San Francisco Ballet has announced their new hires for the upcoming 2010 season. Vitor Luiz, former principal dancer with Ballet Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro, will join the company as a principal dancer and Rebecca Rhodes, an apprentice with SFB last season, will move into the ranks of the corps de ballet.
Vitor Luiz was accepted by the Royal Ballet School at 17 and, after three months, joined the corps de ballet of the Birmingham Royal Ballet. In 2000, he became a soloist with Ballet Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro and was promoted to principal in 2005.
Six apprentices were also hired – Kimberly Braylock, Madison Keesler, Kristina Lind, Steven Morse, Myles Thatcher, and Sylvie Volosov – five of which were plucked from the San Francisco Ballet School Trainee Program. You can follow Madison Keesler's career (in 2008 she was an apprentice with Hamburg Ballet) on her blog at http://madisonkeesler.wordpress.com or via Twitter, http://twitter.com/MadisonKeesler
To see more fresh faces and perhaps even the stars of tomorrow, check out the San Francisco Ballet Student Showcase, an exhibition of promising talent molded by the school’s world-renowned faculty. The evening begins with demonstrations from the youngest students, but quickly progresses to repertoire.
The San Francisco Ballet School Student Showcase: 7:30 p.m. tonight, 8 p.m. Thursday, May 21, and 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 22, in the Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. For tickets, call (415) 865-2000 or visit www.sfballet.org
