work live was the same pleasure that I received being inside of work,” she says. “I didn’t know that transference was possible. It was intoxicating.”

In 2008, Batten Bland founded her company to support her growing choreographic projects. Before long, she began feeling the call to come back stateside: Her parents were getting older, and she felt she had reached her ceiling in France. Batten Bland worried that her work wouldn’t be understood, as dance theater wasn’t nearly as popular in the U.S. as it was in Europe. But in 2011, she made the move, encouraged by her longtime supporter Mikhail Baryshnikov, whom she’d met early in her performing career in New York City. He predicted—correctly—that dance theater was growing in the New York scene, and offered her the support of his Baryshnikov Arts Center.

When Batten Bland auditioned for the then-recently opened Sleep No More in New York City, she knew that she had made the right decision. “It was like, duh, this is exactly what I’ve been made for,” she says. “It was another extension of how I already coexist inside that amazing hyphenation of theater-and-dance.” Batten Bland was in Sleep No More off and on until 2018, performing two of the show’s most iconic roles, the Bald Witch and Lady Macbeth.

Simultaneously, her company—now binational, with both American and French performers—was slowly gaining recognition stateside. Its visually stunning, highly tactile pieces appealed to both downtown dance insiders and first-timers. “Her work is incredibly accessible,” says Mia Yoo, artistic director of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, where Batten Bland is a resident artist. “Even if you’re not somebody who goes to see abstract dance—the community that she can speak to is vast and across the spectrum of performance-goers.”

But it wasn’t until 2017 that her work received widespread acclaim, with Bienvenue뻑短WelcomeBienvenidoكب‭ ‬الهأ, a La MaMa commission exploring immigration and featuring striking cardboard walls graffitied by audience members. The next few years marked one breakthrough after another, with 2019’s Look Who’s Coming to Dinner, an inventive reimagining of the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and 2022’s Embarqued: Stories of Soil, her Brooklyn Academy of Music debut. Embarqued—which explores African ancestral stories and transforms the stage into the deck of a ship—sold out its run, and the standby line wrapped through the building. “That made me feel like, wow, this scene is taking me seriously,” says Batten Bland. “I don’t feel like I have always been seen the way I thought I would have been here.”

This idea of being seen is a choreographic interest of Batten Bland’s—she likes to play with presence and absence, visibility and invisibility. Ensuring that the artists she works with are seen fully is also something of a mission. “She wants you to be who you are,” says Jennifer Payán, Company SBB’s associate artistic director. “She sees the heart and the imagination in someone’s choices, and then she amplifies it.” As longtime company member Emilie Camacho puts it, “She knows how to reveal people.”

Sometimes, she reveals people more literally. At Sleep No More, to which she returned in 2021 as a performance and identity liaison, she has worked with designers to properly light artists with darker skin tones. She’s also helped the show rethink its casting practices, inspired in part by her own experiences of being typecast throughout her career. “The world was saying, ‘Hey, has anybody noticed that Black women keep getting hired as witches?’ ” Batten Bland, who has an inviting energy and a gentle sense of humor, thrives when helping collaborators find common ground. “She shows everyone their bridge to each other,” says Kayla Farrish, a former Sleep No More performer and rehearsal director who has also performed with Batten Bland’s company.

Immersive theater has not only a diversity problem but also a training problem, Batten Bland says. Though the genre has exploded in the past decade, few collegiate programs prepare artists with the highly specific skills needed to be cast in a show like Sleep No More. Batten Bland, who recently earned an MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College, is starting to change that. Last year, she launched a physical-theater class at Montclair State University that links the dance and theater departments­. She is also working with MSU to pilot an immersive-theater summer intensive, which will include classes like clowning, acting for dancers, and physical theater, as well as opportunities to work with immersive-theater makers.

Batten Bland’s latest piece for her own company is also her most immersive yet. Coup d’Espace, which will have a residency at La MaMa next year before its premiere, asks what it takes to make communal change, to overthrow a space. It’ll take place inside of nine distinct rooms—depending on the setting, it may take over an entire theater building, or overflow onto the street.

This year, Batten Bland will also be working as the casting and movement director for a new show from the creators of Sleep No More, and taking Embarqued on tour. When not on the road, she’ll return to her home base, which is back where everything started: She lives with her family in SoHo.

“I’ve never seen someone ahead of me,” she says. “There is no template for me to follow. I’m not stepping into anyone’s shoes. I’m just stepping.”

The post The Magic and Magnetism of Stefanie Batten Bland appeared first on Dance Magazine.

That love came directly from my family. Fiestas and family gatherings would center around connection and laughter. Every party started with food and finished with a relative picking up an instrument and my whole family breaking into song. No one was formally trained, but it didn’t matter. Everyone played and sang from their gut. Eyes closed and heart opened, you could physically feel the joy in my house. The love of performing runs deep in my blood.

From the moment I stepped foot into BodyArts, my first dance studio, it was over for me. I became obsessed. I was hungry to get back in the studio and work on my pirouettes even though I could barely make fifth position. With the desperation to move and the deep love of music, I didn’t want to do anything else but dance. I felt a constant pull.

Whenever I dance, I get the same sweeping feeling. My heart is brimming. I feel euphoric and fulfilled. But it is really the connection onstage with other artists that gives my joy meaning. I was very fortunate to dance with some of my closest friends at BalletX. We toured, experienced life, developed as dancers and as people.

When I choreograph, I love being able to create a physical conversation for other artists to experience, to share, to contribute to. It brings me back to the family parties at my house where you could feel the air shift with commitment, joy, and music, everyone singing with a full heart and sharing this finite time together. Dance always brings me home.

The post Caili Quan Shares How Her Family Influenced Her Love of Performing appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Why Choreographing Appeals to Her:

“I’m generally a dance nerd when it comes to learning new techniques, but I love working my mind in that way of observing and seeing things and finding ways to speak about dance and share.”

From Assisting Kyle Abraham at NYCB to Creating Her Own Piece:

“Kyle is someone who really looks out for me as a dancer, choreographer, friend, artist—all things. That experience assisting Kyle on The Runaway was really cool because it was such a new world for Kyle at the time too. I met a lot of cool people, and I also got to see what that institution and the ballet world was like on the inside.”

Making History With Fortuitous Ash:

“Making a piece on New York City Ballet is still pretty surreal. I absolutely felt the pressure, but I tried to remember that if I wasn’t ready, I wouldn’t be here—pressure creates diamonds, they say.”

How Her Thai Heritage Influences Her Work:

“I like to live and present loudly and proudly of who I am, which is many things. Sometimes my work might not seem so blatantly ‘Asian’ to some people, but to me, it always is because it’s just who I am.”

Her Pre-Performance Routine:

“I keep it chill. Sometimes I like to have a warm glass of tea, and then it’s whatever I feel like will get me to that point of being grounded and calm.”

How Music Inspires Her:

“I love my music, and I usually create playlists that relate to certain times in my life or just how I’m feeling on certain days. If I’m more low-energy or it’s like a sleepy morning, I’ll play something like Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged album. Or, I love Tierra Whack’s ‘Whack World Instrumentals’ as background music if I’m reading.”

When She’s Not Dancing:

“I love spending quality time with loved ones and eating good food. I like taking in the sun and going for walks, or even just running my errands. Then I binge-watch my shows like everyone else. Right after The Joyce season, I binge-watched ‘Beef’ on Netflix, which was great, and I caught up on some ‘Barry’ and ‘Succession’ on HBO.”

The post How A.I.M Company Member and Choreographer Keerati Jinakunwiphat Uses Self-Reflection When Creating appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Company: BalletMet

Age: 21

Hometown: Vega Alta, Puerto Rico

Training: La Escuela Especializada en Ballet Julián E. Blanco, Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico, San Francisco Ballet School

Against the odds: After attending San Francisco Ballet School’s summer program in 2017, Dávila hoped to enroll full-time—and then Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. “We had three months without power and a month without water,” she recalls, and her training was put on hold. A friend encouraged her to write a letter to the school about her situation, and they responded with a full scholarship. Dávila started in January 2018, and her teacher back home helped raise money to pay for a shared room in a hostel because the dorms were full midyear. “I told myself, ‘I’m gonna make this happen, no matter what.’ So many people sacrificed so much for me to get here.”

Finding home: Throughout her training and her first job at Tulsa Ballet II, Dávila struggled with her body image and hyperextension. “And being a Latina in the dance community is hard,” she says. “You’re around people who don’t look like you.” Joining BalletMet (she danced with the second company for a year before joining the main company) felt like coming home, she says, because artistic director Edwaard Liang “appreciates his dancers the way we are, and everybody is unique. Now I’m thankful for my body, instead of trying to change it.”

Memorable debut: Dávila was excited about her first lead role, as grown-up Clara in BalletMet’s 2022 Nutcracker, but then her partner got sick and missed tech week—they finished rehearsing backstage before their first performance. “During the coda we were like, ‘We made it!’ Then on the last lift, I slipped and fell. Every single show after that we were like, ‘It’s not over till we bow!’ ”

Dream roles: Manon, Kitri, and Juliet top her wish list, but when BalletMet does Romeo & Juliet next spring, she says, “I don’t care what role I’m doing, I’m going to enjoy it.”

What her artistic director is saying: “Iris creates incredible shapes and movement with her body, and she is able to trust her partners and fall into the choreography,” says Liang. “I believe her career will be bright.”

Savoring her time off: Dávila loves eating out, cooking, and baking, but nothing beats her grandmother’s fried chicken. “Whenever I go back to Puerto Rico, she calls me and asks, ‘When are you coming, so I can have the fried chicken ready?’ ”

The post Meet BalletMet’s Iris R. Dávila appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Chicago’s leading repertory company struggled, as all dance companies did, during the pandemic. But years of turnover and financial challenges had been creating uncertainty well before COVID-19 lockdowns began.

In March, Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell rounded the bend on two years in the artistic director’s chair. Picked to usher Hubbard Street through the turmoil and into a new era, Fisher-Harrell has proved a savvy and steadying leader, leaving her mark on the company while honoring its past. 

Fisher-Harrell is just the fourth director in Hubbard Street’s 46-year history—the first woman and first person of color to serve that role. Founder Lou Conte was artistic director for 23 years, followed by Jim Vincent and Glenn Edgerton.­ The company was not new to Fisher-Harrell; she had danced with Hubbard Street prior to a storied performance career with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

When Fisher-Harrell auditioned for Hubbard Street in 1989, “I couldn’t take my eyes off of her,” says Conte, who was director at the time. “Nobody was as charismatic as her.”

Fisher-Harrell spent three seasons with the company. Though brief, her time there left an impression. The 19-year-old woman who arrived in Chicago in 1989 is often in her consciousness today.

“I was [at Hubbard Street] during the Tharp era,” she says, referencing a transformative multiyear commissioning project adopting new and existing works by Twyla Tharp. “When I envision Hubbard Street into the future, that’s the image that grounds me.” 

Fisher-Harrell leaned on Conte and former Ailey artistic director Judith Jamison as mentors as she navigated company leadership for the first time. “They were so powerful to me as artistic directors,” she says. “I’m asking for guidance or perspectives that I may or may not take. Either way, those relationships anchor me.”

A key priority from the get-go has been reconnecting with audiences. Before Fisher-Harrell’s directorship, a handful of highly entertaining programs were keeping the bills paid, like The Art of Falling (2014), a collaboration with The Second City, and Decadance/Chicago (2018), an evening-length assortment of Ohad Naharin works. But a critical mass of working-class Chicagoans failed to keep up with the company’s evolution toward a predominantly European aesthetic, culled from Vincent’s and Edgerton’s histories with Nederlands Dans Theater. Audience numbers had dropped off well before the pandemic, leaving some in the administration to question if they could continue to support a home season at the 1,500-seat Harris Theater for Music and Dance.

A cascade of additional challenges included several key staff turnovers. Executive director Jason Palmquist had left in 2017, replaced by ex-politico David McDermott. And when McDermott got his hands on the ledger, it was apparent that cuts were needed.

The company roster shrank, as did dancers’ contract lengths. In March 2020, the company’s affiliated Lou Conte Dance Studio closed. Perhaps the most symbolic loss was the sale of the company’s building at 1147 W. Jackson Blvd., its home since 1998.  

“It needed $3 million in roof fixes alone,” says McDermott.­ “From an investment perspective, it didn’t make sense.”

Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell assumed leadership in 2021 at the height of the pandemic with her company in a beleaguered state. McDermott was on the selection committee. “She just got it,” he says. “She got Hubbard Street and she got Chicago—the richness and diversity of Chicagoland. It was clear to me that she was going to connect with Chicago and that the art she wanted to present was going to connect with Chicagoans.”

Fisher-Harrell was aware of the challenges. “This is the thing I was looking for, but I knew the state of affairs,” she says. “It felt like a reset, and I’m not afraid to create something out of nothing.”

As one of the few long-running repertory companies not named for its founder, Hubbard Street is in many ways unburdened by an obligation to honor Conte’s legacy. Still, Fisher-Harrell is committed to tapping into Hubbard Street’s roots. Conte, now age 81, is happy to be a mentor, but all parties are clear: Hubbard Street is Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell’s company.

“I care a lot about what happens, but I don’t have any control of it,” he says. “I told her to follow her own lead and do what she thinks is right. She has good instincts.” 

A top priority for Fisher-Harrell was to turn her gaze westward and engage more American choreographers, particularly^­ choreographers of color. “I’m building a repertoire,” she says. “There are things in the past that I want to ­revisit…like taking out your old albums. There are going to be those reaches back. But as I reach back, I still want to build.­”

In two seasons, that catalog has included first-time commissions­ from in-vogue choreographers such as Amy Hall Garner, Hope Boykin, and Rennie Harris. Fisher-Harrell has also reengaged the company’s stake in Chicago, programming works by city natives Lar Lubovitch, Randy Duncan, Rena Butler, and Conte, who restaged his signature duet, Georgia, in May. And in rebuilding the dancer roster, now back to 14, Fisher-Harrell favored versatility—a necessity given the wide-ranging rep.

“I don’t want to turn my back on the European road,” she says. “All of the roads that were open to Hubbard Street, I feel like, are fair game.”

One of those roads was a relationship with Canadian American choreographer Aszure Barton, who set BUSK on the company in fall 2021. Barton will be Hubbard Street’s next choreographer in residence, beginning a three-year commitment this fall. Her residency looks like The Tharp Project: She will stage previous works on the company as well as make new ones. 

When Barton last worked with Hubbard Street, the company was rehearsing in a temporary, out-of-the-way warehouse space near the expressway, adjacent to a loading dock. It now occupies a sparkly, retrofitted storefront (previously an Adidas store) at the Water Tower Place mall on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. 

The new space is a vast improvement, but still a temporary solution. As the company rebuilds, a permanent home is part of Hubbard Street’s long-term planning, as is reopening a school. Fisher-Harrell also hopes to add more dancers; perhaps reinstate a second company, apprentices, and a trainee program, to create more pathways to professional performance opportunities for promising young dancers; and to protect company dancers from burnout. 

All of that, she acknowledges, will take time.

“That’s dreaming big,” Fisher-Harrell says, “and I realize that we have to be fiscally responsible. I want us to approach [those dreams] the right way, so they last.”

Hubbard Street’s Next Generation

Alexandria Best

Raleigh, NC

BFA in dance, Pace University

Joined Hubbard Street in 2021

“Everyone is really here for the vision of Linda. The way that she has been involving so many different aspects from the Chicago community—I’m like, ‘Wow, this place is so fruitful.’ ”

Aaron Choate

Lexington, KY

BFA in dance, The Juilliard School

Joined Hubbard Street in 2022

“Hubbard Street is not one thing at all. I think that’s what is unique. I’ve never seen or felt a company that is so comfortable going so many different directions at the same time.”

Shota Miyoshi

Kanagawa, Japan

BFA in dance, SUNY Purchase

Joined Hubbard Street in 2022

“[Linda-Denise] always says, ‘The party’s on the marley.’ She always gives me a new mindset.”

The post Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Is Returning to Stability—And Its Roots appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Copeland plays Rose, a dance teacher and waitress supporting her mother, Gloria (former Dance Theatre of Harlem and Complexions Contemporary Ballet member Christina Johnson), who lives with dementia. The two struggle to keep their home in a rapidly gentrifying Oakland, California. Rose befriends Sterling (Alonzo King LINES Ballet’s Babatunji Johnson), a local man who renews her hope for the future of her community and its culture. Throughout the film, Rose and Sterling largely interact through contemporary dance, with Sterling also communicating through turf dance, a street style that originated in Oakland.

Flower is mostly nonverbal, creating an inclusive story ballet in film form. It took root years ago, when executive producer Nelson George—who directed the documentary about Copeland, A Ballerina’s Tale—encouraged Copeland to further explore acting after seeing her perform La Bayadère in California. Copeland and Fayyaz, Flower’s producer, continued to develop the idea. “We took the ball and ran with creating a new form of storytelling for film,” Copeland tells Pointe. “That has been like our baby that we’ve birthed during the pandemic, but with a lot of intention.” The only dialogue comes from unhoused individuals, meant to give voice to the voiceless.

“I feel that the work I’m doing off the stage is equally as important as being a presence on the stage,” says Copeland. “This is the direction that dance and ballet should be moving in—telling these types of stories that will invite different communities and make them feel seen and heard.”

Most of Flower’s creative team have ties to Oakland. Copeland was inspired by the city, her husband’s hometown, for its history of activism and the way its youth culture uses art as a tool for social justice. “It was important for the creatives to have a real say in cooperation with the project,” she says.

The film features choreography by Alonzo King and creative pair Rich + Tone Talauega, and music composed by Raphael Saadiq. Copeland began working with King on the movement approximately a month and a half before filming started. “We just went into the studio and started creating,” she says. “He would ask me, ‘What do you think your character would be saying in this moment?’ Then, we would create based off of that, and we gave Rich + Tone the space and freedom to do what they do, like with conversations about who Babatunji Johnson’s character was.” Copeland wanted the choreography to feel fully relatable and human. “I have such a sensitivity to different genres of dance coming together,” she says. “It can work so beautifully and organically, and feel like a conversation of two different languages.”

At times, Rose escapes into a dreamlike state. In one scene, inspired by the 1983 hit Flashdance, she warms up and freestyles before teaching a ballet class. She then appears to be transported to the stage of Segerstrom Center for the Arts, highlighting the comfort and freedom she finds in movement. The addition of Segerstrom was originally unplanned. “It was just supposed to be in the studio, in my element, and then I loved the idea of this transformation,” Copeland says.

The walls of Rose’s studio are decorated with illustrations of trailblazing dancers by Salena Barnes from Copeland’s book, Black Ballerinas: My Journey to Our Legacy. “We wanted it to feel authentic to this character and her connection to the Black community and Black dance community,” says Copeland.

Copeland reflects on Flower as her first performance since the pandemic and motherhood. “Even with the surgeries and injuries I’ve had, I’ve never taken that much time off from dance, so my body was in a very different state,” she says. During the biggest dance scene—a pas de deux between Rose and Sterling—she was pregnant. “To have that experience within this new experience of being a producer and in this type of film, it felt good. Now, stepping back and watching it, I feel like there are so many layers to my intentions, but also what I was feeling in those moments.”

During a talkback with CNN’s Sara Sidner following the Lincoln Center screening, Copeland and Fayyaz revealed plans to make Flower a series of shorts, with each focusing on an issue specific to a different city. “We were able to provide jobs to people in the area, especially during a time when people weren’t getting as much work and productions were closed down,” Fayyaz said of the Oakland installment. “We want to continue doing that in other communities across the country.”

The post Misty Copeland’s New Film, <i>Flower</i>, Explores Inequity and Celebrates Community appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I’m a fourth-generation Korean American. I grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in a Hispanic neighborhood, attending bilingual Spanish and English schools by day while experiencing a very Asian American experience at home. My best friends were American Indian, Hispanic, and Asian American. Early on, I learned to move between different cultural worlds by embracing one concerted language: dance. Movement became my primary, galvanizing mode of communication. Through dance I expressed how I perceive the world.

As a young dancer I studied ballet, modern dance, jazz, and even martial arts. As I grew older, I developed a movement style that embraces all these forms. When I began choreographing, I founded a company of diverse dancers, Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company. My dancers also speak my language, and add their unique cultural experiences to the interpretation of my choreographies.

I still feel invigorated in the studio. This is my sacred space where I can express my memories, emotions, and life experiences. I develop dances that express unique stories that celebrate the tribulations and triumphs of our shared human experience.
My feeling about and dedication to dance have deepened over the decades. At moments of fatigue, dancing rejuvenates my body and my mind.

Now, I often ruminate on the fact that dance is passed down from generation to generation—teacher to student. You can’t learn to be a professional dancer through a YouTube video or TikTok. I thoroughly enjoy choreographing, teaching, and coaching a new generation of dancers and celebrate how the journey of passing on physical knowledge from one dancer to another continues. Although I do not perform anymore, I am deeply thankful to continue to be in the studio alongside professionals in their prime. I now understand the field from multiple vantage points.

When I’m asked to give advice to a young dancer, I tell them to nurture what is unique about their life and to explore how this informs their dancing. An honest understanding of the self will allow you to dance for a lifetime.

The post How Choreographer and Artistic Director Dana Tai Soon Burgess Uses Dance to Move Between Cultural Worlds appeared first on Dance Magazine.

An Eye-Opening Summer Intensive:

“Dance Theatre of Harlem was my first non-commercial summer intensive. I got to stay in New York for about six weeks, and it was so cool to see a predominantly Black company extend their resources and their talent to young people who were trying to dance. To just be around that culture was exciting.”

Bringing More Representation OnScreen:

“So many people say this, but growing up, I didn’t see myself. And you realize the detrimental effects it has on you and your identity and how you present to the world. Most people who looked at me just identified me as Black, so being able to unapologetically be Black and Latina, it’s given me confidence that I didn’t know that I needed. And hopefully it shows other Afro-Latinos that they belong and that they’re represented—and represented in a positive way.”

Her Go-To Classes:

“I love taking Horton technique. I was very blessed to learn from Don Martin, who performed with Lester Horton Dance Theater and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and I just fell in love with it.”

Getting the Part:

“I sent in my tape, and a couple of days later my agent called me and said, ‘They’d like to do a chemistry read with you and Jabari [Banks].’ A few days after the chemistry read, my agent called me and was like, ‘You’re going to be Jackie.’ I was extremely anxious the day he called me, too. I had taken myself on a sushi date and was reading to try to take my mind off of it when I saw his contact pop up on my phone.”

How Dance Informs Her Acting:

“I think being a dancer puts me more into my body; it helps me to think on my feet and go with what I feel.”

The post How Dancer and “Bel-Air” Actress Jazlyn Martin is Carving Out Her Own Creative Path appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Company: Cincinnati Ballet

Age: 23

Hometown: Havana, Cuba

Training: Cuban National Ballet School with Ramona de Saá, Ana Julia Bermúdez, and Yaima Fuentes

Accolades: Gold and silver medals, Havana International Ballet competition; winner, Youth America Grand Prix Chicago; Top 12, YAGP New York Finals

Budding bunhead: Ochoa began ballet lessons at age 5 and quickly developed a passion for the art. She went on to study at Cuba’s national school for eight years before joining the National Ballet of Cuba in 2017, where she danced for three years, launching her professional career at 17.

Broader horizons: As a member of Cuba’s corps de ballet, Ochoa shined in staples of the classical canon like Giselle, Swan Lake, and Cinderella, swiftly rising to the rank of first soloist. But, says Ochoa, “I’d always dreamt of dancing in the U.S.,” so she connected with Cervilio Miguel Amador, a former dancer with the National Ballet of Cuba who is now a rehearsal director at Cincinnati Ballet. She joined the company in February 2022 as a corps member.

Branching out: Cincinnati Ballet’s wide-ranging repertoire offers a good challenge, as Cuba was largely focused on the classics. “Here, you do everything, and I am excited every time a choreographer comes to start working on a different type of ballet,” she says.

What Cincinnati Ballet’s artistic director is saying: Jodie Gates promoted Ochoa to soloist in January after her “exquisite” performance as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. “The backbone of her work is a very strong technical base, but it’s the richness of her artistry that makes her shine,” says Gates. “She has this intuitive way of approaching roles and really understands what it means to command the stage.”

The reel deal: If you haven’t watched Ochoa perform live, you’ve likely seen her trending on social media. Reels of her fouettés (sometimes reaching eight pirouettes) have been shared on numerous­ ballet fan pages. “I love turns!” says Ochoa, adding that it was common to engage in friendly competition with her colleagues during breaks in Cuba.

Downtime: On her days off, Ochoa likes going for walks with her boyfriend, Cincinnati Ballet principal Rafael Quenedit, and their Weimaraner, Kratos. Ochoa has befriended many of her colleagues, including first soloist Maizyalet Velázquez, a fellow Spanish-speaking dancer.

High hopes: Ochoa is excited to dive into contemporary work, while also performing in her “dream ballets” like Don Quixote and George Balanchine’s Jewels during the 2023–24 season.

The post Meet Cincinnati Ballet’s Katherine Ochoa appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Paliński moved to Los Angeles from his native Poland in 2015, looking for bigger opportunities after competing on “So You Think You Can Dance Poland” and performing with the top recording artists of his home country. The following year, he landed a job that would take his career to new heights: He was chosen to be a dancer for the burlesque superstar Dita Von Teese, joining the all-male Vontourage on her Strip, Strip, Hooray! tour.

Seven years later, Paliński—whose background includes ballroom, contemporary, jazz, and hip hop—has become a principal dancer, choreographer, and rehearsal director for Von Teese. For her Glamonatrix tour, which began in 2019 and ended in February after a two-year, pandemic-imposed pause, his offstage duties ranged from auditioning dancers to managing lighting cues and spiking props. Paliński also continues to dance for other artists, including a recent tour with the reggaeton sensation Karol G.

Von Teese and Paliński are preparing for a Las Vegas residency expected to open later this year. He will serve as a principal dancer and her creative associate responsible for choreography.

Strip, Strip, Hooray! was one of my first jobs after moving to L.A. I continued dancing with Dita, and, eventually, I choreographed a number for a new show of hers. I proved myself with that. Then for the next show it was like, “Can you choreograph multiple numbers?” It was the first time I could go back to choreography professionally after doing it in Poland, because after moving here, I had to start from scratch.

Dita saw some of my passion projects and concept videos, and she asked me, “Did you edit this yourself? Is this your concept?” Based on that, she started trusting me more with the creative side of her show. Even with big artists, sometimes you don’t need huge credits. They can see a passion project you did with no budget, and if it’s done really well and it makes them feel something, they can
trust you.

What makes Dita’s tours different from other commercial tours is that there’s a lot of individuality, and solo performances from the backup dancers. Some of the solos are burlesque performers with their own acts, and some we create for dancers who were not previously burlesque performers. A solo is very different from being a backup dancer; there’s so much playing with the audience in being the only person onstage.

In creating a solo, there is a certain amount of tapping into the performer’s natural style and ability. What I typically do is create the vision, and I love to be prepared with the steps before rehearsal rather than creating them on the spot. I teach it, and for those slow moments, I give an intention. Then, I see what the performer does with it. It’s allowing them to bring life to it, identifying their superpower and letting them live in that realm. You can adjust the expression, the story, or certain steps or positions, so they can really shine.

In an audition, the first thing we look for is stage presence. You have to be able to stand and be electrifying.

With choreography I love playing with stillness; the contrast between intense, sharp moments and then just being there and not moving for a while. I learned so much in working with Dita—how you can get the audience to react exactly how you want by sectioning the movements correctly and playing with the music.

I always wanted to be a versatile dancer, and I think that helps me now with choreography for shows like Dita’s. We had one number that’s jazzy and flowed a little bit from elements like West Coast swing and jazz. There’s another with a huge cake, a Marie Antoinette–inspired performance. Dita pulled inspiration for that from Madonna’s­ “Vogue” performance at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards.

My days on tour are longer, because I have to come to the theater early on show day and spike all of the props with the crew, and make sure of where everything’s going to land. In every theater, the sight lines are different. Sometimes we have to go narrower with the props, and sometimes you can spread them out more. We make sure they are seen from each angle. When the dancers come in, we have a crew-and-cast meeting for all of the safety measures. After that, we run some of the numbers, and then I clean it. I watch it on video and make any adjustments.

Especially for a new show, I’m learning new things, but I also have to make sure everyone else knows what they’re doing and be able to answer their questions. What’s challenging is making sure that I’m on top of my stuff as a dancer, but taking care of everyone else as a leader at the same time. I try to give as many tools to new dancers as possible, so they can be self-sufficient. For example, there are a ton of costume pieces for each number, because we take off a lot of layers. The dancers make a list for each number.

There are a lot of moving parts in a touring show, and things constantly change. Sometimes, you’ll change the order of the layers Dita takes off, how she’s taking them off, or she’ll add or take a piece away. That then affects the timing of our choreography, and we have to figure out how to fit it. That keeps it exciting.

We’re brainstorming ideas about a show that’s a hybrid of our touring show and a Vegas revue. Dita wants it to have show girls and show boys. It would allow us to create bigger performances and have more dancers. It’s my dream to create grand numbers that are dance-heavy and hire people who have been consistently auditioning and showing their best.

The post How Alek Paliński Juggles Being a Performer, Choreographer, and Rehearsal Director for Burlesque Star Dita Von Teese appeared first on Dance Magazine.