The past few weeks have brought another exciting round of dancer career news—check out the latest farewells, appointments, promotions, and more in this month’s ballet roster roundup. Promotions and Appointments Bleuenn Battistoni has been promoted to étoile of the Paris Opéra Ballet. POB artistic director José Martinez and national opera director Alexander Neef announced the […]
If you were asked to name the influential ballet choreographers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, you’d probably list a lot of men: Marius Petipa, Michel Fokine, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton. Maybe, if you really knew your stuff, you’d add Bronislava Nijinska. You wouldn’t be wrong, but there were others, too. […]
The first time I saw San Francisco Ballet principal Yuan Yuan Tan dance was as a 9-year-old child in the early aughts. When my dad took me across Bay Bridge to see my dream company, even he, a dance-world outsider, could see that Tan was a consummate artist. The carriage of her port de bras […]
The past few weeks have brought another exciting round of dancer career news—check out the latest farewells, appointments, promotions, and more in this month’s ballet roster roundup. Promotions and Appointments The Royal Ballet’s Giacomo Rovero has been promoted to soloist, effective February 1. Rovero, a Royal Ballet School graduate, joined the company’s corps de ballet […]
It’s not every day that someone celebrates 10 years as choreographer in residence at the company where he has spent the majority of his own dancing career. Ricardo Graziano, a member of The Sarasota Ballet since 2010, and principal since 2011, has much to celebrate. The list of roles he has taken on in his […]
When current Sarasota Ballet coryphée Willa Frantz auditioned for Sarasota Ballet’s Summer Intensive at age 15, she didn’t plan to stay with the company for the next five years. But something about that first audition class, taught by Sarasota Ballet’s education director Christopher Hird, made Frantz feel remarkably close to her goal of dancing professionally. “I remember him giving […]
Céline Gittens bourrées forward and lifts her chin confidently, her arms poised in fifth as the accompanist plays the coda of Nutcracker’s grand pas de deux. It’s a moment of sheer delicacy before she launches into fouetté turns, traveling along the diagonal of Birmingham Royal Ballet’s spacious studio. She pulls into a spectacularly centered quadruple […]
The year’s end is a fantastic time to celebrate the hard work that dancers and ballet companies have been doing onstage. Here are 12 standout performances our writers have seen and loved in 2023, listed in chronological order. They range from exuberant solos to major ensemble works, from premieres to revivals, and even a film. […]