Inside an ABT Studio Company Rehearsal

April 20, 2016


Teen Vogue
has a big ol’ crush on ballet, and we couldn’t be happier about it. The magazine regularly profiles gorgeous up-and-coming ballet dancers, and its “Strictly Ballet” web series—a behind-the-scenes look at life at the world’s top ballet schools—gives us LIFE (can we get a Season 3, please?).

Most recently, the mag went inside a rehearsal at the prestigious ABT Studio Company, the American Ballet Theatre feeder boasting a slate of incredibly talented young dancers. (A special shout-out to ABT Studio Company director Kate Lydon, our former editor in chief!) The resulting video paints an intimate portrait of George Williamson’s Murmuration, a lush, passionate ballet made for the Studio Company dancers that premiered last week in NYC.

ABT Studio Company rehearsing Murmuration (screenshot via teenvogue.com)

We see the familiar stop-and-start process of choreographic creation, and watch the dancers figure out the work’s technical and artistic puzzles. “You give them the material, but you can’t tell them how to take every step,” Williamson says. “That’s part of learning how to be a mature dancer: You have to go from A to B, but not do it in the way you’d walk to the bus stop….They have to learn how to speak in the language of the piece.”

Take a look—and click here to read more about Murmuration:


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