Ballet aficionados hungry for live performances need not wait any longer. The New York ballet company konverjdans (pronounced converge-dance) will grace the Stark Stage this weekend, the culmination of the 10th annual Riverside Dance Festival co-presented by Ballet Vero Beach and Riverside Theatre. Konverjdans performances take place at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 6 and Aug. 7 and a performance by students enrolled in the program takes place at 2 p.m. Aug. 7.
“Last year we executed the student component only,” says Adam Schnell, BVB founding artistic director and Riverside’s director of dance education.
Konverjdans had been scheduled to take part in the program last August but couldn’t because of the pandemic. Classes were instead taught by Riverside and Ballet Vero Beach dancers and faculty, concluding with a student performance attended by immediate family members only.
The inaugural Riverside Dance Festival took place in August 2012 and, says Schnell, was the impetus for the founding of Ballet Vero Beach, which was incorporated in January 2013.
The festival, a two-week intensive dance program that ends with professional and student performances, teaches the unique dance variants of small professional companies to students enrolled in the program. Camilo Rodriguez, BVB co-founder and ballet master, and BVB principal dancers Katherine Eppink and Anders Southerland will also teach and perform.
Vero Beach was introduced to koverjdans in November 2018, when Schnell invited them to perform at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. He had learned of the company through Wendy Whelan, a former principal dancer with New York City Ballet and now its associate artistic director, when she visited Vero a year earlier.
The Brooklyn-based contemporary company was co-founded in 2016 by artistic directors Amy Saunder, Jordan Miller and Tiffany Mangulabnan, born in Zimbabwe, the U.S. and the Philippines, respectively, and is known for its collaborations with musicians, filmmakers, painters, sculptors, and other dancers and choreographers.
“They might spell their name funny but really it’s about converging and dancing together, whether it’s dancers or visual artists or musicians,” says Schnell. “What the founding ladies of konverjdans have done is so amazing. The three of them all had these really high-level ballet pedigrees.”
Mangulabnan had to return to the Philippines due to a death in the family and has not yet been allowed back, so she will perform “with” the other dancers via a pre-recorded video filmed there.
He adds that some of the film work they produced during the pandemic is among the best he has seen, adding with a laugh: “And we’ve all seen a lot of it by this point, because that’s all everyone could do.”
Companies are given free rein as to the genre of dance, engagement workshops and performance material, and can either create something special for the students to perform or introduce them to pieces in their existing repertoire.
“So they’re going to dance a little of our repertoire, and we’re going to dance a little of their rep. We have variants in our repertoire, but we wanted to be able to broaden our audiences’ perspective, and also have these phenomenal artists in town to work with the kiddos.”
Another important component, says Schnell, is having the company engage with some of Ballet Vero Beach’s community engagement partners. In the past, that has meant on-site mini performances at local nonprofits, or having nonprofit clients watch dress rehearsals.
“Having an invited company here hits all aspects of our mission. It’s not just this bubble for our audience or the kids enrolled in the program.”
This year’s group of 16 students is fewer than in the past, but greater than last year.
“Sixteen is great; it’s all that we can ask for at this point,” says Schnell, adding that most of the students are returnees.
“So to me, that shows that we’re offering a product that they care about, that they want to come back for and that they enjoy year after year. With kids that’s really all you can ask for.”
He anticipates that some students will have benefited from Riverside’s tuition assistance program.
“I think that’s a continued testament to Riverside’s hard work. Even through all of this, they were able to keep the tuition assistance program going, because that’s usually one of the first things to go. But they kept it going all this year. And it helps, it really does. We get kids who wouldn’t be able to participate otherwise,” says Schnell.
“I think what’s really cool about having to pivot in this way as we’re coming out of this pandemic, is the fact that with these performances we will be able to not only embody their spirit of converging and collaboration, but we also get to continue to showcase our own Ballet Vero Beach professional dancers that our audiences have fallen in love with over the past couple of seasons.”
Although Riverside Theatre offers dance programs throughout the year, the festival is the only time an outside company is brought in, but Schnell says it fits nicely into the educational philosophies of Riverside and Ballet Vero Beach.
“I think that it mirrors both sides of the education department at Riverside: the theater and dance education. We have our core faculty, we have our core classes, and then there are things injected throughout the year, where we rely on the artists that are in town. This one is a little unique in that we’re bringing them in specifically for this program.”
Noting that the invited companies have taught everything from tap to classical ballet, he adds, “what I want is for the kids to get to learn as much about the dance world as possible. I really do try and keep it as different as possible year after year, to expose the kids to it. And then the audiences get that exposure too.”
They generally try to have one piece choreographed with the students integrated into the professional performance, and conversely to have professionals dance in the student performance. Doing so, he explains, highlights what the students have learned.
Subscriptions for the 2021-2022 Ballet Vero Beach season and single tickets for konverjdans can be purchased online at balletverobeach.org. To purchase tickets by phone for konverjdans performances, call the Riverside Theatre Box Office at 772-231-6990.
Photos by Kaila Jones
