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Article Excerpt
Ballet Nouveau Colorado
Melissa Thomas
Leslie Kraus
Sarah Reynolds
Edwin Aparicio
Manuelito Biag
Rachel Piskin
Kyle Abraham
Sonya Tayeh
Ricardo Zayas
Francisco Graciano
Kiesha Lalama-White
Andrea Miller/Gallim Dance
Jessica Tong
Sarah Reich
Christopher Vo
Megan Quiroz
Kara Wilkes
Seth Stewart
Marideth Wanat
Jessica Collado
Lux Boreal
Ginger Smith
Eric Underwood
Rachel Foster
Ballet Nouveau Colorado
The new leadership team at Ballet Nouveau Colorado is taking the suburban Denver company's name seriously, bringing new, often technologically savvy approaches to everything from programming to marketing. Exhibit A is its innovative 21st Century Choreography Competition, in which entries are posted on YouTube and voted on by the public. Operating in the shadow of the larger and more established Colorado Ballet, the small company shows verve and imagination. The dancers have improved since the leadership changed less than two years ago, and artistic director Garrett Ammon is full of ideas. This past fall he mounted a program of rock ballets to the music of INXS and Queen. In February, Love will include three new pieces through a collaboration with Colorado's Lighthouse Writers' Workshop. The program features works by Ammon, Ma Cong (winner of the 2008 choreography competition), and Canada-based choreographer Mark Godden. Ammon's wife, associate artistic director Dawn Fay, is a demanding yet caring taskmaster (both are veterans of Ballet Memphis and the Trey Mclntyre Project). Sometimes, being the little guy in town can be just the motivation needed to get results.--Kyle MacMillan
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Melissa Thomas
There's lightness and delicacy to the way Melissa Thomas dances that suggests the steps require little effort. The American Ballet Theatre corps member, 24, has excelled lately in dramatic roles, where her performances have a natural quality, even in the distilled storytelling of Tudor ballets like The Leaves Are Fading (right). Her Bathilde in Giselle, appalled and repelled by Albrecht's deception, becomes a study in noble dignity and wounded pride. Her graceful Third Girl in Robbins' Fancy Free slowly, sweetly entices the three sailors away from their foiled hopes to a fresh adventure. Expressive even in classical roles, Thomas, a native of Birmingham, AL, who joined the main company in 2002 through ABT's studio company, has a lyricism that imbues the steps with meaning. Her Fairy of Charity in Sleeping Beauty has a giving quality in her port de bras; her Moyna in Giselle seems blown about the stage by winds from the beyond. In a promising crop of corps women, Thomas holds true to ABT's theatrical mission.--Hanna Rubin
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Leslie Kraus
With her flaming red hair, large bright eyes, and sharp attack, Leslie Kraus brings a Susan Sarandon-ish glamour to downtown dance in Manhattan. In her third year with Kate Weare and Company, she seems to define the Kate Weare woman: bold, taunting, as willing to lash out at a partner as to caress. Weare's choreography is sometimes unbearably intimate, counterbalanced by precise, repetitive rhythms. In the context of sexual struggle that Weare fosters, Kraus' every move is taut, sharply focused, and a little scary.
Kraus, 27, grew up in Baltimore and went to a "normal ballet/tap/jazz studio" but also dabbled in gymnastics and theater. She graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she studied improvisation, choreography, and release technique--a good preparation for Kate Weare, who asks her dancers to create their own narrative. "It's challenging," says Kraus, "but it feels like a conversation, like discovering something new. The closeness in which we dance--that alone is intense." What accounts for her riveting stage presence? "I try to be a clear window through which the audience can experience something," she says. The company performs at the Danspace Project in June.--Wendy Perron
Sarah Reynolds
When Sarah Reynolds dances, you see the movement take its course through her who[e body. Even her breathing is precise. As her ivory limbs emerge through a white screen in diri Kylian's Sleepless, she is hauntingly ghostlike; each flick of...
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