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Winnipeg Free Press
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Emotional edge
Sahel Flora Pascual's dance career has taken her all over the world: Ballet Manila, the School of American Ballet in New York City, Ballet Austin in Texas and, for the upcoming 2025/26 season, London City Ballet. In April, it brought her to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Pascual, 22, is a choreographic fellow in the Pathways to Performance Choreographic Program at MoBBallet (Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet), which links ballet companies to Black choreographers and those of colour so they can engage in a meaningful way. Ryan-Rogocki photo Choreographer Sahel Pascual leads Aspirants students through her new piece. Pascual was commissioned by the RWB to choreograph an original work for the students in the Anna McCowan-Johnson Aspirant Program in the Professional Division at the RWB School. The piece will be performed as part of On the Edge, the Aspirants' mixed-rep showcase this week. Pascual participated in the inaugural MoBBallet Symposium in Philadelphia in 2019 as a dancer. Lately, though, she's been considering ways she could contribute to her art form as a choreographer. 'I've always seen choreography as a way, not only to create my own artistic vision and exercise my own authorship of my voice and my idea of what art can do, but as also a way to facilitate growth within the artistic community, whether that's through creating more holistic dance spaces for mental health or for diversity's sake,' she says from London, England, via Zoom. The as-yet-untitled work she created on the Aspirants was inspired by the barrier-breaking American-born French dancer, singer and actress Josephine Baker. It's a dialogue, she says, between Baker's legacy and her own experience, informed by her African American, Jamaican and Filipino heritage. 'My choreography draws from my own positionality as an expatriate artist and emerges as a physical meditation on displacement, trauma, discrimination and the reverberations of the colonial gaze,' she writes in her choreographer's note. 'What was really important to me was the piece itself is not a re-creation of her in any way, but it is a meditation on the things that were important to her, the parts of her that were significant, through the shared language of human emotion,' she says. Working in the studio with the Aspirants in the spring was 'truly just a beautiful experience.' 'They're young dancers, they're dancers of a lot of different backgrounds, and they want to engage. Something that was just lovely was that each one of those dancers wanted to engage with this work,' Pascual says. 'And it's difficult, because one would say, 'How can a group of dancers that does not have African American or Black heritage work within this framework that centres a Black woman?' And my response to that was,' Yes, it is about a Black woman, but each one of us, through whatever part of our life, can empathize in certain ways with her rebellion, with her love of not only people but of animals, of community, with her fieriness, with her desire to change things, with her desire to care and to break down barriers.'' Founded in 2015 by consultant, educator, advocate and former ballet dancer Theresa Ruth Howard, MoBBallet is an archive that preserves, presents and promotes Black ballet history. The RWB joined MoBBallet's Cultural Competency and Equity Coalition (C2EC), a membership-based organization that will see peers work collaboratively to become anti-racist, in 2022, and has previously commissioned works by MoBBallet Pathways fellows Meredith Rainey and Portia Adams. That commitment stands in contrast to what's happening south of the border, where many organizations are rolling back anti-racist and DEI initiatives. 'It's important for us to keep this relationship, because I have worked very hard on building that trust so when we bring choreographers in — it's a little bit cliché — but it's a safe place to be,' says Tara Birtwhistle, the RWB's associate artistic director. The fact that Pascual is working with the next generation of dancers on the precipice of their careers in the Aspirant Program is also significant. Wednesdays Columnist Jen Zoratti looks at what's next in arts, life and pop culture. 'We talk a lot about changing the culture of ballet, and we can't just talk about it anymore. We have to do something about it, and really, to lean in to these young people who have so much to teach us and guide us through a different lens,' Birtwhistle says. Pascual would agree. 'Why it's important that these kinds of stories that choreographers like myself are being engaged with is because we are the art that is current. We are the people who are dancing. It is the population that we are dancing for,' she says. 'If you think about ballet's audience now, there are many conversations about how it's diminishing, and although that in some ways is true, I think what we've seen from the dance world and the art world as a whole is an understanding that the audience must be broadened, and that the art that is being encountered, that is being created, must reflect the world as a whole.' Jen ZorattiColumnist Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen. Every piece of reporting Jen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
New York Times
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Ballet Kids of ‘Midsummer' Bring Magic to the Bugs
There is Oberon, the King of the Fairies, and his beautiful Queen, Titania. Puck, a sprite, works his magic with the occasional unforced error, as mortals and immortals find themselves in a similar predicament: wanting to love. And wanting to be loved. But for all the sparkle of the mythological adults in George Balanchine's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' it's the kids — 24, plus Titania's page — that rule this fantastical realm. Enter the Bugs. These young dancers from the School of American Ballet are the heart of New York City Ballet's production. Technically, they play Fairies and Butterflies, but at City Ballet and its training ground, S.A.B., they are known informally as Bugs. (Perhaps less dignified as far as outdoor creatures go, but cuter.) These Bugs are small, exuberant bodies that, at times, scurry across the forest stage, gleaming in the moonlit night. They're a coalition, a small but mighty squad of fleet-footed girls, ages roughly 10 to 12 — 'a wholly unsentimental deployment,' wrote Lincoln Kirstein, who founded the school and company with Balanchine. Balanchine based his ballet more on Felix Mendelssohn's overture and incidental music for 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' to which he added additional pieces, than on the Shakespeare comedy. Mendelssohn's sweeping music also thrills the Bugs no end. It puts the gas in their engines, the quiver in their antennas, the flap in their delicate wings. 'You're not walking down the street anymore,' said Naomi Uetani, 11, with a smile she couldn't suppress. 'I'm in a magical place. I understand 'Nutcracker' — yeah, you're in the candy land, but this is different. The feeling.' There's truth to that. 'George Balanchine's The Nutcracker' (1954) is a marvel of storytelling and dancing, and kids play a huge part in it. But 'Midsummer' (1962), which closes City Ballet's spring season this week, remains both grand and carefree, irresistible for its sweetness. That comes from the children. 'They bring so much to the whole idea of the forest and all the little creatures,' Dena Abergel, City Ballet's children's repertory director, said. In other words, they bring the magic. With militaristic precision they burst into the action — their movements sharp and swift — while brief, stand-alone moments bubble up, seemingly from nowhere, as when the Bug called the spinner whips around in place while drawing her arms up and down. The seven Bugs in the overture have more difficult steps, including the first two who perform big saut de chats, or catlike jumps. But largely, for the children, the dancing in 'Midsummer' is a group experience. 'They're all part of the finale, they're all part of the Scherzo,' Abergel said. 'Everybody gets to dance a lot in 'Midsummer.'' Arm movements — pushing them out like rippling wings — are important for the Bugs; running and sharp footwork, too. 'There are a lot of sauté arabesques and pas de chats, and those are things that Balanchine uses from beginning to end in the training,' Abergel said. 'They're practicing all of those crucial classical steps,' as they also work on moving in and out of formations. When she's casting, though, Abergel is on the lookout for something other than technique. 'Just like every creature in nature, there are different bugs and different energies,' she said. 'This is more about energy and that ability to move quickly and with excitement.' For Abergel, the sweetest moment in the ballet has nothing to do with nailing a tight fifth: It's when the bugs yawn and fall asleep on one another in a pile. 'You don't really need any technique for that,' she said. 'You just need to be in the moment and understand what it's about. I love that they experience that onstage.' The children, wearing dresses or short pants and whimsical headwear designed by the innovative costumer Karinska — there are a dozen designs with individual details on each, which is rare for an ensemble — frame the ballet. After the classical wedding scene in the second act, they return to a darkened forest stage for the finale. Isla Cooley, 12, loves this moment, when the adult dancers leave and 'then, us Bugs are running onstage and flapping our wings,' she said. 'I think it was a supervisor who told me that she thought it was like us kind of crashing the party. Because it's like, Oh, wait! We're here.' Last year Isla was the spinner. This year, she is a pop-up Bug. 'When Oberon motions to us, we pop up, we spin, and then we jump around,' she said. Naomi was the first Bug in the overture last year. For her big jumping moment, she said: 'You have butterflies in your stomach, but you also want to do it super bad. So I was scared, excited and like nervous at the same time. But yeah, I still couldn't wait to do it.' What was Balanchine looking for when he cast children in his ballets? 'Curiosity,' said Carol Aaron Bryan, 74, who trained at the School of American Ballet and danced in 'The Nutcracker' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' 'A kind of wonderment — just wondering what this adventure will be.' Bryan was around Balanchine a lot. In 1961 and '62, she performed Clara (as the young girl in 'The Nutcracker' was then known) opposite his Drosselmeier. 'He always did something different in the transition scene, and I never knew what he was going to do,' she said. 'It was always a surprise.' His Drosselmeier would sit near her legs on the sofa where she was meant to be sleeping. 'The whole couch would shake because he'd be fixing that Nutcracker,' she said. 'And I remember this so vividly: He would take the shawl off me and then he would cover me again. Like he was my Drosselmeier, my godfather.' When rehearsals started for 'Midsummer' — the first entirely original full-length ballet Balanchine choreographed in America — she said she felt she had gotten to know him, which 'made it easier for me to react when he asked us for things.' She recalled him working with the students on their runs by taking them to the back of the studio and running along diagonals with them. 'He would really show us,' she said. 'He was so nimble on his feet. It's like his heels never touched the ground. He became a Bug, and he became one of the Fairies. He taught us how to be so light and so quiet.' For Bryan, he was the man with the magic. His ability to enchant lives on in 'Midsummer' — in its glittering array of kids. As Naomi said, 'Without the bugs, the ballet wouldn't be alive.'
New York Times
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Leading Ballet Students With Grace, Mercy and Hard-Won Experience
'Y'all' is pleasant enough on its own, but to hear it more than a dozen times during a ballet class in New York City is a happy find. As in: 'I want y'all to move a lot more. If you fall off your pirouette that is ohhh-kay.' That voice, that word, that Southern sound — Jenifer Ringer is back in town. Ringer, a former principal with New York City Ballet, is now the director of the intermediate and advanced divisions and artistic programming at the company's School of American Ballet. As Ringer, 52, called out combinations in a recent technique class, starting with a simple plié sequence at the barre, she reminded her students of the basics: To press all 10 toes into the floor. To pull the legs together, wrapping their muscles for increased turnout. To contract the stomach into the spine. Preparation is important to Ringer: She likes to talk about where dancers should be holding weight in their bodies so that they can move in any direction. 'When y'all move, it's so much better,' she said. 'So much better.' As a teacher, Ringer is precise and firm, yet encouraging. She can get carried away. Before the class, she warned: 'I get very frizzy and red faced, so I'll lose my dignity, probably.' Her face did grow more pink, just as her smile became more joyful. She did not lose her dignity, but she did make her students want to dance bigger, bolder — to hear the music and to be on it. For her, musicality and efficiency matter. Ringer is part of a restructured leadership at the school, which is headed by Jonathan Stafford, who is also the artistic director of New York City Ballet. The school is now run by a team of three: Ringer; Aesha Ash, who is head of artistic health and wellness; and Katrina Killian, the director of the children's and preparatory divisions. The school, considered by most to be the country's most prestigious ballet academy, trains dancers for City Ballet — the majority of the company comes from the school — and beyond. Stafford decided to restructure after Darla Hoover's short stint as chair of faculty, a job she took on when Kay Mazzo retired. Stafford said that he realized it was too big a job for one person, that 'we needed to have multiple people leading different aspects of the school.' And after the pandemic, the school was going through a transition. Wellness has become a priority. 'This was a much broader effort,' Stafford said, 'to support the students at the school beyond the tendus and pliés.' Last year Stafford invited Ringer to be a guest teacher for a week. Simone Gibson, 16, described that time as 'a breath of fresh air because it felt like she really wanted to be there.' Gibson said, 'She was like, I'm coming here, I'm here for you, like, I'm ready to learn with you and learn about you as a dancer.' All the while Stafford had something bigger to pitch. 'I wanted to sit with her face to face and tell her that I really felt I needed her at S.A.B.,' he said. 'I wanted to work together with her at the school.' The job offer came as a surprise to Ringer, though she and Stafford know each other well. At City Ballet, they were dance partners, a relationship in which, Stafford said, 'a person's character is laid bare in those stressful, pressure-packed, vulnerable moments.' When he saw their names on a casting sheet or a rehearsal schedule, he would be filled with relief. 'I would internally celebrate,' he said. Ringer, whose romantic presence and musical dancing could bridge drama and humor with ease, never really thought of herself as a teacher. 'I wasn't one of those dancers that studied class,' she said. But her teachers at the school left important afterimages. She studied under the best, including Stanley Williams, Alexandra Danilova, Antonina Tumkovsky (or Tumi) and Suki Schorer, who still trains dancers at the school. 'All so very different,' Ringer said. 'Tumi worked on our strength and stamina. Suki worked on our precision and our presentation quality. Stanley was subtlety and control. And Danilova had the perfume and the magic.' Her own teaching career began gradually. After retiring from City Ballet in 2014, she moved to Los Angeles to direct the Colburn Dance Academy, and in 2017, she became dean of its Trudl Zipper Dance Institute, where her husband, James Fayette, another former City Ballet principal, was associate dean. Being at Colburn and caring for students over the course of a year transformed her ideas about what a teacher could be. She liked planning for them: 'What repertory is good for these students to learn this year?' she said. 'Knowing that I could have goals to work on — seeing them and saying, 'Oh my gosh, we really need to work on arabesque and planning that for a month.'' She also found she enjoyed digging in. 'That's where I think I started to find the passion,' she said. 'That's where I really got a lot of my understanding of what it means to be a teacher.' Ringer loves that at School of American Ballet, 'it's a given that we're going to attempt excellence,' she said. 'I remember the feeling of being one of these students. I remember wanting to please these teachers more than anything. And now being on the other side and being one of the teachers and knowing how hard they work and how much they care, I find it very touching. And I know that I ask a lot of them.' But she also knows that they want to be pushed. Kai Perkins, 16, said that Ringer focuses on building strength. 'If we're doing an adagio step, she'll tell us how to be on our leg before we do the combination,' Perkins said. 'So we go in and do it, already knowing how to approach the step. Which I think has actually helped me in all my other classes, too.' Killian has known Ringer since they both danced at City Ballet. 'Her spirit is exactly how she danced,' Killian said. 'Which I think is so unusual. Some people are gorgeous dancers, but the way they interact with people is difficult.' Before she was offered the job, Ringer and her family — she and Fayette have a daughter and a son — were living in Charleston, S.C., having left Los Angeles in 2021 to spend more together as a family and to be closer to Ringer's parents. (Ringer grew up in Summerville, S.C.) This year she has been living in a studio apartment in New York and commuting to Charleston on weekends. Her family will join her this summer. Fayette, she said, can't wait to move back, which says a lot. In 2013, he was stabbed with scissors while protecting his toddler son from an attacker in Riverside Park. Recently, as a family, they returned to the site. 'We're building positive memories,' Ringer said. 'There's so much to love about the city. And obviously there's other stuff, too.' At City Ballet, Fayette was one of the company's finest partners, and Ringer, a marvel of versatility. Always glamorous, with eyes bright enough to shine up to the fourth ring, Ringer could act. She could be magnificently deadpan, puffing away at a cigarette in 'Namouna,' in a role created for her by Alexei Ratmansky. But her career didn't always go according to plan. 'I didn't have a meteoric rise in the company,' she said. She joined as an apprentice in 1989, and 'it was five years to make soloist and then another five years to become principal,' she said. 'And in the midst of it, I was let go.' She suffered from eating disorders. 'I felt very much like a failure within the perfectionism of the dance world, and so I got to the point where I really couldn't function,' she said. When she left in 1997 — her contract was not renewed — she didn't imagine she would return to dance. But during her year off, she found her independence outside of ballet and eventually made her way back to dance — and to her job at City Ballet — in 1998. For the remainder of her career, ballet was a choice. But in 2010, a reminder of her former struggles came when, in a review of 'George Balanchine's The Nutcracker,' Alastair Macaulay wrote in The Times that Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, 'looked as if she'd eaten one sugarplum too many.' It caused an uproar. Ringer, who had always been open about her eating disorders, ended up on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show.' Looking back, she said, she can see how it initiated some good dialogue. It also showed her how healthy she had become. 'By the time all that happened, I had gone through my stuff,' she said. 'It was bizarre. I mean, I got to meet Oprah.' For Stafford, the way Ringer has faced her own problems means 'there's a realness to the conversation she's going to potentially have with a student who might be going through the same things,' he said. 'She can speak from real experience.' Beyond helping her to be a better teacher, Ringer hopes her experiences have allowed her to be 'a better overseer of a student body,' she said. 'It's really important for us to care for them as humans within that framework of a ballet school. I just think life is messy, and life is hard, and ballet is beautiful, and ballet is hard. There's just a lot that goes into crafting an artist. And usually the best artists haven't had it easy.' She added, 'There is a reality to the dance world. But there also needs to be grace and mercy.' Before the recent S.A.B. Ball, Ringer worked with dancers on their entrances. Sometimes she tells to them to walk onto a stage, stand and say their name in their heads. 'Anybody who's ever been my student, they know that entrances and exits are really important to me,' Ringer said. 'I want them to come out and say, 'This is who I am.' That's what we all want to see.'
New York Times
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
After 25 Years of Triumphs and Troubles, a Ballerina Bids Farewell
Ashley Bouder has grit, and that's good. Since the pandemic, this New York City Ballet principal has been dealing with a lot: injuries, weight issues and sporadic performance opportunities. They have fueled one another. There was the time she tore her plantar fascia onstage during a performance of 'Western Symphony.' She made a full recovery, but it took a while. There was weight that wouldn't come off, which resulted in infrequent casting and just a smattering of shows. With few scheduled shows, there weren't many chances to rehearse. Then came another injury, this time in 'Vienna Waltzes': She tore her posterior tibial tendon. 'My dancing feet weren't there,' she said in an interview at Lincoln Center. 'That's kind of been the up and down. It's like trying to come back, but not getting enough to do and then hurting myself again.' But she wasn't ready to give up. 'I just kept waiting to dance again,' she said. 'I'm like, all I want to do is dance. Like, get me out there, let me dance, let me dance.' This season, Bouder, 41, got to do that, before closing out her 25-year City Ballet career. On Thursday, her farewell performance, she'll dance in George Balanchine's 'Firebird.' She first danced the role at 17, when she was thrown into at the last minute. 'Everybody always asks you when you get to the end, 'What do you think you're going to retire with?'' she said. 'I was always like, 'I don't know.' But I think I've know my whole life that would be the ballet.' In the years since that 'Firebird' when, she said, 'I didn't know anything,' Bouder became one of the company's most visible ballerinas — she also earned a double degree in political science and organizational leadership from Fordham University; married and had a child (her daughter, Violet, 8, is a student at School of American Ballet); and embraced being a feminist, speaking out about injustices in the ballet world. Onstage, Bouder was vivid from the start, dating back to her first major role at City Ballet as the demi-soloist in 'La Source.' Kathleen Tracey, a repertory director whom Bouder works closely with, said, 'She came bounding out onstage with so much excitement and thrill and a huge jump and a beautiful, exhilarating kind of presentation. I was blown away.' She was fearless. Soon after joining the company in 2000, Bouder, who trained at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet before attending the School of American Ballet, quickly became a dazzling interpreter of Balanchine ballets. Her virtuosic dancing matched her theatrical effervescence. Her sparkle was never put on — she was never the type to hide how happy dancing makes her feel. But over the last couple of years, she said, she had been questioning her every move. 'Finally I'm feeling like I can do it again,' Bouder said. 'Like not be nervous that they're going to judge me because my leg's not high enough. Or if I didn't hit that fifth. Or if I'm going to get tired because I don't know what kind of shape I'm in.' In other words, all of those anxiety-producing feelings that, she said, make your shoulders rise and your dancing smaller. 'So I'm finally, like, just' — she exhaled deeply — 'let it go.' There were moments during our interview when Bouder's voice shook and her eyes welled with tears. But she was just as prone to laughter as spoke about the ups and downs of her career. 'Firebird' was a high. Tracey is proud of her for choosing that ballet as her send-off. 'It means a lot to her and it means a lot to the ballet to have her leave her imprint on it,' Tracey said. 'She will be remembered in that role.' When Bouder danced it at 17, she had only two hours of rehearsal. 'I remember that Kay Mazzo was there,' she said, referring to a former principal and chairman of faculty at the school. 'I didn't know when to enter because the music is very murky in the beginning, and it's Stravinsky, and I hadn't even seen that part of the ballet.' She had danced in the ballet before, playing a monster. But 'I had never watched the beginning of it,' she said. 'So Kay stood behind me and she goes, 'OK, bend over'' — the Firebird enters leaning forward like a soaring bird — 'and she pushed me so I could run out.' Bouder triumphed in many more roles after that storied debut, including Balanchine's 'Ballo Della Regina,' 'Stars and Stripes' and 'Tarantella.' But she faced challenges in those early years too. While the onstage and studio part of dancing was great, 'the social aspect was terrible,' she said, and described one show 'that was absolutely horrifying.' She danced in three ballets on that program. For the final one, she needed to switch from pink tights and pointe shoes to white. When she returned to her spot to put on her white shoes, they were gone. 'The ribbons were all cut off,' she said, 'and the shoes were destroyed in different trash cans around the dressing room.' She ended up performing in a colleague's shoes that were a half a size too big. (She packed them with extra toe pads.) 'We were all kids at that point,' Bouder said. 'I got bullied a lot. There were certain colleagues that if I was walking down the hallway, they would say things like, 'I hope you fall tonight.'' Now City Ballet has a Human Resources department, something Bouder wishes had been around when she was coming up. 'I grew a really thick skin to the point where people were like, 'Well, she's prickly.' And I'm like, yes, but if you had been treated the way I have, you pull the wall up. You are not getting in here. And it took me a long time to reverse that.' Recent experiences have been wounding, too. In 2022, she posted on Instagram that a board member had told her that 'they don't mind the extra weight on me.' Before that Bouder said she had been taken out of a performance, 'because the costume showcased my 'problem area.'' She fell into a deep depression. 'It's like I didn't want to work,' she said. 'I couldn't lose the weight because I didn't want to work. It wasn't eating too much or doing something like that, but it's just like I couldn't get the energy.' She added, 'one of the things that I'm excited to let go of is the constant scrutiny of every part of my body.' Tracey, a former soloist with City Ballet, has watched Bouder evolve as a person and a dancer. 'She was able to always navigate through the pressure,' Tracey said. 'I think that is a testament to her mental toughness and that ability to take hard situations and make them her own — to be able to work through the difficulties of any particular ballet or situation in the workplace.' For her next act, Bouder is now in the middle of applying for nonprofit status with a new organization, Ashley Bouder Arts, which will include educational elements like workshops in different dance forms; continue her performance group, Ashley Bouder Project, with a choreographic lab; and start a summer dance festival that would tour the Northeast. 'I would love to keep dancing,' she said. 'It's funny because a lot of people say, I'm ready to hang up my pointe shoes, get rid of the pointe shoes. I love my pointe shoes.' As for 'squishing into a leotard,' as she put it? Not so much. 'I think that just the past couple of years have really destroyed me forever really wanting to do that again,' she said. 'I want to still dance, but I don't want to be in a leotard and tights in front of 2,000 people anymore.'
