Joburg ballet for the world

Dance company Joburg Ballet has made ever-increasing leaps and bounds across the world stage, and shows no sign of taking a final bow anytime soon.

Its ties with the international ballet and dance world has grown rapidly as the company’s dancers and management honoured engagements and invitations abroad.

Company spokesperson Lindsay McDonald said that prima ballerina Burnise Silvius had travelled to China, where she will dance the lead role in Giselle as a guest artist with the Shanghai Ballet.

“Dancer Angela Revie was in Havana for four weeks of intensive study at the National Ballet School of Cuba,” he said.

“As co-ordinator of the Joburg Ballet Cuban School, this gave Revie an up-close and hands-on learning experience related to Cuban ballet training methodology.”

Revie was accompanied by Joburg Ballet principal dancer and ballet master, Michael Revie.

Dancer Ramiro Samón will travel to Amsterdam for the Dutch National Ballet’s summer school, following an invitation from the Dutch company’s Junior Company director, Ernst Meisner, when he judged the SA International Ballet Competition in February, where Samón won gold in the senior men’s category.

Dancers had also pitted themselves against some of the world’s finest young dancers in international competitions.

“Jessica Overton [danced] at the International Baltic Ballet Competition in Latvia; Overton and James Fraser at the Arabesque Competition in Perm, Russia and at the Korea International Ballet Competition, where Overton won a silver medal,” said McDonald.

Angela Revie won a choreography award at the Perm competition for her duet, My Reverie, performed by Overton and Fraser.

The duet will be performed at The Fringe, Joburg Theatre, during the company’s Celebration 6 season in August.

Overton and Fraser also travelled to Varna, Bulgaria, to compete, and Kozue Mikami and Randol Figuerdo travelled to Istanbul, Turkey.

McDonald added that the company’s CEO, Dirk Badenhorst, had accepted invitations to serve on the judging panels of several international competitions in Beijing, Havana and Seoul.

Company artistic director Iain MacDonald travelled to the USA where he is a returning faculty member at the American Ballet Academy’s summer school in New York.

The company’s forthcoming productions at Joburg Theatre include Celebration 6 on 15 and 16 August, La Bayadère from 12 until 28 September, and The Nutcracker Re-Imagined from 19 until 27 September.

The company’s 2014 Just Dance! competition will also take place in September.

Details: www.joburgballet.com; 0861 670 670; www.joburgtheatre.com