Ballet BC’s Emerging Artist Program: Reimagining Apprenticeship
By Rachel Silver Maddock
In 2018, Ballet BC traded in the traditional model of apprenticeship for their new and more substantial Emerging Artists program. The venture is reimagining the transition of young dancers into working professionals, and creating new roles in the company structure somewhere between apprentice and junior company member.
“We wanted to build a platform that would be more enhanced than an apprentice level, but still with a supportive training environment,” says outgoing artistic director Emily Molnar, who spearheaded the initiative.
In former years, the West Coast’s small contemporary ballet company fluctuated between two to four apprentices each season, to join its roster of around 15 company members. In the two years since the program launched, Ballet BC has taken on five Emerging Artists each season. And at the end of the 2018-2019 season, the directorship surprised even the dancers by promoting all five to full company members.
The Emerging Artists receive a larger salary than the former apprentices, and even go on tour with the company. Day-to-day, they are integrated into every aspect of company life. According to current Emerging Artist Kiana Jung, the role of the EAs changes slightly depending on the choreographer. Often, they start out as understudies or “covers” learning one or multiple roles in a particular cast and filling in if there are injuries.
The Emerging Artists are also used to supplement the cast for larger productions. In the recent remount of Medhi Walerski’s Romeo and Juliet, all five performed in their own right. In a small group like Ballet BC, the leap from being a “cover” to being a first or second cast dancer is already typically much shorter than in larger companies, where it can take a young dancer several years to move up the ladder from corps de ballet to soloist to principal. Ballet BC is making it possible for young dancers to rise up quickly — elevating the status of apprentices to Emerging Artists, and also integrating graduate students from Arts Umbrella, the official training institution associated with Ballet BC. Six Arts Umbrella students were onstage for Romeo and Juliet.
First-year company member Zenon Zubyk is a good example of rising talent. A former Emerging Artist, the 22-year-old recently landed the major role of Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. The fact that Zubyk danced for Walerski as a graduate student with Arts Umbrella when the work premiered in 2018 no doubt aided his securing the role: He had been in Walerski’s creative process already and had the chance to build some rapport with the choreographer.
So far, eight out of 10 of Ballet BC’s Emerging Artists have been Arts Umbrella graduates. The Vancouver training institution, under the direction of Artemis Gordon, has strengthened its ties to Ballet BC since 2015, when it formed an alliance to share resources and choreographers. The “shared philosophy” (in Molnar’s words) between the institutions not only grooms dancers toward a similar aesthetic, but gives the pre-professional artists an opportunity to form relationships with professional choreographers.
Ballet BC, bolstered by Arts Umbrella, is not just using the Emerging Artist program to elevate the value and role of young apprentice-level dancers. From the start, they have been garnering support around the program to pave the way for an even more ambitious undertaking: the establishment of a junior company, Ballet BC II.
According to the company’s Strategic Plan for 2018-2025, Ballet BC II is envisioned as an extension company of six to eight dancers with its own repertoire and touring circuit, which could travel to smaller communities where it is not financially feasible to tour the main company. The junior company would also supplement the senior one for larger productions. The Plan states Ballet BC II will be “formed and operated in collaboration” with Arts Umbrella’s 3rd year graduate program, though doesn’t specify details.
Incoming artistic director Walerski — who knows the company well, having worked with them several times since 2010 — seems supportive of the proposition. Last January, he was quoted in the Globe and Mail saying, “It would be amazing to have a young company, Ballet BC 2.”
