Women take center stage as Pointeworks aims to 'bring balance within the ballet world'

Sophie Williams’ decade-long creation vocation has taken her crossed the globe, from the English National Ballet successful London to the Royal New Zealand Ballet and the Texas Ballet Theater, wherever she’s presently a subordinate of the corps de ballet.

Yet she tin number connected 1 manus the fig of works she’s performed by a pistillate choreographer.

So erstwhile Williams started her ain nonprofit ballet company, Pointeworks, successful 2023, she knew she wanted to spotlight women, whether choreographers, dancers, costume designers oregon composers.

“Whenever determination is an opportunity, I volition utilize the level to effort and bring equilibrium wrong the ballet world, which astir of america haven’t seen successful our careers,” Williams, Pointeworks’ creator director, told The Times.

From its inception, Pointeworks has strived to capable successful gaps. Williams was inspired to commencement the institution arsenic a mode to supply enactment for nonrecreational dancers during their unpaid summertime layoffs. With a deficiency of opportunities and an abundance of endowment successful the ballet world, Williams decided to make a radical that performs during the off-season.

“[Pointeworks] is simply a precise artist-forward company. It’s creating opportunities for the dancers — giving them caller works, collaborations, things that tin elevate their careers extracurricular of their structured institution season, and beryllium capable to supply them a level during that clip arsenic well,” Williams said. “And besides for audiences who don’t get to spot ballet during the summertime due to the fact that companies are off, they get to spot Pointeworks.”

Pointeworks debuted past June with a sold-out show astatine the 500-seat Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center successful Williams’ hometown of San Diego. This year, the institution expanded to the East Coast with 3 shows astatine New York City’s Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater successful March. After a palmy instrumentality to San Diego past week, the radical is preparing for its archetypal Orange County amusement Friday astatine the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Before the Irvine show, Pointeworks volition big its archetypal mentorship programme for section students who mean to prosecute a nonrecreational creation career. Selected dancers volition enactment successful a Pointeworks people connected Friday and beryllium paired with a mentor from the institution who volition proceed to usher them implicit the adjacent year. As of Wednesday, 7 students had applied and been accepted, according to selling and outreach coordinator AvaRose Dillon.

Sisters Claire, Nicole and Emma Von Enck rehearse for their show of “Chasing Shadows” with Pointeworks.

(Raquel Beauchamp)

Williams received much than 400 applications from choreographers for this play overall, she said. While her extremity is to item pistillate creatives, anyone is invited to taxable ideas.

Among the pieces commissioned for the New York shows was Laine Habony’s “Chasing Shadows,” choreographed for sisters Claire, Emma and Nicole Von Enck — who had ne'er performed unneurotic professionally. Nicole, the eldest sister and Williams’ workfellow astatine Texas Ballet Theater, leapt astatine the accidental to collaborate with her siblings, who some creation for New York City Ballet.

Habony, besides from New York City Ballet, wanted the task to beryllium accompanied by an archetypal score. So she enlisted Welsh composer Katie Jenkins, whom she met astatine Revolve Dance Project successful Providence, R.I., past summer. The duo aboriginal recruited pianist and caller Juilliard postgraduate Joshua Mhoon to play the unrecorded score.

For the Irvine show,Williams, Paige Nyman and Adeline Melcher, each from Texas Ballet Theater, volition execute the piece. This volition people the archetypal clip that Williams volition creation to a creation by a pistillate composer, she said.

“[‘Chasing Shadows’] is conscionable precise unsocial successful the consciousness that it’s a pistillate composer down the euphony and a pistillate dependable down the choreography, pistillate costume decorator down what we’re wearing, pistillate lighting decorator down what’s going connected the stage,” Nyman said. “It’s conscionable an wholly sisterhood piece.”

In summation to “Chasing Shadows,” the Irvine programme includes caller commissions from choreographers Reka Gyulai and Heather Nichols; DaYoung Jung’s “It’s Deep, It’s Dark,” which debuted successful New York; and Christopher Wheeldon’s “Carousel,” a 2002 pas de deux acceptable to euphony from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s philharmonic of the aforesaid name.

“I deliberation it gives a assortment to the assemblage by commissioning caller works, modern works, caller classical works, but besides putting successful iconic classics — and ‘Carousel’ is 1 of those,” Williams said.

Dance careers don’t past forever, truthful it’s important to instrumentality vantage of each moment, Williams said. That’s wherefore she’s passionate astir maximizing opportunities some connected and offstage.

Sisters Claire, Nicole and Emma Von Enck execute unneurotic for the archetypal clip professionally.

(Nathan Carlson)

In October, Williams hired interns to assistance with administrative tasks. Among them was Dillon, Pointeworks’ selling coordinator and a corps de ballet subordinate astatine Texas Ballet Theater. This month, she began dancing with Pointeworks arsenic well.

“I privation to marque definite that Pointeworks is for the dancers first,” Williams said. “So by having dancer perspectives successful conscionable each space — whether that’s marketing, administration, improvement — if you cognize what it is to beryllium a dancer and you person been a dancer, I deliberation that it’s a batch much cohesive, putting those interests first.”

In summation to dancing professionally, Dillon takes online classes astatine Texas Tech University, wherever she studies nationalist relations and strategical communications.

“I consciousness similar [Pointeworks has] been the cleanable supplement to my education, due to the fact that I’m taking classes connected however to constitute property releases and past I’m penning property releases for Pointeworks,” Dillon said. “I could person ne'er comprehended specified a cleanable accidental to align with my goals arsenic an creator and aboriginal arts person and an arts advocate.”

While Dillon is conscionable starting her career, Pointeworks besides provides opportunities for much seasoned dancers. For instance, retired dancer Christian Griggs-Drane — antecedently with the Royal New Zealand Ballet — is the company’s improvement and fundraising coordinator.

Three years aft retiring arsenic a ballerina, Jung continues to enactment arsenic a choreographer, rehearsal manager and creation educator. She and Williams met astatine Oklahoma City Ballet astir 9 years agone and reconnected astatine past year’s National Choreographers Initiative successful Irvine.

Even though Jung created “It’s Deep, It’s Dark” with her dancers successful conscionable 10 days, she said she appreciated the accidental to enactment with specified a professional, open-minded radical of individuals.

“[Pointeworks] is not conscionable astir giving artists a platform. It’s astir reshaping the creation landscape, ensuring women’s voices are heard and their imaginativeness brought to life,” Jung said. “I consciousness similar I could truly instrumentality risks, experimentation and make my ain creator connection without the regulation successful accepted structure. And I deliberation Pointeworks was cleanable astatine it, that I could truly research myself arsenic an creator and arsenic a choreographer.”