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Carlsen Center Event: Ballet Boyz
Johnson County Community College
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2/09/09
Story by Peggy Graham
Clever Boyz
Behind the light-hearted attitude of the Ballet Boyz is some serious dancing. Since leaving the Royal Ballet to form their own company, Ballet Boyz Michael Nunn and William Trevitt have established themselves as one of the most cheekily original and innovative forces in dance. Their programming is a mix of media — live performance and video of behind-the-scenes outtakes.
Ballet Boyz brings its witty and evocative style to the United States with Balletboyz: The Greatest Hits! at 8 p.m. Friday, March 27, in Yardley Hall of the Carlsen Center, Johnson County Community College. Featured works are by Russell Maliphant, Broken Fall; Liv Lorent, Propeller; Rafael Bonachela, EdOx; and Craig Revel Horwood, Yumba vs Nonino. For its U.S. tour, the Ballet Boyz will be Nunn, Trevitt, Oxana Panchenko and two other dancers. A company member will host the post-performance Q&A.
Ballet Boyz has made a dramatic mark on the British dance scene, thrilling audiences and dance critics alike with an exhilarating mix of award-winning repertoire, performance style and high artistic standards.
Nunn and Trevitt lead a unique team, and their evocative style sets new standards for dance as they grace the stage with ferocity, strength and determination as well as tremendous elegance and poise.
Intrinsic to the Ballet Boyz is the way the company produces and presents dance that uses film and video clips created by Nunn and Trevitt showing behind-the-scenes activities of dancers mixed with on-stage performances, thereby demystifying the art of dance and the choreographic process.
For instance, a perfectly masterful on-stage dance is prefaced by the dancer shown doubled over with exhaustion rehearsing in the dance studio. Or a dancer is filmed being coached in an Isadora Duncan dance before he captures the work’s complexity in front of the audience.
In November 2008, the team won the International Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Arts Programming for its documentary Strictly Bolshoi. Nunn and Trevitt were given unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to follow choreographer Christopher Wheeldon as he created a new work for the Bolshoi Ballet.
Born in London, Nunn trained at the Bush Davies School and the Royal Ballet Upper School. He joined the Royal Ballet in 1987 and became soloist in 1997.
In just seven years the company earned a reputation for commissioning new works and now has numerous works in its repertoire crafted by some of the most important and influential choreographers of our generation.
Tickets are $25 and $35, available by calling the Carlsen Center box office, 913-469-4445, or online at www.jccc.edu/CarlsenCenter.
The Carlsen Center ArtsEducation program will have the Ballet Boyz in residency Wed.-Fri., March 25-27, for students grades high school and up.
For more information about master classes and an off-site performance, call the ArtsEducation office, 913-469-8500, ext. 4221.
