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The New York City Ballet announced on Thursday that it has promoted two dancers to the role of manager and one to the role of soloist, raising young talent as six of its longtime performers are ready to leave and the company is looking to make an energetic comeback after the prolonged pandemic shutdown. .
Soloists Unity Phelan and Indiana Woodward will become directors, and corps ballet member Roman Mejia will rise to soloist rank, the company said in a news release. Under the direction of the company’s artistic leaders, Jonathan Stafford and Wendy Whelan, the first promotions come as City Ballet has returned to the stage for a little over two weeks, performing for vaccinated, masked, and often enthusiastic crowds.
On the opening night of the long-awaited new season, 27-year-old Woodward returned to the stage and “C Symphony” by George Balanchine. Phelan, 26, appeared in Alexei Ratmansky’s lively and moving film. “Russian Seasons” the next night.
Woodward was born in Paris and later moved to California, where he trained with Yuri Grigoriev, who danced with the Stanislavsky Ballet in Moscow. In 2018, she played the “dream role” as the principal ballerina in “Romeo and Juliet”; Writing in The New York Times, Gia Kourlas lauded her footwork and spins and said, “sparkle with fluid musicality”
Phelan was educated at the Princeton School of Ballet in New Jersey and enrolled as a full-time student at the School of American Ballet, affiliated with City Ballet, in 2009; He was promoted to the role of soloist four years ago. In 2016, before Phelan was promoted to soloist, Alastair Macaulay, then dance critic for The Times, wrote that it was “effortlessly poetic” In “Chapters” of Balanchine.
On Wednesday evening, Phelan made her debut in Balanchine’s “Western Symphony” and danced with Mejia in the fourth episode. As the performance ended, Phelan said in an interview that Stafford and Whelan wanted her and Mejia to stay behind. Stafford told them he planned to share the news with them the next day, but his performances decided not to wait for him.
“I feel like I’m swimming,” Phelan said on Thursday. “I don’t even feel my feet touch the ground.”
Mejia, 21, was born in Fort Worth, where she began her ballet training at age 3. Edwaard Liang’s “Descendant” and Ratmansky’s “Voices”.
Young dancers will help fill the void left by a departing group of senior principals. Six is an unusually high retirement number for a year. Three of the retired dancers – Maria Kowroski, Gonzalo Garcia and Ask la Cour – wanted to leave for the 2020-21 season, but decided to stay for a farewell season as it was canceled.
Before the pandemic, Lauren Lovette decided after the dance he wanted to continue outside the corporate domain; Abi Stafford chose to retire after 21 years with the company; and Amar Ramasar, who was temporarily fired and subsequently reinstated following a nude photo-sharing scandal, will leave in the spring.
The pandemic also made Phelan question whether her time as a ballerina is over; has a bachelor’s degree in economics and was looking for job postings in finance. But after returning to the stage this fall, all his doubts were cleared.
“I realized that this is exactly what I wanted to do,” he said.
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