Winner of Emerging Dancer 2015, Queen Elizabeth Hall, 23 March. (photo by ASH)
A couple of days have elapsed since ENB’s wildly popular Emerging Dancer competition Final, held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Seven finalists nominated by the company took up the challenge to dance for the coveted title, with Jinhao Zhang deservedly carrying off the prize.
Now in its seventh year, the event reflected the meteoric rise in both artistry and technical skill of the ballet company. Molli overheard one audience member say that compared with the first year of its existence, the standard of dance was incredibly high. Everyone was a winner: dancers, orchestra, ENB, and the audience who clearly loved every moment.
While the judges – all luminaries from the dance world – were deliberating we were treated to last year’s joint winners, Alison McWhinney and Junor Souza, performing an extract from No Man’s Land by Liam Scarlett.
At the beginning of this post I mentioned that a couple of days had elapsed since the competition, and the visual treat that stayed with me the most was actually the short film of each of the seven dancers. Each one was beautifully shot, each one gave the dancer the same verbal and visual exposure, all seven made a delightful and satisfyingly balanced series, with the content of each different, yet complementing each other. Just like a good ballet company.
Take a Bow Wow: Laurent Liotardo for the short films of the dancers
Ballet Bichon 