Introducing Our 2020 “25 to Watch”

Posted On Jan 12, 2020 經過行政和評論關閉

25 to watch

Breakout superstars, paradigm shifters, competition changers. Our annual schedule of the dancers, choreographers and companies that are on the verge of soaring has a knack for illuminating where the dance life is foreman. Here they are: the 25 up-and-coming artists we believe are ready to take our realm by storm.

Gabrielle Hamilton Gabrielle Hamilton, a dark-skinned young woman with a shaved head, dressed in high-waisted, ripped jeans and a red crop top, balances on relevu00e9 in retiru00e9. She looks to the left, arms angularly framing the space around her head.

It’s rare that your first profession out of college gets you noticed, much less earns you both a Chita Rivera Award and a Bessie Award. But that’s what happened when Gabrielle Hamilton was hired to dance in Daniel Fish’s edgy production of Oklahoma! in Brooklyn in 2018. It intention up on Broadway, where John Heginbotham’s punchy, barefoot, 13 -minute solo–a ended rethinking of the show’s famed dream ballet, primarily choreographed by Agnes de Mille–showcases Hamilton’s fluid, tensile indication and the explosive ferocity she brings to every moment.

這 24 -year-old Harlem native begun at 3, training in a wide range of forms–gymnastics, African dance, ballet and more–and had foreseen dancing on Broadway as the ultimate aim of a long career slog. 反而, it’s the beginning, a unique launching pad that can send her in any number of guidances. She doesn’t mind. “I’ve always wanted to dabble in different things, ” she says. “I never wanted to be restricted to only one.” So she’s looking ahead to more Broadway, 當然, and whatever follows. “I want to see what else is for me as a dancer and as an craftsman, ” she says. And so do we. — Sylviane Gold

LED A besuited man is seated at a drum kit in a white space, stick raised to strike in his right hand. In the foreground, a woman with a tightly cropped pixie cut, wearing textured leggings and a crop top, leaps. Her left knee is bent, foot pointed just above the floor, as her right leg stretches behind her. Her arms are flung open as she looks energetically toward the right.

LED is as much about music as it is about dance. The two are developed simultaneously in a seamless process that choreographer Lauren Edson describes as “completely fluid, ” telling visual and kinetic stories set to music that is often frisked live by the troupe’s in-house band. Founded in 2015 by the Boise-based Edson and her husband, composer Andrew Stensaas, LED and its project-based model are taking off, garnering support from the local community that develop to desire dance during the Trey McIntyre Project years.

Edson’s brand of theatricality perimeters on whimsy with a reek of narrative. She has a way of fusing slick walker progress with virtuosic eye candy that invites the audience into a different world, quarrying the dancers’ nuanced idiosyncrasies to steep the work with texture and charm. The upshot is dances that are recreation, seductive and downright cinematic. With the troupe’s penchant for dance filmmaking, look for LED to expand its influence beyond Idaho. — Nancy Wozny

Maya Taylor A woman with tightly curled black hair, dressed in black briefs and a structured off-white shirt, looks at something out of frame to the right. She sits into her right hip and reaches her arms toward the camera, wrists crossing as her fingers curl and wrists flex.

From sensual, free-flowing twirls to sharp go constitutions, commercial choreographer Maya Taylor’s movement strata styles with a subtle maturity. She was nominated for a 2019 MTV Video Music Award for Best Choreography for Solange Knowles’ edgy “Almeda” video and has collaborated with Solange on four others since 2016. Taylor’s chameleon-like approach has also led to boards from St. Vincent, SZA and Arcade Fire’s Regine Chassagne.

A former Elisa Monte dancer and an Ailey School alumna, Taylor now ricochets from the provide of TNT’s “Claws” to touring with Solange as a concert movement director. Even as her commercial-grade opportunities have increased–including recently choreographing her first feature film, Netflix’s Dirt–contemporary commissionings have deterred Taylor’s concert dance choppers sharp. Those seeds delivering a refreshingly nuanced degree and plot to her occupation that is unusual for the panorama. — Jen Peters

Luke Hickey Luke Hickey, wearing a suit over a blue t-shirt, hovers on the tip of his right tap shoe. His left leg is bent at the knee, arms outflung to shoulder height. The stage is outdoors and framed by greenery.

It’s hard to sit still watching Luke Hickey perform–and he never seems to stop moving either. In his solo “What’s New, ” he’s rarely in the same place for more than a few seconds, crisscrossing the stage with impeccable footwork and resourceful wording. A shift pace borrowed from Bill “Bojangles” Robinson morphs seamlessly into a heel-heavy triplet rhythm. A simple shuffle cycle in place abruptly communicates him skittering across the floor with superb clarity and agility. With each new step, he encounters ways to explore and expand the rhythm, like a musical Russian doll.

The piece is part of A Little Old, A Little New, Hickey’s first full-length endeavor as a choreographer, which debuted at New York City’s Birdland Jazz Club before its Jacob’s Pillow debut last summer. Yet he’s anything but brand-new to the stage: An alumnus of the North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble and the touring indicate Tap Kids, the Brooklyn-based hoofer and filmmaker has performed with many of the field’s resulting dancemakers. In the last year alone, he saw with Michelle Dorrance at New York City Center, Caleb Teicher at The New Victory Theater and Ayodele Casel at The Joyce Theater. At 23, the charming youth performer isn’t just propping his own among the Big Apple’s top tap talent–he’s immediately joining their grades. — Ryan P. Casey

Annie Morgan A white woman with tousled brown hair wearing a green sleeveless dress bends sideways to her right. Her right palm is open next to her face; her left stretches straight overhead, parallel to the top of the image.

Stage presence seems to be in Annie Morgan’s DNA. When she performs, it washes over the public, attracting them ever closer. Even the wonkiest of leaves are infused with her inherent forgivenes and fluidity. In David Shimotakahara’s Sud Buster’s Dream, she twists and disfigures her body like Houdini struggling to escape a straight cap. In Brian Brooks’ Unwritten, she dips, sways and turns through intricate motifs as if immune to gravity’s power.

“My strongs are in the psychological area of recital, ” says the 24 -year-old. Trained at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and Pittsburgh’s Point Park University, Morgan attached Cleveland’s GroundWorks DanceTheater claim out of college in 2018. Shimotakahara, GroundWorks’ imaginative superintendent, says, “She takes in information and imparts it together with what’s inside in ways that arrive someplace unexpected.” That talent has already made her a favorite with visiting choreographers and audiences alike.

–Steve Sucato

Ashley R.T. Yergens Blue and pink balloons that read

Go-go dancing may only be a side gig for Ashley R.T. Yergens. But it has coached him an important lesson: Publics offer hard-earned coin for the performances–whether in tips at clubs or for tickets to downtown dance venues. He’s requested this transactional mind-set to his own concert dance work, striving( successfully) to appeal to more than exactly dance insiders.

In his prettygirl2 64264, the 27 -year-old throws himself a living funeral, responding to the ways in which trans beings are often disrespected in death as well as in life. But the dance-theater work is anything but dark and pompous: Yergens incorporates elevations of gathering bags, a Celine Dion singalong and incidents from Becoming Chaz, the 2011 documentary about Cher and Sonny Bono’s son, who is also trans. It’s all part of Yergen’s desire to “meld esthetics that don’t belong together” and to demonstrate how, actually, they aren’t so opposed.

Next up, Yergens is developing a piece announced C* NT C* NTEMPORARY as part of a two-year residency at New York Live Arts. Long-term, Yergens wants to forge a gift of trans artists in dance–without always having to oblige labor that’s about being trans. — Lauren Wingenroth

Abdiel Figueroa Reyes u200bReyes, clean-shaven with buzzed hair and dressed all in black, balances on one leg. The opposite sinuously arcs behind him in a parallel attitude as his spine twists to face the camera. His right arm reaches straight toward the floor, while the left is lifted to curl toward his head.

There’s a insidiou playfulness to Abdiel Figueroa Reyes’ gangly limbs, his ability to gain quick control like video games of catch-and-release. Keen partnering abilities, a silky-smooth style and a compelling counterbalance between youth and maturity have instantly propelled him into a occupation with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.

Abdiel Figueroa Reyes on Instagram: ““That’s how I choose to live” -Lauryn Hill*** This Friday, HS Pros Take Over@ 6:30 pm and 8: 30 pm !! Chicago, don’t miss out Get your…”

Reyes started dancing at age 4 in Puerto Rico, where his mommy and aunt owned a studio. The home moved to Las Vegas when he was 13 so he and two brothers could seek dance earnestly. A summer at Axis Connect established Reyes to Alexandra Wells, who persuasion him to enrolled in the inaugural class of HS Pro, Hubbard Street’s professional training program. A few weeks later, he was onstage with the company, accomplishing in Peter Chu’s Space, In Perspective. After an apprenticeship in the 2018-19 season, he made his debut as a member of the main busines this November, entering just as three other humanities departed–fortuitous timing that might land him center stage even sooner than expected.

–Lauren Warnecke

Jay Carlon More than a dozen performers stand on a sandy beach, waves crashing in, hills in the background fading into mist. Some of the performers hold long ropes, which are wrapped around the waists of others who are facing or partially submerged in the oncoming surf. Others walk in of their own volition, while still others watch from their knees.

If you want to be completely hauled, look to choreographer Jay Carlon. His work is so theatrical, so sucking that “youre forgetting” where you are–which is often the most banal of seats. He transforms a gloom parking lots, a coast, a public park or a sand-filled backyard into another world inhabited by fully realized people.

He subverts the audience’s promises and point of view, plucking them seriously into his see: a 1950 s ballroom; refugees wrap in golden “blankets” stepping onto a coast; a wrestling gym; a funeral home where a traditional Filipino beach dance transforms into a coffin and resurgence. His movement is often highly physical, relentless and acrobatic–you can see the inhumanity and athleticism he challenges of his emotionally perpetrated dancers. The Los Angeles-based, Filipino-American 12 th child of a “migrant working family, ” Carlon squanders his choreography to touch on race, name, colonialism and gender–as well as adoration, family and belonging. — Abigail Rasminsky

Hannah Garner A woman in a loose white t-shirt and khaki pants stands underneath an opulent archway in Central Park. She sits into her left hip, right knee cocked, as her open palms frame her face from above and below. Her eyes glance past her upper hand.

It isn’t easy to make an audience feel like they’re a reference in your register. But in Hannah Garner’s RED, the audience dallies Little Red Riding Hood. That is, when Red isn’t played by one of the four performers, who substitution characters–one moment the wolf, the next the grandmother–seamlessly.

RED was Garner’s first act that heavily relied on audience participation, but you wouldn’t have guessed. Each select found it necessary to, rather than precisely an excuse to break the fourth wall. Instants of laughter additional dimension , not distraction.( In one of the following options, the public learns a song from the musicians, merely to later recognize they’re singing ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”)

2nd Best Dance Company on Instagram: “oh Granny, what large-scale teeth “youve had” RED@ Ace Hotel pt 1 . . . . . . . . Vc: @jacobkrutyphotography Music: Cesar Franck # 2ndbest … ”

Garner, who founded her New York City-based 2nd Best Dance Company in 2016 with three friends from SUNY Purchase, causes run that “stands at the border of laughter and tragedy, ” she says, and attacks topics like extinction and homosexual name through rigorous, inventive push and humor. A year as artists-in-residence at Brooklyn’s Triskelion Arts and a achievement with Gibney’s dance-mobile series have recently improved the company’s New York sketch. But with music videos for craftsmen like Stolen Jars on the docket, Garner’s work will soon be seen by a more world audience. — Lauren Wingenroth

Joseph Sissens A lean, bare-chested man leaps into the air. His front leg is at a 45 degree angle to the ground, the back one in a perpendicular attitude. His head tips to the ceiling as his right arm reaches gracefully upward, the left outflung to his side. The bright red trousers he wears flare with the motion. Upstage, another man costumed identically but for the black color of his trousers looks on.

Joseph Sissens’ long, long legs are the first thing you notice. 這 22 -year-old from Cambridge, 英格蘭, is a dancer of lean gentility, expansive strands and beautiful footwork. Choreographers at The Royal Ballet make a beeline for him. Wayne McGregor–a man with an adroit gaze for talented dancers in the corps–cast him in Obsidian Tear and Yugen. Twyla Tharp picked him for The Illustrated ‘Farewell’. And the first artist’s appearance in new make by contemporary choreographer Alexander Whitley and a slinking, grooving solo, jojo, by up-and-comer Charlotte Edmonds suggests a dancer with a strange judgment, as well as a protean equipment for whatever physical requirements are thrown his way.

Outside of The Royal, Sissens stood out among a superlative lineup in the Merce Cunningham celebration Night of 100 Solos, where he committed Cunningham’s exacting geometry a gossamer margin. But he’s flexing his elongated muscles in some classics, too, constituting his introduction as Lensky in John Cranko’s Onegin this year. — Lyndsey Winship

Luis Beltran Dancers dressed in all black rehearse in a studio. Beltran, 正確的, imitates the pose of the woman demonstrating choreography, his left leg stretched to one side as he pliu00e9s on his right, upper body twisting slightly away from the extended leg as his arms rise to curve around his head. He stares intently forward.

Luis Beltran has an intrepid concoction of allure, confidence and sex appeal. He beguiles publics with a fair share of tantalizing machismo, but it’s not crass, and it’s matched by a blithe and jaunty theatre proximity in Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater’s folk dance repertoire. Beltran manages to find the nuances in each Spanish style–folkloric, flamenco, classical and contemporary–but glistens most in the company’s large-hearted, fearless, unabashed and spectacularly over-the-top group creations.

The native Ecuadorian started dancing with an outreach platform hosted by Chicago’s Ensemble Espanol at age 7, then rose through the ranks to join the company in his late teens. 現在 25, he’s on track to rise to the top of a company whose Spanish dancers are among the best in the world.

–Lauren Warnecke

Joyce Edwards A dark-skinned woman with cropped blonde hair stoops over slightly, fists raised in front of her mouth. She looks warily toward the left.

In Beth Gill’s Pitkin Grove, Joyce Edwards shone. Wearing glowing gold makeup and lace-up high-top boxing shoes, she moved around the four-sided stage in a solo started on her. Often with fists collected, she deliberately stepped and sometimes stomped in a riveting dance of compiled fighting with an invisible adversary. Her ease, suppleness and confidence captivated–and she was still an undergraduate student at SUNY Brockport.

Edwards are speaking about dance in the same precise and purposeful action she travels. She says, “I don’t believe I could arrive at a sit of recital without failure in the studio, without hour and opening to try on a knot of different things. And I feel like I can’t, as a pitch-black, homosexual maid, ever do that safely. 這麼, I turn to dance for love, in the interests of clarity, for a lot of things that I don’t undoubtedly have access to always.” During her undergraduate job she performed with Ronald K. Brown/ Evidence at Bard’s SummerScape festival and worked with Netta Yerushalmy. When she returned to the U.S. this wintertime after a semester abroad in Spain, a company position with Evidence was waiting for her.

–Caroline Shadle

Zenon Zubyk A red-headed male dancer leaps. His right leg crosses straight in front, while his left bends into a parallel attitude behind him. He is twisted toward his back leg, elbows bent at 90-degree angles with his back forearm stretching up and front forearm pointed down.

With lanky legs and wild red whisker, Zenon Zubyk revels in a uniquely cumbersome virtuosity. During an memorable solo in To this day–a work Emily Molnar crafted with Ballet BC’s brilliant dancers-as-collaborators–the 22 -year-old masterfully steers between a comedic woo ritual and captivating showmanship. In an insect-like mating dance set to Jimi Hendrix, he turns himself inside out for the purposes of an unamused female see, somehow meshing gangliness with serious cool.

The dancer is a recent alumnus of the Skills Umbrella Graduate Program, and after one year at Ballet BC’s emerging artist rank, Zubyk was promoted to full company master for the 2019-20 season. Although he has plenty of technical quirks up his sleeve–he was a comp kid geniu who won the 2013 New York Teen Male Best Dancer claim at The Dance Awards–he investigates gesture with extreme care for detail. Molnar will leave her imaginative chairman berth at the end of this season, but Zubyk’s idiosyncratic carries-on guarantee he’ll continue to be a standout. — Jen Peters

Julie Crothers A dancer dressed in purple jeans and a purple leotard grins as she balances on one leg in a backbend. Her upstage arm is outflung; her left arm ends at the elbow.

With a inclination for both the heartfelt and the humorous, Julie Crothers is taking the San Francisco Bay Area by storm with her autobiographical solos. “I like to form parties laugh and then cry, ” she says. “I want to encourage publics to look inward and feel more connected.” Whether she’s regaling them with the romantic capers of her beloved grandmother or gale her path through a insignificant glass menagerie–her ease items from childhood–Crothers has an uncanny knack for petitioning to her audience’s sense of humor, empathy and curiosity.

As a congenital amputee, Crothers, 27, began use a prosthetic appendage at merely 5 months age-old. After an eye-opening visit to Bates Dance Festival during college, she stopped exploiting the prosthetic absolutely( except sometimes as a prop in her task ). Following a three-year stint with AXIS Dance Company, Crothers set out on her own in 2017. “I have a little sadness when I think about my onetime ego who was so scared of sticking out, ” she says. “I want to encourage audiences to look at the things that constitute them different and see how that’s something you can own, assertion, declare and utilize for good.”

–Rachel Caldwell

Lizzie Tripp A red-headed ballerina balances in a forced arch back attitude en pointe. Her arms are bent at the elbows and in slight opposition to the twist of her open attitude so her forearms frame her face.

Contemporary movement flows from Lizzie Tripp like a Shakespeare sonnet. In the opening solo of Enrico Morelli’s The Noise of Whispers in 2017, she bewitched publics with supple airiness, nuanced complexity and heartfelt strength. Now in her fourth season with Milwaukee Ballet, the 23 -year-old has not only played boasted capacities in various contemporary ballets, but has also appeared as the Snow Queen in The Nutcracker and the Enchantress in Michael Pink’s Beauty and The Beast–a role she originated in 2018.

Lizzie Tripp on Instagram: “Me after I expended the day binge watching the entire season 5 of Schitts Creek #addictedtothescreen #milwaukeeballet #contemporary”

Tripp studied at the company’s official school and started her busines at its second company, growing up and into her aesthetic name “of the organizations activities”. Dancing in Pink’s Peter Pan this spring as a company member, she’ll come full circle: She performed in the premiere as small children. — Steve Sucato

Tatiana Desardouin A dark-skinned woman looks calmly at the camera. She leans forward with her arms gently outstretched to the sides. Two other women, identically dressed in loose, dark blouses patterned with butterflies and black trousers, stand close behind her to either side, their angular arms adding to the architecture as they stare past the right edge of the frame.

A beautiful powerhouse, both onstage and off-, Tatiana Desardouin is on a duty. She to come to New York City in 2016 to pursue her dream of creating a dance company in the birthplace of hip hop. The resulting all-female Passion Fruit Dance Company incarnates the complexities of street and guild dance, squandering vocabulary that roots from both trendy move and mansion. Desardouin emphasizes these styles’ beginnings in pitch-black culture and is dedicated to exploring them as racial structures, approaching her task as a call to action. “You cannot be about this culture, about this movement, and not support the struggle of my beings, ” she says.

With subtle, precise torso isolations layered over quick-fire footwork, polyrhythms and counterpoint overriding. Desardouin’s eye for changes and her ability to shift effortlessly from potent and dynamic to soft and smooth result in stylistically multifaceted bits. Within, she procreates strains that are conducive to audiences to ask questions bordering the ethnic and name politics of these vogues: Who created them? Who does these dances, and where? Who devours them, and why? Challenging her dancers as much as her gathering, Desardouin causes by precedent. “Create the world you want to live in, ” she says. “There’s no other way.” — Ephrat Asherie

Tommie Kesten LED

Tommie Kesten is not one to go unnoticed. 這 19 -year-old Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre corps member duets joie de vivre with grown-up gesture choices. A Pittsburgh native, she affiliated the company in 2018 and has already garnered peculiarity capacities.

Tommie Kesten on Instagram: “Come watch my partner and I play-act Blue Bird in The Sleeping Beauty next Saturday, 可能 11 th at 8p m! Here’s a little sneak peek! I will…”

As the “tall girl” in Balanchine’s “Rubies, ” Kesten, who at 5′ 4″ is not the traditional altitude for the persona, crowded the stage, her beautiful increase paired with bright, hurling noses and a gorgeous smile. In The Sleeping Beauty, she took a reflective coming to her pacing and characterization in the Bluebird pas de deux. The sporting dancer’s unquenchable drive has her on a fast track to busines renown.

–Steve Sucato

Zimmi Coker A short, red-headed ballet dancer dressed as Little Red Riding Hood stares out at the audience with wide eyes. She clutches flowers in both hands as she peeks out from beneath her red robe, a wicker basket by her feet.

She has only been a fully fledged member of the detachments since June 2018, but previously American Ballet Theatre’s Zimmi Coker is popping up everywhere. She rent into Michelle Dorrance’s highly syncopated, tap-infused movement in Dream within a Dream( shelved ). She scampered about the stage with feverish ferocity as the young Adele in Cathy Marston’s Jane Eyre. And she showed confidence and joy as one of the two sneaker-clad “stompers” that open and close Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room.

Zimmi Coker on Instagram: “Next week is ABT’s Fall season y’all! I can’t wait to leap around the Koch stage with these two in Ratmansky’s,’ The Seasons’! Featured…”

What you notice about Coker is the clarity and intention with which she dances. Whatever she’s doing, from the smallest character role to an ensemble role, she does full-out. “I’ve learned the importance of expressing detail with each advance, ” she says. “And I try to be mentally fully present for any rehearsal or performance.” It registers. — Marina Harss

Mira Nadon

Eyes find Mira Nadon quickly onstage, even when she’s stationed in the tall-girl back sequence of the squads. 這 19 -year-old New York City Ballet dancer has only one open, large-featured face that’s strikingly comprehensible from the gathering. And her dancing is every bit as readable: express but never maudlin, authoritative but never overbearing. She says what she wants to say in simple sentences, free of italicization.

Nadon can also parse multiple choreographic communications. As the Fairy of Courage in The Sleeping Beauty, she delivers Petipa with nary an accent. Choreographer Pam Tanowitz’s sophisticated mottoes are the dance equivalent of tongue twisters, but last spring, in Tanowitz’s Bartok Ballet, Nadon spoke them fluently. And in her mother tongue, Balanchine, she’s unstoppable. Her debut as the siren soloist in “Rubies” last fall had polish, panache, power–a performance in full voice. You won’t need to seek out her face in the regiments populace for long. — Margaret Fuhrer

Khalia Campbell A dark-skinned woman wearing an orange unitard smiles as she extends her right leg high to her side, her supporting leg turned out and steady. Her arms stretch into a

Emotions avalanche through Khalia Campbell’s every affect. As “the umbrella woman” in Ailey’s Disclosure, her torso and forearms ruffle with exuberance. As a soloist in Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Ounce of Faith, she turns premiers with dancing that’s smooth and silky, yet sharp and purposeful.

Khalia Campbell on Instagram: “Wading in the sea and I am Grateful Happy Sunday everyone!*** @danfreaka*** #AAADT #Revelations #wadeinthewater #umbrellagirl … ”

Campbell first resist out as a long-legged gazelle on the Ailey II stage. But since joining the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2018, she’s become even more commanding. Proud of her persona in the company’s legacy, the Bronx native encumbers good-for-nothing back onstage, generously rendering her all to the work–not just physically, but spiritually. — Charmaine Warren

Maya Man A young woman stands at a large screen in a darkened room, gesturing with her right hand toward the dancer on the screen. Several people look on in from where they are seated in the background, including Bill T. Jones.

Maya Man works at the intersection of flow and machines. As a technologist at the Google Creative Lab, she recently collaborated with Bill T. Jones to complement his improvisatory practice with state-of-the-art machine learning, exploring how the new technology can augment artistic showing. The project lives at BillTJonesAI.com, where anyone can try out the resulting web experiments and watch the film documenting the process.

Maya Man on Instagram: “deep in concentration trying to keep up with affects by @kenichi. kasamatsu whose class impels me :~)!! when I get to take it YOU KNOW the song”

Man considers herself an master, dancer and technologist hybrid, and across those characters one can glimpse the dancemaking of the future: where forms are augmented digitally, carries-on are enjoyed as much online as off- and the choreographer also codes. Man isn’t waiting for that future to arrive, though. An excellent hip-hop dancer, she regularly shares videos of her dancing( as well as her technological pastimes) with her flourishing Instagram audience. She’s likewise been a persuasion attendance on the public speaking circuit, featured recently in New York Live Arts’ Live Ideas festival. Her genre-warping career dares conventional expectations of what it means to be a successful dance artist. — Sydney Skybetter

Kara Chan A woman balances on one leg, facing the right side of the image. Her downstage leg is slightly bent as the upstage leg stretches behind her in a loose arabesque. Her downstage arm is slightly raised from by her side, the one upstage just visible above her head. She is dressed in a gauzy, translucent jumpsuit that appears green-gray in the muted stage lighting..

Kara Chan has emerged in the latest iteration of Twyla Tharp’s troupe as a petite yet strong power. She recently attacked Tharp’s own character in a reconstruction of Eight Jelly Rolls and nailed the quintessentially Tharpian “drunk” solo, shaking and galloping across the stage in a full-bodied, loosey-goosey romp. In The Fugue, Chan masterfully flew through the complex guidance changes and footwork. No substance the choreographic tackle, she dances with what has become a characteristic warmth.

Kara Chan on Instagram: “ # Repost @gleichdances This is the beautiful @_karachan who has performed with Gleich Dances for practically four years. It’s always a rapture to…”

Tharp, a notoriously tough nut to crack, trusts Chan not only as a dancer, but as a right-hand woman in the rehearsal area. Chan cured prepared Deuce Coupe on American Ballet Theatre last season and Tharp’s brand-new A Gathering of Soul in October.

Chan is also a member of Pam Tanowitz Dance, 和 2015 Juilliard grad has already played for two seasons in Mark Morris’ The Hard Nut and danced as a guest master with the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company. What will she add to her resume next? — Caroline Shadle

Tobias Praetorius A bare-chested male dancer lifts the corners of two panels of marley, arms raised slightly in front of his sides. His shadow is cast on a piece of fabric just upstage.

As a young student at the Royal Danish Ballet School, Tobias Praetorius got to perch in a tree onstage during August Bournonville’s A Folk Tale and watch the dancers below, imagining himself in their arrange. 現在 23 and in the detachments, he is a mainstay at the company, where he has danced everything from the mild-mannered troll Viderik in A Folk Tale to Benvolio in John Neumeier’s Romeo and Juliet, as well as manipulates by Jiri Kylian, Liam Scarlett and Cathy Marston. But what’s unique about Praetorius is how he cuddles each element of his plane: He’s evenly at home in character and pure dance characters, and is also a budding choreographer.

During a recent expression in New York City, Praetorius rendered a riveting rendition–slithering, androgynous, menacing–of the implacable sorceres, Madge, in La Sylphide. A few moments later he was dancing the first alteration from the tarantella in Bournonville’s Napoli with total serenity, exposing that palatial Bournonville plie and tightened upper figure. “I’m happy the Royal Danish Ballet still produces dancers like Tobias, ” his former RDB colleague Ulrik Birkkjaer says of him. “That sense of attribute and storytelling, at that position, and at such a young age, is rare.” — Marina Harss

Airi Igarashi A smiling ballerina dressed in a white romantic tutu balances in an open arabesque. She is oriented to the side of the stage, her arms stretched before her with palms facing up, as though offering something.

When Atlanta Ballet debuted Yuri Possokhov’s Nutcracker simply over a year ago, a then-2 2-year-old Airi Igarashi opened an opening-night star turn. As a second-year company member, she carried the ballet, dancing both major pas de deux in the role of Marie. Partnered by Sergio Masero-Olarte, Igarashi spun and burst into broad, vivid paths, looping, diving and inscribing coilings across the space.

Airi Igarashi on Instagram: “Love Fear Loss by @rickamar with amazing @joleepster from last weekend [?][?][?].. Photo by Kim Kenney”

Igarashi taught at the Reiko Yamamoto Ballet School in Gunma, Japan, and abode a Prix de Lausanne scholarship from Hamburg Ballet’s school in 2013. She met Atlanta Ballet in 2017 after impressing artistic lead Gennadi Nedvigin with a variant from Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, and her brilliance has only grown more compelling since. Her operations in Don Quixote and Bournonville’s La Sylphide has been demonstrated the kindnes, charity and multi-dimensionality of a rising ballerina. — Cynthia Bond Perry

Oluwadamilare “Dare” Ayorinde A long-limbed, bare-chested black man stands with one hand raised. He sits into his right hip, left leg extended slightly in front of him but with the foot flat on the floor. His gaze is downcast as his right arm, bent at the elbow, rises alongside his head.

Oluwadamilare “Dare” Ayorinde transforms himself each and every time he plays, in pieces by drastically different choreographers. In Trisha Brown’s repertory, he dances as if each manipulate was made during his still recent tenancy with her eponymous company; those iconic gliding legs and weapons seem rabid and fresh whenever he roams the stage. For Kyle Marshall, Ayorinde is grounded and drags from his soul in contemporary works that expect personal dredging of his African-American seeds.

His passion is unquestionable, converting any wield fetch his acces. Recently, Ayorinde has begun to find his own enunciate in the role of choreographer, seeking to bring his Nigerian heritage to life.

–Charmaine Warren

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Credits for header photo, turn left right, from top: Loreto Jamlig, Courtesy Desardouin; Todd Rosenberg, Courtesy Hubbard Street Dance Chicago; Erin Baiano, Courtesy NYCB; Jonathan Potter, Courtesy Carlon; Dallas Koby, Courtesy Edwards; Tony Turner, Courtesy Ayorinde; Jeff Downie, Courtesy GroundWorks DanceTheater; Tom Davenport, Courtesy Milwaukee Ballet; Ryan Duffin, Courtesy Yergens; Maria Baranova, Courtesy Chan; Sachs Grootjans, Courtesy RDB; Andrew Eccles, Courtesy AAADT; Kim Kenney, Courtesy Atlanta Ballet; Jayme Thornton; Jonathan Hsu, Courtesy Crothers; Tristram Kenton, Courtesy ROH; Aimee DiAndrea, Courtesy PBT; Marissa Mooney, Courtesy Taylor; Christopher Duggan, Courtesy Hickey; Gene Schiavone, Courtesy ABT; Michael Slobodian, Courtesy Ballet BC; Courtesy Man; Dean Paul, Courtesy Ensemble Espanol; Steve Smith, Courtesy Edson; Mike Lindle, Courtesy Garner