Ballet Manila performs in Taiwan
(L-R): Company artists Rafael Perez, Brian Ramos Sevilla, Alvin Dictado, and soloist Joshua Enciso will be performing excerpts from Raymonda in Taiwan. Photo by MarBi Photography
Ballet Manila will perform in Taiwan on August 23 as part of a continuing collaboration with the Taipei-based Zhongli Youth Ballet.
Soloist Joshua Enciso and company artists Shaira Comeros, Alvin Dictado, Rafael Perez and Brian Sevilla will dance excerpts from Giselle, Sleeping Beauty and Raymonda, which are among the highlights to be featured in Zhongli Youth Ballet’s school recital.
The Ballet Manila group is led by co-artistic director Osias Barroso who first conducted a workshop for the school in 2018.
Company artists Shaira Comeros and Alvin Dictado will be performing an except from Giselle in the Zhongli Youth Ballet’s recital. Photo by Erickson Dela Cruz
More recently, nearly 20 students from Zhongli Youth Ballet, accompanied by school heads John Chang and Maggie Chien, attended an intensive workshop at the Ballet Manila studios in Pasay City.
The students got to participate in Tuloy ang Saya-wan, a fundraiser for ballet scholarships held last July 21 at Star Theater.
Several students who came to Manila also trained for the Asian Grand Prix International Ballet Competition, held last week in Hong Kong.
It was actually at the Asian Grand Prix that the paths of Ballet Manila and Zhongli Youth Ballet first crossed, as both had students participating in the competition in 2017.
From there, Chang and Chien expressed interest in Ballet Manila’s chosen Vaganova training method and subsequently invited Barroso to hold classes for their students.
Barroso went to Taiwan in 2018 and conducted classes for students aged nine to 16. He might conduct similar classes for Zhongli in the near future.