Canyon Concert Ballet

Dance with the Best

40th Anniversary – Artist Profiles: Kristen Hill

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As part of our 40th Anniversary Celebration, we are doing #FlashbackFriday in May, a 5-part series where we release a spring ballet from our past every Friday in May at 7pm mountain time on our YouTube Channel! We are also featuring a company dancer profile in celebration. This week, meet Kristen Hill!

If ballet chose you, as many dancers say it did, what is it that has made you stick with it? 

 The fact that you can always work harder and get better.

Who would you most like to dance with & what would you dance? 

Scott Ranagan,  Hoedown

What are you looking forward to dancing in 2020/21?

The Nutcracker

Who inspired you to dance?

Lorita Travaglia

Which role has tested you the most & how?  

Sugar Plum Fairy – The Cavalier was brought in, so I only got a few days to work with him before we performed together.  This was an amazing experience.

 Describe yourself in just three words. 

Hard working, Silly

40th Anniversary – Artist Profiles: Cara Doyle

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As part of our 40th Anniversary Celebration, we are doing #FlashbackFriday in May, a 5-part series where we release a spring ballet from our past every Friday in May at 7pm mountain time on our YouTube Channel! We are also featuring a company dancer profile in celebration. This week, meet Cara Doyle!

If ballet chose you, as many dancers say it did, what is it that has made you stick with it? 

Ballet didn’t choose me actually. I had so much energy as a child, that my Mom needed to find an outlet for me. I wanted to be a gymnast or a cheerleader, but my Mom told me she’d rather deal with me potentially “breaking a leg dancing” vs. breaking my neck tumbling. I guess this is why I have always been a bouncy dancer! I stuck with ballet because CCB became my family from the day I walked in the door as a teenager.  I love that I am part of a special legacy at CCB that allows me the opportunity to perform onstage next to my children.

Who would you most like to dance with & what would you dance? 

I would love to dance with my former teacher, Fernando Schaffenburg, in his adaptation of Balanchine’s “Tarantella.”  I would also love to be the Madame in MacMillan’s “Manon.”What are you looking forward to dancing in 2020/21? Our Spring storybook ballet performances always bring some of my favorite roles, so I look forward to dancing in that show. I am also looking forward to helping the costuming dept. more with hair and makeup for the 2020/21 season.   

Who inspired you to dance?

Paloma Herrera has always been an inspiration to me as a strong dancer and Alessandra Ferri inspires me to keep on dancing. 

Which role has tested you the most & how?  

Randy Wray’s “Passing Fancies,” Modern Couple. It wasn’t hard choreography per say, but it challenged me by opening my eyes to a whole new world of dance that wasn’t ballet. It pushed me out of my box and made me a much stronger and more well rounded dancer. 

 Describe yourself in just three words. 

Effervescent, Creative, Sassy 

40th Anniversary – Artist Profiles: Cassie Quinn

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As part of our 40th Anniversary Celebration, we are doing #FlashbackFriday in May, a 5-part series where we release a spring ballet from our past every Friday in May at 7pm mountain time on our YouTube Channel! We are also featuring a company dancer profile in celebration. This week, meet Cassie Quinn!

If ballet chose you, as many dancers say it did, what is it that has made you stick with it?

I think that the challenge of ballet is what has made me stick with it. There is something addicting about striving to achieve something that is essentially unachievable. I think every dancer has those moments that feel like flying, and the feeling I get in those moments is indescribable. 

Who would you most like to dance with & what would you dance?

I would love to dance Aurora in “Sleeping Beauty” or “Giselle,” but those are of course big dreams. 🙂 Probably with David Hallberg or James Whiteside.

What are you looking forward to dancing in 2020/21?

I’m not sure what our 2020/21 season will look like, but I always look forward to “The Nutcracker” because of the sense of tradition. I feel that no matter how many times you do it, there is always something new to discover, and there is always a sense of magic to be found in this ballet. 

Who inspired you to dance?

My mom was the one who first inspired me to dance, and she was the one who put me in ballet when I was 11. In addition, my teachers and friends inspire me each and every day to push myself and are a constant reminder to find passion in all of the hard work. 

Which role has tested you the most & how?

The role of Clara in “The Nutcracker” tested me a lot in terms of the emotional/acting side of ballet. However, last year I was an eel in “The Little Mermaid,” and that was also challenging because I had to tap into a very animalistic side of myself that is quite different from my usual personality. 

Describe yourself in just three words.

Quiet, passionate, and joyful.

40th Anniversary – Artist Profiles: Jenna Smith

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As part of our 40th Anniversary Celebration, we are doing #FlashbackFriday in May, a 5-part series where we release a spring ballet from our past every Friday in May at 7pm mountain time on our YouTube Channel! We are also featuring a company dancer profile in celebration. This week, meet Jenna Smith!

If ballet chose you, as many dancers say it did, what is it that has made you stick with it?
I describe my relationship to dance like my relationship to air—It gives me life. I dance because I simply have to.

Who would you most like to dance with & what would you dance? 
I would love to dance with ANY current or past NDT members, and I would love to perform “The Statement” by Crystal Pite.

What are you looking forward to dancing in 2020/21? I am actually really looking forward to “The Nutcracker” again this year. Dancing “Arabian Princess” was extra special because it was always one of my dream roles!

Who inspired you to dance?
Although I was and am inspired by MANY dancers, I saw the ballet, “Swan Lake” when I was 4 years old. I told my mom, “I am going to do that someday” and I never once looked back! 

Which role has tested you the most & how?
Most definitely the “Little Mermaid”! I don’t think I have ever thrown myself so fully into a character. It was such a complex and heartbreaking story, and dancing in such a diverse way as well as vocalizing on stage, was a unique and fun challenge! It is definitely what I am most proud of 🙂

Describe yourself in just three words.
Passionate, Driven, Goofy. <——— 

A Preview of Rubies: A 40th Anniversary Celebration

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CCB’s spring ballet, April 24-25th, features the Fort Collins Symphony with two brand new choreographies to the iconic work of Aaron Copland and Antonín Dvořák.  Conducted by Maestro Wes Kenney and directed by artistic director, Alicia Laumann, the evening is sure to enchant and enrich audiences.

In 1942, Aaron Copland began work on his Pulitzer Prize winning piece, Appalachian Spring.  It was a work commissioned by dance giant Martha Graham who had previously worked with the composer and who wanted to choreograph a ballet on the American experience.  Martha’s ballet tells the story of a sparsely populated religious pioneer town and is set in designer Isamu Noguchi’s highly distilled yet evocative pioneer scene.   

Though Copland’s score is indelibly linked to Graham’s ballet, the score itself has gone on to widespread and enduring popularity.  The score, with only 13 instruments, invokes an early morning sunrise, a simple hymn-like melody and a country fiddle dance.  Local choreographer, Judy Bejarano, founder and director of IMPACT dance, has been commissioned to set a brand new work to this score for CCB’s spring concert, accompanied by the FCSO.  It will include a core cast of 10 dancers. In it, Bejarano acknowledges the American themes of Copland’s score working through meta ideas of arrival, assimilation and settling. When asked about the commission, Alicia Laumann, writes: “Being quite familiar with Judy’s grounded yet lush modern movement vocabulary, which she often combines so eloquently with discreet and communicative gesture, I knew that she was the perfect choreographer to take on Copland’s score.”

The second half of the program will again be accompanied by the FCSO.  Ms. Laumann’s new work is set to Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings in E major, Op. 22.  The score was composed by an optimistic, young husband and father in 1875.  In fact, he composed it in just 14 days! The piece is alternately charming and joyful, passionate and dreamy and concludes with an hommage to his native Bohemian folk music.  Laumann’s piece, simply titled “Dvořák’s Serenade,” features 27 dancers arrayed in ruby red, jeweled dresses in honor of CCB’s 40th anniversary. Laumann says about her new work, “My piece is a celebration of Dvořák’s music through color, vibrant neoclassical vocabulary and a few of my own little hommages to Slavic folk dance which typically includes intricate footwork and inventive hand holds.  My hope is that it will be a feast for the eyes and ears.”

Get your tickets here!

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