NYC > Minneapolis > Chicago: Adventures on the Road and Touring Tips

September 17, 2016 by Rachel Hellwig

Touring with a professional dance company is a maturing experience. The process tests you in many ways. Since joining Miami City Ballet, I have toured to Vancouver, Ottawa, New York City, Minneapolis, and Chicago. Every city is culturally diverse, but all share an appreciation for dance. I look forward to sharing several touring experiences with you from my recent three-city tour with Miami City Ballet…

It is a dancer’s dream to perform at Lincoln Center. As the home of George Balanchine and New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center has a high level of historical importance. The backstage area, dressing rooms, and even the elevator reminds a performer why Lincoln Center is so remarkable. Our week there included three dress rehearsals and seven performances. Every performance highlighted a piece that was created for Miami City Ballet. Liam Scarlett’s Viscera, Alexei Ratmansky’s Symphonic Dances, and Justin Peck’s Heatscape were among these works. The company also performed works by George Balanchine and Twyla Tharp. On Wednesday evening, we performed Balanchine’s Serenade. It was a high point of the tour. The company also performed Twyla Tharp’s Sweet Fields. This particular work by Twyla first premiered in 1996. It is extraordinarily spiritual onstage and was a true highlight to bring it to the Koch Theater. In fact, the audience reacted so well that we returned for a curtain call after each performance.

To finish off the 2015-2016 season, we performed in Minneapolis and Chicago. Both cities presented new venues and different inspirations. Compared to the New York step of our tour, we presented similar programming which included Balanchine’s Serenade, Peck’s Heatscape, Scarlett’s Viscera, Balanchine’s Symphony in Three Movements, Ratmansky’s Symphonic Dances, and Balanchine’s Bourrée Fantasque. The audience stood on their feet after each performance.

Touring Tips on the Road:

While touring, learning to reset and refocus is important. Below are a few suggestions on how to approach touring with your best foot forward….

#1: Remember your goals. Touring is a very exciting element of company life. Usually, the first thing you want to do is explore the city, but, it is important to remember that you are there to perform and work.

#2: Plan ahead. I recommend researching the area around your hotel or near the theater so you have an idea of what is available. It is helpful to know where you can grab food quickly before or after the show.

#3: Stick to your routine. On tour, the theater, the distance to the theater, and the studio space are different. This means it’s important to stick to your regular routine for preparing for class and performances. If you usually spend 45 minutes warming up before class, make sure you do so.

#4: Eat! Be sure to bring good snacks for the trip so you do not get stuck trying to find something last minute. I like to have a variety of snacks like Cliff Bars, trail mix, and bananas. Check to see if there is a refrigerator at the venue or in the hotel. In this case, I would be sure to have yogurt, veggies, humus, or deli meat.

#5: Sleep! I recommend turning in a little earlier than usual.

#6: Keep you head held high and be positive. Touring is one of the most rewarding adventures a dancer can be a part of. Not only will you have the opportunity to perform in theaters around the world, you will also have the chance to be introduced to new audiences. A main reason I enjoy performing on stage is to bring audiences the emotion of our art form. So enjoy every minute and dance your heart out.

Dreams Come True... Samantha at Lincoln Center. Jonathan Taylor — Dreams Come True…Samantha at Lincoln Center. Photograph by Jonathan Taylor

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Boston Ballet’s Lauren Herfindahl

June 24, 2014 by 4dancers

Today we’d like to welcome Lauren Herfindahl to 4dancers. Lauren is a dancer with Boston Ballet, and she was kind enough to talk with us about preparing for her roles in the company’s upcoming engagement at Lincoln Center.

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Can you tell readers a little about your background in dance and how you wound up dancing at Boston Ballet? I started ballet at a very young age after my mother noticed my strong interest and desire to move and express myself to music. I loved putting on mini dance performances for friends and family members, so you could say I always had an innate passion to be a performer. My family and I moved to the Boston area from the West Coast when I was eight and my mother enrolled me in Boston Ballet School. I studied at the school for 7 years before getting an offer to join Boston Ballet II. I grew up watching Boston Ballet and performed many children’s roles in large productions, including six years of children’s roles in The Nutcracker, so it was a dream come true to be offered a job with my home company. It is now only a week away from the end of my first season as a Corps de Ballet member!

This is Boston Ballet’s 50th season and it will be the first time they have performed at New York’s Lincoln Center. What is it like to be a part of this historic event?

It is truly an honor to be able to be a part of such an amazing company. Even from my ten years of watching and now dancing with the company, I have seen it grow into a sensational organization filled with so many amazing artists! To be able to bring this to a new audience is a great opportunity, especially to perform at Lincoln Center. I have learned a lot about the history of Boston Ballet this year, and without George Balanchine and the Ford Foundation, Boston Ballet might not be what it is today, so it seems fitting that we are now closing such a historic season in New York City.

Would you talk a bit about this performance series and the role(s) you will be dancing in New York? What has been the biggest challenge for you personally in preparing for it?

[Read more…]

10 Questions With…Ikolo Griffin

September 10, 2012 by 4dancers

I met this lovely man at Dance USA when he came up to talk to me after the panel on Dance Writing–he had a pretty cool idea that he wanted to share–and now I’m pleased to be able to share it with you…

1. What is your dance background?

When I was in third grade, San Francisco Ballet’s Dance In Schools Program (led by Charles McNeal) came to my school, and following the residency I received an outreach scholarship. I started training at the San Francisco Ballet School from the age of eight until I graduated at eighteen. After ten years in the School, I became the first outreach student to get into the professional company as an apprentice in 1993. At that time SFB was becoming a world-class company, and I was very blessed to grow up watching and then performing with some of the best dancers from all over the world.

In 2001, after seven years performing professionally with the San Francisco Ballet, I moved to New York to join Dance Theatre of Harlem as a soloist. Under the guidance of Arthur Mitchell, I felt myself become more than just a dancer, but a true artist. I felt real satisfaction and fulfillment as I was promoted to a principal dancer and given the opportunity to dance leading roles in many iconic neoclassical ballets. For two weeks we performed at Lincoln Center, the heart of dance in America, and I felt I had reached a very high point in my career.

Unfortunately, after only four years dancing with DTH, the company closed its doors. I was blessed enough to join the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago and landed nicely on my feet (as always!). After my experiences in San Francisco and New York, I felt confident in my abilities as a technician and as an artist. One of the highlights of my two years at the Joffrey was working with Sir Antony Dowell on the role of Oberon in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream.

My time in Chicago was short and sweet, and in 2006 San Francisco called me home again. This time, I had the fortune to dance with Smuin Ballet. Michael Smuin was one of the best artistic directors I have worked with. He had a way of bringing out the best dancing in me and giving the audience a really great show. Mr. Smuin had been the director of San Francisco Ballet when I was just a kid, and we had worked together at Dance Theatre of Harlem as well. It was great to work with him on a full time basis because I felt he appreciated me as a dancer and as person. Up until the day he died in the studio, my experience with Smuin was marked by some of the best dancing I’ve ever done.

Since I left Smuin in 2008, I’ve been freelancing around the Bay Area. I am currently working with the San Francisco Opera as a resident corps dancer. One of the best things about working with the Opera is being back on the War Memorial Opera House stage. This is the very same stage where I did my first Nutcracker as a Mother Ginger kid. It feels like home, and the opera singers are amazing too…

2. What is “Just Turns” and why did you decide to found it?

Just Turns is an interactive classical ballet workshop. The two-hour Just Turns workshop is designed to focus the student’s approach and maximize turning technique in order to increase confidence and ability in all kinds of turns. The class structure and progression are designed to break down every part of turning technique— training spot, balance, force control, and placement from the ground up. Students are encouraged to ask questions, experiment, and take notes throughout the workshop in order to realize their ideal turning method.

My inspiration for Just Turns is in helping dancers with one of the hardest and best parts of ballet technique. While I was dancing in New York, I would take class at Steps on Broadway with Willy Burmann. In his class I really started to develop a great turning style. My turns were always good, but with the Mr. Burmann’s help they became great! When I returned to San Francisco, dancers would frequently ask me for help working on their turns after class. One day I was talking with my friend Vanessa Zahorian (principal dancer with SFB who is a great turner as well), and I thought, “How great would it be to bring back the ‘turning class’ that we would take during summer sessions?” That thought brewed in my head for a while, and when I started teaching ballet two years ago, it was time for Just Turns to be born. Now, as I am moving toward the next phase of my career as a teacher, I am finding my specific niche as a turning coach. Just Turns is my way of reaching the broader dance community and using my passion and specific expertise with turns to help dancers everywhere.

3. Who can benefit from the “Just Turns” approach? [Read more…]

The Taming of the Tutu: A Call for Restraint in Today’s Ballet Stars

August 2, 2012 by 4dancers

by Risa Gary Kaplowitz

Although it’s been nearly four decades, I remember like it was yesterday–standing in line with my friends at Lincoln Center by 7:30 AM to get standing room tickets to see Cynthia Gregory dance. She was an American Ballet Theatre superstar at the time, and no matter what she performed (but especially when partnered by Fernando Bujones), we were ravenous to dwell with her in the magical world she created onstage.

Ms. Gregory’s assured technique, especially her balances were legendary. Solid like a statue with a beating heart, she would take an attitude line en pointe and hold, hold, hold it as we held, held, held our breath only to exhale when an ever so slow extension into arabesque was complete. Then we exploded into rock-concert-fan-screams; a cacophony of bravas and oh-my-gawds.

Yet, as wonderful as these heart-stopping moments were, they never came at the expense of Ms. Gregory’s characterizations and musicality. Rather, she used her technique as a means by which to express whatever character she was portraying. She was a true ballet artist of the narrative ballets.

Unfortunately, in these days of what appear to be an Olympian approach to ballet, such ballet artists are hard to find. And sadly, many ballet schools and major companies do not seem to be doing enough to preserve ballet’s greatest asset—its ability to transcend words and transport an audience into their world. Ballet technique that explodes with meaning instead of fireworks is vastly lacking.

This is due in part to the thriving dance competition scene—one of the most prestigious is Youth America Grand Prix, which was featured in the recent movie First Position—and, more broadly, to the human nature of always wanting more. Many of today’s ballet students believe that the main goal of their training is to achieve higher extensions, bigger jumps, and more turns. As they obsessively view ballet wunderkinds on YouTube, ballet companies respond to the demand for ballet pyrotechnics by promoting hyper-technical dancers without much coaching on the subtleties necessary to make great art.

Thanks to YouTube, we can take a closer look into this dilemma. Below is a video of Ms. Gregory performing the Rose Adagio from The Sleeping Beauty in the late 1970’s. In it, she illustrates a ballerina artist who uses impeccable technique to provide a deep connection to her character, the sixteen year-old Princess Aurora. In the scene, Aurora is meeting her suitors for the first time.

Ms. Gregory’s portrayal clearly shows Aurora’s growth in both comfort and joy as she gains confidence dancing with her suitors. Ms. Gregory’s pitch perfect technique is in perfect harmony with the story and the music. Her nuanced gestures grow larger as Aurora’s confidence does. And, at the end, there is that arabesque extension— slow, controlled and deliberate. An enraptured ending to a demure beginning. [Read more…]

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