Clare Morgan Arts editor
Sydney Morning Herald
Photo: Angela Wylie
November 9, 2009

It was a case of art imitating life for Dayton Tavares, a schoolboy about to take a star role in Billy Elliot the Musical on Broadway.

Dayton, 13, of Penrith, left for New York last week with his mother Sharon to begin rehearsals before his debut next month.

But in an echo of the musical – in which Billy takes ballet classes instead of the boxing lessons demanded by his coal miner father – Dayton spent six months learning ballet before spilling the beans to his father, Elvis. Kylie Vassallo, Dayton’s dance teacher at Studio 11, Penrith, said he came to a hip-hop class when he was nine after being persuaded by his sisters, Aeysha and Tenille.

Straight away, Ms Vassallo saw her new student had talent and suggested he take up dance. ”He had so much ability, which was obvious right away. He was doing soccer at the time but he fell in love with dance. I suggested he take up jazz and tap, but his father didn’t want him to do ballet. We snuck him into ballet class behind his father’s back and he did it for six months before his dad found out. Dayton was winning competitions after only six months, so his father could see there was something there,” Ms Vassallo said.

Dayton joined the Sydney production of Billy Elliot halfway through its run and starred on the opening night in Melbourne earlier this year. His proud father spent much of that performance in tears.

The youngster could not believe he had scored a role in the Broadway production, which won 10 Tony Awards this year. ”I had my last show in Melbourne and I thought that was it for Billy and then all of a sudden we got this big call saying, ‘We want you to go to New York,’ and it all just went from there,” he said.

He was ”a bit nervous” but was sure he would be fine for the demanding role.

Dayton is one of two new faces for the part, a 14-year-old from Canada also getting the call. Because of the role’s physical demands, with Billy on stage for most of the performance, four boys play him during a season.

Ms Vassallo said she had a very close relationship with Dayton – another echo of the Billy Elliot story, in which Billy forms a bond with his teacher. ”Dayton and I have a rare bond. I have closeness with all my students but with him, I don’t know – it’s just a respect that goes both ways.”

So much so that she has booked her flight to see him perform in January. ”I’m so excited. I really can’t believe it.”

Copyright 2009 Sydney Morning Herald

Steven McRae grew up in the world of motor racing but now he is one of the Royal Ballet’s brightest stars

By Jessica Duchen
The Independent
Saturday, 31 October 2009

Stranger phenomena may have graced the stage of the Royal Opera House than a balletic prince who takes his inspiration from motor racing, but maybe not many. Meet Steven McRae, the hot young star of the Royal Ballet who makes his debut tonight as Prince Florimund in The Sleeping Beauty. The son of an Australian drag racer, McRae, 23, has been thrilling Covent Garden balletomanes: blessed with a soaring, secure technique, flaming red hair and a disarming charm that fronts terrific drive, he is living balletic life in the fast lane. 

He started dancing aged seven. “My elder sister was a fantastic gymnast and dancer and I used to love watching her,” McRae says. “Then I said I’d like to have a go myself, so my mother took me to a class. She told me later that they thought I’d last a week.” The family lived in the western suburbs of Sydney, where arts were not a priority. “I would watch films – Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire – but we never went to the ballet. We were always at the racetrack instead. To me that was normal, to go to the track, watch Dad race and be surrounded by these incredible cars. I loved it.”

And so his role models, he says, were motor racers. “First, Shirley Muldowney: female racers at the time weren’t accepted, but she became world champion three times. Everyone tried to stop her, yet she wanted to achieve that goal; she kept going and eventually she did. Then John Force: he started with absolutely nothing, but he’s one of the biggest success stories in the sport. He wasn’t handed it on a silver platter. That was a huge inspiration.”

He’s ambitious, then? “Ambition is a wonderful thing,” he declares. “It’s a driving force behind you and it’s a powerful tool. It’s important to keep striving and having dreams and goals.” Growing up in Australia, everything was competitive, he adds. “There were always trophies to aim for in every field, and that competitiveness helps to set you up for all kinds of situations later.”

Images of Billy Elliot may spring to mind, but McRae encountered few problems with bullies as a boy wanting to dance. “When I started high school, a bunch of guys came up and said, ‘We hear you dance.’ I said, ‘I hear I’m not so bad. You should come and have a look sometime, you might like it.’ They never bothered me again. I think when people see a ballet rehearsal, class or performance, they realise there’s more to being a ballet dancer than the stereotypes. Throw anything at us, and we’re a lot fitter than the rest of the world! Besides, if you want to do something enough, then you’re going to do it. It doesn’t matter what people around you say.”

McRae feels he was lucky to have excellent teachers who encouraged him to aim for the top. And the top meant the Royal Ballet. “The whole dance world wants to come to London for the Royal Ballet and the Royal Ballet School.” It might have seemed an impossible dream at first, but after McRae won the Adeline Genée medal in 2002 and the Prix de Lausanne in 2003, doors swung open: aged 17, he won a coveted place at the Royal Ballet School.

Matters could easily have taken a different turn. Aged 14, McRae danced in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sydney in an extract of the hit show Tap Dogs. Soon after, he was invited to join the show in New York. He could certainly have become a star in musical theatre instead: on YouTube there is a clip of his dazzling James Bond tap solo in the Prix de Lausanne. “But I had already set my sights on the Royal Ballet goal,” he says. “It was a tough choice, but I’m glad I made that decision. Ballet has opened up a whole new world to me.”

McRae was promoted to principal dancer this summer. Having cut his teeth on smaller but technically glittering roles such as Bratfisch the coachman in Mayerling and the Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty, and having had roles choreographed for him by Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon, now he is also facing debut upon debut in the great classical leads. The company’s variety of repertoire is among its biggest attractions, he says; he has about seven roles on the go at any time. “You can be rehearsing everything from The Sleeping Beauty to a brand new work in next-door studios on the same day, and that’s terrifically exciting,” he says. “I’m keen to be as versatile as possible. It keeps you on your toes.”

After all that virtuosity, plus contemporary works that push him to the limit, what is it like to portray a classical prince? The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince Florimund is not only about elegance, McRae insists. “As a character he’s a bit lost, wondering where his life’s going; there’s more depth to him than people might think. That’s important to convey – it allows the audience to connect with the character. He has feelings as well, hasn’t he? That’s what I’ll be working for.” His Aurora is the Brazilian ballerina Roberta Marquez: “She’s beautiful!”

And as that weren’t enough, he is taking an Open University degree in business management and leadership. “One day I’d love to be in the directorial side of dance,” he says. “The ballet world is always changing and evolving and I want to be part of that, so I’m doing this degree to back it up. And if you want to do something, you do it, don’t you?” If you are McRae, you certainly do.

Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited

The Gravity-defying thrill of NYCB’s Daniel Ulbricht

By Harris Green
Dance Magazine
June 2008

Being short is no handicap for male dancers whose low centers of gravity can be a springboard to airborne virtuosity. Those possessing the artistry and technique to compensate for their stature include Vaslav Nijinsky, Edward Villella, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Herman Cornejo. Whether Daniel Ulbricht can join this distinguished honor roll remains to be seen, but New York City Ballet’s ballet master in chief Peter Martins has such faith in the dancer’s star power that he has created high-flying, technically demanding solos for him in his last three ballets. The decibel count during curtain calls always spikes when Ulbricht takes a solo bow.

Otherwise Ulbricht has failed to follow the usual ballet traditions. Yes, he did join his sister, Heidi, in ballet class when he was 11 years old, but before succumbing to that cliché, he had devoted five years to karate. “The Karate Kid and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made a big impression on me,” he recalls. “I begged my folks to sign me up. Because my teacher, Kathy Marlor, always stressed self-respect and discipline, I carried her lessons over into ballet.” Before he decided to concentrate on dance at age 13, he had earned a second-degree black belt, won two Florida championships in kata—variations on established forms—and found time for gymnastics. It took a knee injury to slow him down—for a while.

He felt fortunate in his ballet teachers, beginning with Leonard Holmes at Judith Lee Johnson’s Studio of Dance in St. Petersburg, Florida, his hometown. “Lenny wisely made me—the only guy—feel at ease by letting me take class in a baseball cap and baggy shorts and T-shirt,” he says. “I could do double tours and entrechats six from the start, but the barre bored me. He taught me how to harness my energy.” Holmes, who had studied at School of American Ballet, gave Ulbricht a foundation in Balanchine style. Private lessons with Javier Dubrocq from the Ballet Nacional de Cuba followed. Ulbricht stood a little over five feet at the time, but he continued to grow and is now about 5′8″. (Heidi’s short stature would eventually rule out a career in dance; she’s now married and has a degree in elementary education.)

Four years of summer study on scholarship at Chautauqua Summer Dance Program in upstate New York led to further Balanchine training under Patricia McBride, Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, and Violette Verdy (her likening a plié to melting ice cream remains with him to this day). “Soon teachers who were visiting Chautauqua were offering me gigs,” he says. His freelance career began at age 14 with four Nutcrackers: Miami, St. Petersburg, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. Everyone was suggesting he study at SAB, so in the spring of 1998, he flew to New York with his father for three days.

During that visit, he sneaked into Peter Boal’s advanced men’s class. Boal, now artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet, says he spotted Ulbricht as a “trickster” but he was stunned by how advanced he already was: “I thought: What on earth can I teach this kid? Yet I found him open to any correction. He was a dream student.” SAB offered him a full scholarship, and Martins didn’t wait until he was an apprentice to cast him as the central jester in the last-act divertissements of his Sleeping Beauty. “I was dazzled by Daniel when I first saw him as a student at the school,” Martins says, “and my admiration only continues to grow.”

Ulbricht’s jester, with its brilliant à la seconde turns and uniformly high side-straddle hops, and his leader of the men’s regiment in Stars and Stripes at SAB’s spring 2000 workshop earned him a Dance Magazine “25 to Watch” in 2001. Former City Ballet principal Daniel Duell, who now runs The School of Ballet Chicago, was bowled over by Ulbricht in Stars, a role Duell had danced. “Everything Daniel did was unfailingly musical,” he says, “always on the center of the beat. And he regularly landed in soft plié—a perfect fifth.”

Casting after he joined NYCB’s corps in the 2002 winter season proved a feast-or-famine affair. One Saturday he made two major debuts: as the spunky Faun in the Fall section of Robbins’ The Four Seasons and that evening as the refined Gigue in Balanchine’s Mozartiana. “The Gigue is my hardest role,” he says. “Victor Castelli taught me I must always consider myself a delicate Dresden figurine, which was a stretch.” More often he was, say, a huntsman in Balanchine’s one-act version of Swan Lake. (“If you think it’s easy keeping a straight face wearing a feathered cap while standing between two swan girls, you try it some time.”) Opportunities were limited by his height and the difficulty of finding a regular partner. (His offstage partnership with principal Sterling Hyltin has cooled but they remain chums.)

Waiting his turn at repertoire occurs less often now that Martins is creating roles on him. As Mercutio, Ulbricht danced eight of the first 14 performances of the new Romeo + Juliet last year. He bristled with prankish virtuosity yet died with powerful simplicity. No one else has ever been assigned the midair twists yards above the stage in Friandises. Tiler Peck, his partner, remembers, “Danny would finish rehearsing some really demanding stuff with Peter and then have the energy left to partner me. I felt I could trust him completely.”

Not everyone appreciates the veneer of sunny showmanship in his performances. One reviewer said he looked like he was “auditioning for a Three Stooges routine” as the First Sailor in Robbins’ Fancy Free. “I know I enter the bar walking like Popeye,” Ulbricht says, “but that’s what Robbins wanted.” More newsworthy was his performance of the sailor’s solo with its sensational split landing after a double tour. No one else at NYCB or American Ballet Theatre really goes for it like Ulbricht. Most guys land on their heels, then slide to the floor, but he performs both actions so quickly he seems to have crash-landed on his crotch. “You have to do everything in a split second,” he says.

Now a principal at age 24, with the great Villella roles such as Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and “Rubies” within his reach, he’s concentrating on toning down the showmanship. Villella, for instance, smiled but Ulbricht grins. Fortunately, the grin flickered only fitfully during his first two performances of Prodigal Son last winter. What drove audiences to demand multiple curtain calls was the power of his soaring Prodigal leap, his spiky pirouette of rage, and his embodiment of defeat and degradation. (“You can’t use your legs when you drag yourself off; it’s done with your elbows and shoulders.”)

Tarantella, another Villella specialty, has become Ulbricht’s signature ballet. When City Ballet visited London last March, he impressed veteran critic Clement Crisp with “his exact phrasing and his engaging freshness, as if inventing on the very moment the delights he shows us.” Before rehearsals for the spring season began, he took it on freelance gigs to San Juan, St. Petersburg (Russia), and Dallas. “Tarantella is going to buy me my apartment.”

And his burgeoning side career as a teacher will furnish it. He was invited to conduct his first class three years ago at the New York State Summer School for the Arts in Saratoga, and became so involved he lost his voice. Now that Damian Woetzel has stepped down as head of NYSSSA, Ulbricht and City Ballet principal Jenifer Ringer will share its direction. Ever adept at networking, he has since taught at—and always been asked back by—Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, The Rock School, School of Ballet Chicago, and Indiana University.

The teenage boys in Ulbricht’s advanced men’s class at SAB, where he began teaching last winter, would be surprised to learn how their teacher regularly clowned around in company class. Now while he gives them a challenging barre, he prowls the classroom, singing the counts like a nursery rhyme while stressing the beat with finger snaps and open-palmed thwacks to his thighs that go off like pistol shots. Once, however, he did a barre wearing the head of a Nutcracker mouse. Inspired by the production manager’s backstage instructions to his stage crew (“Housewarmers cue—go”), Ulbricht would amuse—or annoy—nearby classmates by whispering, “Sous-sus cue—go!”

He tells students that thorough preparation conquers fear, and that the barre should be treated as a performance. Yet he can’t remain solemn for long.

“You’re introducing yourself every time you step onstage,” he says. “But if you stand like this”—the posture sags, the neck disappears, the shoulders grotesquely hunch up to the ears—“it’s like you’re saying”—in the squeaky voice of an adenoidal robot—“Hi, I’m Daniel.”

Then the posture straightens, the shoulders subside, the neck elegantly lengthens, and all caricature vanishes. In his normal light baritone, Ulbricht says, “Hello, I’m Daniel.” And now everyone grins.

© 2008 Macfadden Performing Arts Media LLC

Clare Morgan
The Sydney Morning Herald
October 29, 2009

THE day before Adrian Burnett turned up at the Owl and the Pussycat dance school in Tamworth, he received a photograph and a letter from a boy who could barely contain his excitement over the former Australian Ballet dancer taking their class.

”They were so enthusiastic, they absolutely rocked it out,” said Burnett, who led the class as part of the Dance The Dream competition, a joint venture between NAB and the Australian Ballet.

It seems that boys up Tamworth way love their dance, with the school’s principal, Kimberley Brazel, dedicating one day a week to a boys’ class, the Tomcats. Class member Jaydon Merrick, 10, had entered the competition without telling anyone, including Mrs Brazel.

Almost 800 ballet schools from around Australia entered, with 10 selected for workshops with a professional dancer from the Australian Ballet. Burnett thinks the program is invaluable in fostering interest in dance and ballet, especially in regional areas.

”You see programs to get children interested in sport but there aren’t so many of those things for the arts, and in particular dance,” he said. They might not be ballet dancers – in fact, most of them won’t be – but they’re the audiences of the future, which hopefully gets them into other artforms.”

He enjoyed the chance to speak to parents, who often didn’t know what they were supposed to do to encourage their children. ”Often the fathers ask me questions, and it’s great to put them at ease. My father didn’t know what was going on either,” he said. ”There’s lots of focus on dance, thanks to So You Think You Can Dance, but not so much on classical ballet. In fact, I think there’s lots of misconceptions about ballet.”

Yesterday Burnett took a class from the Caper School of Performing Arts, in Bella Vista. ”I saw a lot of talent that we’ll see more of in the future,” he said.

Copyright © 2009 Sydney Morning Herald