The Ballet Manila Archives is the repository of documents, print, photographic, audio and video materials and memorabilia relating to the history of Ballet Manila and the life and career of its founder, prima ballerina Lisa Macuja-Elizalde. This site is powered by Ms. Elizalde and Project Art, Inc.
All in Features
Ballet Manila principal dancer and resident choreographer Gerardo “Geri” Francisco is always on the go. Not even the enhanced community quarantine can keep him still.
For Ballet Manila company artist Sean Pelegrin, having to stay indoors for hours on end has meant getting the chance to improve his skills in videography and photography – two hobbies that he wants to pursue more seriously.
Using his white Prisma colored pencils, he drew a health professional wearing a mask on a small sheet of black cartolina,
Expect the unexpected. If there’s anything that Ballet Manila artistic directors Lisa Macuja-Elizalde and Osias “Shaz” Barroso have learned from its just-concluded 24th season, it is this.
Ballet Manila will remember 2019 as the year it was thrown its biggest curve ball yet.
For Ballet Manila’s dancers who come from other countries, memories of holidays past with family and friends sustain them through this season while based in the Philippines.
In an early holiday treat, Ballet Manila performed excerpts from the Christmas favorite, The Nutcracker, and from Lisa Macuja-Elizalde’s Sleeping Beauty in a free show at S Maison.
Last November 13, Ballet Manila and singer Tippy Dos Santos were the featured performers at the grand Christmas tree-lighting of the mall located in Cagayan de Oro.
Echoing the winter theme of Frozen, Ballet Manila co-artistic director Osias “Shaz” Barroso put together a choreography that would rightfully complement the dazzle and shine of the festivities.
Ballet Manila soloist Joshua Enciso and company artist Shaira Comeros were charming as the Prince and the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker Pas de Deux.
In ballet lore, the wilis of the classic Giselle are in an exalted spot when it comes to otherworldly beings. The spirits of women jilted by their lovers, they exact revenge on disloyal men by forcing them to dance until they die of exhaustion.
Giselle is one of the most dramatic ballets that a ballerina can be privileged enough to dance in, and also one of the most exhausting roles. It’s a story of love so strong that it causes a girl to go mad and dies of a broken heart. It also causes her to rise from the grave and save the same man who wronged her.
Giselle will be on stage for one night on October 17, Thursday at 8 p.m., at the CCP Main Theater.
Begin again. For Ballet Manila artistic director Lisa Macuja-Elizalde, it’s the prevailing thought amid an incomprehensible loss that she is still grappling to make sense of.
Another inspiration for Giselle was reportedly French novelist Victor Hugo’s poem Fantomes, featured in the anthology Les Orientales (1829)
Ballet Manila artistic director Lisa Macuja-Elizalde is eager to bring back her interpretation of Snow White as the company’s 24th season-opener.
Snow White will return to the stage as the initial offering of Ballet Manila’s 24th season, On Pointe, to captivate audiences once more.
For its 24th season-opener, Ballet Manila brings back an iconic female protagonist with skin as white as snow and whose kindness earns her the trust of forest animals and seven dwarfs.
With the celebration of Father’s Day today, seven Ballet Manila artists take a breather from their classes and rehearsals to talk about that one man who has played such a huge part in their lives.
Most people know Lisa Macuja-Elizalde as the prima ballerina. But for me she is, quite simply, “Mama.”
