We are not a competition school. It is what you will hear us say time after time at Kirova Ballet Academy.
Competitions for ballet?
To put it bluntly: preparing for competitions takes away a lot of time from working on technique. Just to show off the piece once and never return to it again. Until the next competition. Is there a positive? Of course. Students get to work on choreography, deepening their knowledge and cleaning up the details of their movement. They also get used to the stage, lights, nerves, and pressure. Plus meeting dancers better than themselves, learning from variety of teachers – all of that amount to an incredibly powerful experience.
After several years of whining and stomping their little pointe shoe fitted feet, we finally agreed to a curated list of ballet and contemporary competition. Namely Youth America Grand Prix, UBC, ADC IDC and World Ballet competition (with additional few local non-ballet centric competitions.)
A success at YAGP Tampa 2020
This is our second year after a prolonged absence at the YAGP. And did we perform! Not only our student placed in Top 12 Pre-competitive age group contemporary; she managed to receive 3rd Place and an invitation to perform at the coveted YAGP Gala “Stars of today meet stars of tomorrow.”
This year, we risked. We took a character dance Russian folk song for the contemporary/original choreography category. Sometimes, you have throw out the mold and try something different.
Not to say, that the duet in Classical category, would have definitely received The Cutest Award, if that was such a thing. Scoring very high, but not high enough to beat out the likes of Brady Farra, Madison Brown, and the unstoppable duet of Josue Gomez and Alexis Workowski. Every judge rated them “CUTE”. We will definately take that.
Congrats to our Level 2A students Allegra De Vecchi and Rose Perez for such a great achievement.