The Kennedy Center’s regional ballet festival in June drew Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, Ballet Arizona, Ballet Memphis, Houston Ballet, The Joffrey Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Suzanne Farrell Ballet and Tulsa Ballet. The dancers compared notes in company class, taught each morning by artistic directors like Stanton Welch and Ashley Wheater, and […]
Where can you find San Francisco Ballet corps member Quinn Wharton most Sunday evenings? Popping and locking with Funkanometry, a San Francisco-based hip-hop troupe. “Different company members teach Sunday night classes each week, and every one has his or her own style,” Wharton says. “So you learn styles, rather than just steps. Eventually, you have […]
Misa Kuranaga felt completely in control when she performed the Black Swan pas de deux four years ago in the first round of the USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi. “It was as if there was a bubble around me and nothing could go wrong,” she says. Although the Boston Ballet dancer won a […]
When Pointe featured Romi Beppu in its Spring 2003 issue, the young dancer had just performed her first principal role with Boston Ballet: the lead in Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly. “That was an exhilarating time for me, and the article was such a confidence booster,” she recalls. “I was so excited to be in the […]
A roundup of recent honors in the ballet world Muriel Maffre, a former principal with San Francisco Ballet who now performs as a guest artist with Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet, was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. In October, Pacific Northwest Ballet principal Olivier Wevers received […]
It was Tulsa Ballet Artistic Director Marcello Angelini’s dream to build a world-class company from the moment he decided to give up his career as a dancer and take artistic control of TB in 1995. Some would say that he has succeeded, and perhaps because he’s still a dancer at heart, his company is one […]
When Angel Corella walks into Cafe Mozart near Lincoln Center for his interview in mid-May, it’s a blustery, rain-soaked afternoon that has kept most New Yorkers inside. But one look at the American Ballet Theatre superstar, and you’d think it was a perfect spring day. In person, Corella bursts with the same effervescent sparkle he […]
During Nutcracker season, when Christopher Ruud was a young student at the San Francisco Ballet School, he often eluded his chaperone to lead his fellow boy party guests through the catacombs and across the catwalks of the War Memorial Opera House. This historic theater was a backdrop to Ruud’s childhood even before his formal training […]