Dancers try out for ‘absolute dream’
American Ballet Theatre auditions
It was still dark out in Houston on Saturday morning when cousins Alana Jones, 17, and Juliette Wooden, 14, pulled on pink tights and black leotards, and piled into the car with their mothers to drive to Baton Rouge for a very important ballet audition.
Both girls, who each dance more than 15 hours a week, have been practicing for tryouts for about 20 different summer ballet programs, a key weeding-out step on a dancer’s path to becoming a professional ballerina.
But Saturday’s audition in Baton Rouge was the most important. It was with the New York-based American Ballet Theatre, one of the nation’s most-prestigious ballet companies.
“This is my absolute dream,” Jones said Saturday, while waiting for her turn to try out. “I know I want to be a professional ballerina.”
Jones was one of about 100 girls who came from all over Louisiana, Texas and other states to audition Saturday at The Dancers’ Workshop, just off Bluebonnet Boulevard and Perkins Road. About 40 girls trying out for the program live in the Baton Rouge area.
Acceptance to the American Ballet Theatre’s summer program is highly competitive. Baton Rouge was just one stop on the company’s 25-city audition tour across the country.
The summer program puts the country’s most promising young ballerinas on a fast track to some of the world’s top professional dancing jobs, said Sharon Mathews, Baton Rouge Ballet Theatre artistic director.
Without joining a summer intensive program, it is hard for budding dancers to grab the attention of those looking to hire, Mathews said.
“For an advanced dancer, this is really the ultimate,” Mathews said.
In the minutes before the tryouts began, the first wave of girls, all between 11 and 14 years old, stretched in the hallway alongside their mothers, who, in many cases, appeared more nervous than their daughters.
As the dancers, clad in the requisite pale pink tights, black leotards and tightly twisted ballet buns, laughed with each other and stretched, their mothers looked on, reaching to brush lint off a leotard or adjust a hair clip.
Jennifer Wooden said she hoped her 14-year-old daughter, Juliette, would be accepted.
“I just see how much dancing means to her. It’s her main source of expression,” Wooden said.
Soon, it was time for the girls to file into the tryout room and take their places at the wooden cylindrical barres lining the mirrored walls.
As piano melodies flooded the room, the girls began their choreographed routine at the barre, bending and stretching their legs in the air, toes pointed, as the two New York judges paced the room.
Rebecca Acosta, an associate director of the Baton Rouge Ballet Theatre, said she had to be certified by the American Ballet Theatre to make sure she was teaching her students the fundamentals of ballet in a way that met the company’s high standards.
“It’s not just your leg going really high in the air or doing five turns that is most important at a young age, but really that you have the basics down,” Acosta said. “It’s like learning the ABCs before you ask a child to write a paragraph.”