Overheard at the Barre
Artistic Director, Julio Alegria Spends a Special Week in NYC
Thank you to everyone at Brass City Ballet for indulging my absence last week and my most heartfelt and tremendous gratitude to all the faculty, staff, and students of SAB – Official School of the New York City Ballet – for the amazing opportunity to learn about SAB’s training and curriculum.
I was selected as one of five annual recipients nationwide for this year’s “2024-2025 School of American Ballet National Visiting Fellows” program. During my first week-long residency, I studied SAB’s curriculum and strategies for progression, taught SAB students and received faculty feedback on my teaching, and met with SAB leadership to discuss administrative operations and dance education. Upon completion of the Fellowship in the Spring, SAB will bestow Brass City Ballet with a $5,000 monetary award.
But already I have begun introducing and teaching some of what I learned. How will this benefit your children now?
When I was a child in México, I used to dream of studying at SAB; I kept a magazine clipping of SAB students on my desk where I did my homework every day. At that time, there was no option for me to study outside of México, but during my senior year a few years later, I put together and sent a video audition to SAB. Three months later, I received a supportive response from SAB about my technique and line, my legs and feet; they had scholarships for boys, but I had just turned 18 years old, their cutoff age. They advised me to keep training in another school, which I did. Now so many years later, I was accepted to SAB – as a “2024-2025 School of American Ballet National Visiting Fellow.”
In the tradition of art and ballet passing along styles from teacher to student, my inspiration lies in the diverse “genealogical” tradition in classical ballet – passing along how techniques, stylings, and pedagogy are related and have evolved through the years – from Renaissance Italian to French to Russian Vaganova to Cuban to American.
It is an honor to me to be able to utilize this SAB instruction to mentor your children – who might have similar dreams – to give back to your aspiring dancers what I have been so lucky in life to have taken in myself – so many international styles – none better than another. What SAB exemplifies:
- a preeminent and uniquely American style, one demanding dancers move with unprecedented speed, precision, and intense musicality on the nation’s premier ballet stage
- exposure to the ballet world’s most varied, challenging, and musically accomplished repertoire
And your child will get to participate – SAB Faculty will observe a live BCB class on Thursday, February 6th.
To read more about SAB’s 2024-2025 National Visiting Fellows, please visit: https://sab.org/national-visiting-fellows/.
@sab_nyc #SchoolofAmericanBallet #SABNationalVisitingFellows
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