At a casual wine and hors d'oeuvres party at Good Food by Ferneau, company dancers from Ballet Arkansas and a handful of visiting choreographers mingled three days before the Visions competition on Aug. 22 at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Thirty-one choreographers from around the country entered the contest, five finalists were chosen to showcase short pieces, and a panel of expert judges, in conjunction with audience members, selected the winner, Ilya Kozadayev. He will expand his piece into a full show to be performed by Ballet Arkansas this spring.
At Good Food, muted footage from past performances played on a TV, and despite an exhausting rehearsal schedule and the stress of learning a new piece in five days, the dancers appeared in high spirits. They munched on stuffed mushrooms, deviled eggs and tiny sandwiches, made small talk with the crowd and eventually retreated to a few sleek, low couches, where they laughed and chatted with one another. Two of the dancers, Lynsie Ogden and Meredith Short, were attending their first public Ballet Arkansas event since officially joining the company on Aug. 11.
One of the choreographers, Boyko Dossev with the Boston Ballet, said that his dance -- a duet called "Longing" -- is inspired by the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a couple from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, whom the media dubbed Romeo and Juliet. The couple died in each other's arms on a bridge, shot while trying to reach Serbia.
High Profile on 08/30/2015