Saturday, June 25th 7:00 p.m. – Bozeman
& Sunday, June 26th 4:30 p.m. – Livingston
Yellowstone Ballet Company presents two spectacular gala performances. The performance Saturday, June 25th 7:00 p.m. at the Crawford Theater in Bozeman will be followed by a lightly-catered “Meet & Greet” with photo opportunities and an interactive artists’ panel with the national and international professional cast members. There is also a show on Sunday, June 26th 4:30 p.m. at the Shane Lalani Center for the Arts outdoor theater in Livingston.
Natalie Portman’s Black Swan double, Sarah Lane, performs in Bozeman June 25th
Sarah Lane, a principal dancer of the American Ballet Theatre and Natalie Portman’s dance double in the movie Black Swan will be featured at the Bozeman gala only. Portman won an Oscar for her performance of a tormented ballerina although Lane purportedly performed the majority of the dancing.
Lane joined American Ballet Theatre as an apprentice in August 2003, became a member of the Company’s corps de ballet in 2004 and was appointed a Soloist in 2007. She was promoted to Principal Dancer in 2017. Her principal roles with the Company include La Bayadère, Coppélia, Le Corsaire, Don Quixote, Giselle, The Golden Cockerel, The Green Table, Harlequinade, Manon, Onegin, Other Dances, The Sleeping Beauty, Le Spectre de la Rose, Swan Lake, Les Sylphides, Theme and Variations among others.
Lane will be dancing the White Swan Pas de Deux with Hernan Montenegro of Santiago, Chile where he graduated from the Escuela de Ballet del Teatro Municipal de Santiago. At the age of 16, he won a silver medal at the Lima International Ballet Competition. In 2016, Hernan began dancing with Ballet de Santiago and performed soloist and principal roles in ballets such as Raymonda, Firebird, The Magic Flute, The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, The Nutcracker, Onegin, Don Quixote, Swan Lake, Cinderella. He has performed almost every classic choreographed by John Cranko as well as the choreographies of Maurice Bejart, Jaime Pinto, Peter Schaufuss, Luis Ortigoza, Marcia Haydee, George Balanchine, Glenn Tetley, and Eduardo Yedro. He has performed at multiple festivals and tours in Peru, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and Poland and recently was dance partner for American Ballet Theatre principal Gillian Murphy.
Star-filled Performances Not To Be Missed
Fiona Lee of the world-renowned Royal Danish Ballet will be returning to Montana from Copenhagen to perform The Flames of Paris at the Gala. Ms. Lee began her ballet training at the age of five at the Yellowstone Ballet Academy in Livingston and studied under Artistic Director Kathleen Rakela for eight years, during which time she performed with YBC and staged a mini version of Swan Lake to raise money for the Academy’s Scholarship Fund. At age thirteen Ms. Lee moved to New York City after receiving a full scholarship to The School of American Ballet’s summer program and then an invitation to attend their highly selective year-round program through high school.
Ms. Lee has not performed in Montana since 2015, when she returned from NYC to perform the lead in YBC’s original ballet The Little Mermaid. Ms. Lee describes the opportunity to perform The Flames of Paris as a “dream,” having learned the variation over Zoom during the pandemic while practicing alone for several hours a day. She will be dancing with Arcadian Broad of Sarasota Ballet.
Arcadian has appeared on national platforms such as Top 10 on America’s Got Talent, the Ellen Show and So You Think You Can Dance, and has performed on Broadway as Billy Elliot. He won a scholarship to the Orlando Ballet summer program at the American Dance Competition when he was fourteen and was hired by the Orlando Ballet as the youngest dancer in their history under Artistic Director Robert Hill. He was a Principal Dancer with the company for eight years, and also the first ever Artist in Residence. Arcadian performed numerous lead roles such as Romeo, (Romeo & Juliet), Basilio (Don Quixote), Prince Siegfried (Swan Lake) Jonathan Harker (Dracula) and masterpieces by Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, Jessica Lang, and George Balanchine.
Francisco Estevez, who originally hails from Ecuador, will partner Ms. Huempfner-Groeschl. Mr. Estevez has danced with Boston Ballet, Barcelona Ballet and most recently with the Colorado Ballet as a Principal dancer. His notable roles include Balanchine’s Tarantella and the first and second themes from The Four Temperaments; first and third Sailor in Robbins’ Fancy Free; Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room, the Jester in Ben Stevenson’s Cinderella, James in La Sylphide, Tybalt and Mercutio in Derek Deane’s Romeo and Juliet; Prince Desiree and Blue Bird in The Sleeping Beauty; Basilio in Don Quixote; and Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort.
Scenes from Rakela’s original The Song of Hiawatha
In addition to classical pas de deux, YBC will be reprising scenes from Kathleen Rakela’s original ballet The Song of Hiawatha. This 3-Act ballet was performed in 2005 with dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Moscow Ballet, and Houston Ballet. It includes narration from Henry Wordsworth Longfellow’s epic poem by Broadway actor, singer, and orator Robert Worobec.
Cameron Fraser-Monroe, a member of the Tla’amin First Nation in Powell River, B.C will perform the role of the “Great Peacemaker” Hiawatha. Fraser-Monroe first studied Ukranian dance as a child. He received an Royal Winnipeg Alumni Scholarship and trained and danced with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. He currently dances with the Atlantic Ballet of Canada.
YBC’s gala is a fundraiser for future company performances.
For June 25th AFTER PERFORMANCE SOIREE RESERVATIONS email YBCtxs@gmail.com.
TICKETS FOR JUNE 26th PERFORMANCE are available at American Bank, Livingston or email YBCtxs@gmail.com for reservations.