Charlotte Ballet with Ayisha McMillan Cravotta & Alicia Delgadillo

Ballet Help Desk

This episode of Ballet Help Desk features Ayisha McMillan Cravotta and Alicia Delgadillo from Charlotte Ballet discussing the transition from

Key takeaways

• Charlotte Ballet's pre-professional trainee program is capped at 30 dancers to ensure personalized attention.
• Approximately half of the recent new hires for the CB2 company come directly from college dance programs.

Main topics

• Pre-professional trainee program structure
• Second company (CB2) professional development

Notable quotes

There is no one correct path.

Conclusion

The episode offers a realistic yet inspiring look at the evolving land

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:09) Hey, y'all. We have some exciting news. You asked and we answered. We know you love our year-round and summer-intensive reviews. Small plug, please submit yours today if you have not already done so. We heard the call. We got emails from y'all and you asked us, please, please, please do reviews for competitions. So we have just launched a new platform where you could submit reviews for ballet competitions. Woo-hoo! So there's lots of space to write. Lots of place to be very thoughtful and nuanced. We are not going to launch the reviews live until we have a critical mass. We don't want people, you know, standing out there alone, having their review out there and there's one that feels very, very vulnerable. So submit yours. And when we have a critical mass of reviews, we will launch it and make them all live. So submit yours today and let everybody learn all about the good, the bad, and everything in between. Welcome back to the Ballet Help Desk podcast. My name is Jenny and I'm joined by my co-founder Brett. Today we're excited to speak with the folks from Charlotte Ballet. So let me introduce our guest, Alicia Delgadillo. I think that's how you say it. Please forgive me. She was born in San Francisco. She began training in ballet, jazz, and tap at the Susan Hayward School of Dance. She later moved to Charlotte, North Carolina and continued her study at Charlotte School of Ballet. and Piedmont School of Music and Dance. Alicia graduated with honors from the Ailey Fordham BFA program in 2012 while concurrently dancing with Hubbard Street 2. She joined Hubbard Street Dance Chicago as a main company dancer from April 2014 to December 2019. In October 2020, Alicia was a founding member of Para Dot Mar Dance Theater under the direction of Stephanie Martinez. where she wore many hats for including dancer, company manager, producer, guest rehearsal director. From September 2021 to 2023, Alicia joined the Gibney Company under the direction of Gilbert T. Small II and Gia Gibney, and most recently guested with them for their summer tour. Additional training she had included lucrative summer at Hubbard Street, Juilliard School, SF Dance Conservatory and American Ballet Theatre, and Springboard Dance Montreal. Alicia is also extremely passionate about arts education and loves teaching. She served as an artistic coordinator in 2017 and 19 of the Advanced Level of Harbor Street Dance Intensive. Other teaching credits include Chicago Movement Collective, Bard College, NYU Tisch, and UNCSA. As a producer, she worked alongside Harper Street Dance for their annual Inside Out program, Para.Mar, in their home and touring productions, as well as a Gibney company for a company created. Currently, Alicia resides with her family in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is the associate director of Charlotte Ballet 2 and rehearsal director for Charlotte Ballet. Also joining us is Alicia McMillan-Crovolta. Her dance career marks a path of multiple roles, from company artist through academy director, culminating to develop a new generation of classically trained, artistically versatile ballet dancers. Ayesha joined Houston Ballet as a company artist under the direction of Ben Stevenson in 1996. With Houston Ballet, she toured and performed in London, Hong Kong, Toronto, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. She danced five seasons with Charlotte Ballet. After retiring from the stage in 2007, she joined Charlotte Ballet's marketing department. In 2011, she became principal of Charlotte Ballet Academy. In 2015, she was named an academy director, a role in which she guides programming and administration for over 700 dancers annually, ages three through adult, in production through vocational study. She was inducted to the prestigious HistoryMakers National Archive in 2007 in recognition of her accomplishments as an African-American in the arts and through the organization volunteers as a speaker at public schools. She studied at Rice University and at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. An advocate for increasing racial equity in the ballet field, she has participated in multiple community and national projects, including ASC's Catalyst for Cultural Equity and the Equity Project. Speaker 3 (4:00) So without further ado, the help desk is now open. Ayesha and Allie, thank you so much for joining us. Speaker 2 (4:06) Hi, thank you for having us. Yes, thank you. Wonderful to be here. Speaker 3 (4:11) Thank you. So before we dive into kind of the nuts and bolts of what's going on in Charlotte, can you give us just a little background on how Charlotte Ballet Academy is structured and how students tend to move through the school? Speaker 2 (4:24) Absolutely. My pleasure. So we like to talk a lot about how our mission at... Charlotte Ballet is to deliver the finest quality dance instruction because we believe that no matter where your path in dance will take you whether it is a life fulfilled and informed by enjoying dance or ending up on a professional stage That same training is going to nurture you to get there. And so that's how we structure. We start offering classes as young as age three in our creative movement program. And we also have adult drop-in division programs. So there's no limit on training, receiving dance class and instruction at Charlotte Ballet. We're structured by having our youngest students ages three to six in the preparatory division. Those students are... coming to train with us once per week. Of course, as a student's development grows, we have also our still general training divisions, but at age eight, a student can take a placement class. So if you're new to dance or new to our school, we have students take a placement class so that we know exactly which program is going to support them best. But again, everybody's training together. There's no separate tracks really until we get all the way past high school into our pre-professional division. That pre-professional division is, we almost call it a school within our school. That's the vocational training division. But we like to think, I think that pre-professional term, it's got a lot of different applications around the world and around the U.S. We're training everybody so that they could be a professional one day. But where it really turns vocational for us in our program is with that pre-professional division. Can Speaker 3 (6:16) I ask you a question about that? On your website, I think it says pre-professional training starts at age 15. Can you break down kind of how that maps to your postgraduate levels? Sure. And Speaker 2 (6:31) really, and I'm glad you point that out. with the website and I'll make sure that we're refining the language to really reflect all the way that that flows. The training before that point is still on track toward professional, but really at age 15 is when a student would first become eligible for the trainee program. And that is a, it is not necessary at all to start. the pre-professional trainee program at age 15. We have a very rigorous training program that is not the pre-professional division trainee program. It's our ballet five program, which meets after school. And so that a student can still be training, doing their academic studies all day long at the school of their choice, and then start their training day at 4.30 p.m. That's our Ballet 5 program. Speaker 1 (7:29) Sometimes Speaker 2 (7:30) a Speaker 1 (7:31) student will go Speaker 2 (7:32) spend a number of years in the Ballet 5 program before then going to the pre-professional division vocational training program. Sometimes a student will complete their high school before going on to the trainee program. Sometimes a student will start that pre-professional vocational training while they are still in high school. work very hard to train, to tailor the program to the student, their needs, their desires for what they want out of a career. And then... From that pre-professional division training program, they're going to link hopefully to our own second company or to where Allie, you know, Allie used to start working with a dancer even before they reached second company through Charlotte Ballet. But then whether it's our second company or another second company or. many different pathways where a student might go. Can Speaker 4 (8:28) I just clarify? You say trainee, you're pre-pro. Does that mean that it is a full day program? So then you don't go to a traditional academic institution. You come and you start ballet at, you know, 9 or 9.30 and you go through the day. And then do your students do like an online program? So they have to transition to an alternative academic solution. Speaker 2 (8:51) Thank you. Yes. That is correct. When I'm speaking of the pre-professional division trainee program, it is an all-day program. Those dancers take class starting at 9.30 a.m. That training day ends at about 4 p.m., five days a week, except when we're performing, then it goes into six days per week. And then those students are... finding whatever alternative solution works best for their academic studies, whether that is working with their local school districts to do online or working with an independent online, or maybe they have already graduated from high school. Are Speaker 3 (9:36) there levels within the pre-professional program that, you know, if you've got 15-year-olds and then you've got kids that may have graduated from high school already, how is that divvied up in the group? Speaker 2 (9:46) This is such a wonderful question. And we do not subdivide within the program because we try to place the emphasis on how a couple of things. One, the program is small. The maximum is 30 dancers. Okay. Speaker 1 (10:02) That's Speaker 2 (10:02) it. Just 30 dancers. And so they're all receiving a great deal of personalized attention. The programming happens. together. Sometimes they're split in half for repertoire or for specialty types of classes. I think this also allows our program directors, Laszlo Berto and Katie Mayo, to help them see, understand that they are on individual journeys so that there's not further stratification, you know, within the program. But they are each on their own. each on their journey. You might be newer to the program, but you're still going to be in rehearsal with Miss Allie sometimes or get an opportunity to take company class. Or you might have been training with our program for some time and it's your second year as a trainee. You've already performed in Nutcracker with us, but you're still getting that shot with to take class with second company or rehearse a work, for example. Speaker 4 (11:06) Where do most of your students come from who are in your trainee program? Are they local or are they from out of the area? And what does that split look like? Speaker 2 (11:13) Sure. Most are from, are actually from out of the area. However, there's ebb and flow to how many, I think last year we had a big year. We had a lot of local students. So I think eight of them were Charlotte based. Interesting. Charlotte-based doesn't necessarily mean that they grew up in our academy. Some of them have been in another wonderful training institution around Charlotte, but join us for the pre-professional division traineeship. But most of those eight of our 30 last year had trained for many years with us here at Charlotte Ballet Academy. But that said, most of the dancers come from other schools around the, or even trainee programs around the country. And we meet them a number of different ways. Of course, that our national audition tour is one of the main ways. And students coming to train for us for summer intensive is also a fabulous way. We love that. We love that dancers get to meet us and see us and experience us. take class from this alley as you taught that, you know, she teaches often for us in the summer intensive and the faculty who are with us year round. There's a real getting to be immersed before making that commitment. Like, okay, this is going to be the place for me. Speaker 4 (12:35) So do you require your trainees to come for summer? in order to be considered or it's or just you meet a lot of them in your summer? Speaker 2 (12:43) It's highly recommended. There usually is not space for so usually we the program spots are filled by students who are committing for summer. We like that a lot because that's how that's the best way to experience our program. Pre-professional division schedule is a lot like summer intensive schedule. The balance of the repertoire, the length of the day are quite similar. So a student really walks away from that five-week program getting a good sense of the ins and outs, what to expect, and feeling it. feeling a better level of comfort. So it is not impossible. It is not necessarily a requirement. However, those invitations do fill, do tend to fill before there would be availability for someone who had not. attended our summer intensive. I was just going Speaker 1 (13:40) to add that from the second company auditions as well that the artistic team we also make certain recommendations for the trainee program as well so they're not necessarily accepted through that audition process but we see individuals who may not be ready for second company but that we would recommend for the trainee program so that's another avenue. into that program. Great. That's super Speaker 4 (14:06) helpful. You know, because there's a big discussion going on because too often people are saying that they get trainee offers, but it's a requirement to go for summer and then it's really hard to move. And so it's just kind of a conversation that is happening. And I'm really happy to hear that you make your invitation and your offer pre-summer. And so you recommend to come to experience the program and really get a feel for it. kind of get your sea legs, but it is not a requirement for your audition. And so we just like to clarify with everyone because unfortunately not everybody has that. Speaker 3 (14:42) And now a brief pause to hear a word from our sponsors. Speaker 4 (14:46) While you're back to school shopping, picking up backpacks and new ballet flats, don't forget to pick up our corrections journal. If your dancer is looking to put their right foot forward this year, think about picking up one of our corrections journal. It was made by dancers for dancers. Lots of space to write, lots of space to write corrections, set intention, and set bigger and smaller goals to help your dancer move forward and have the best year yet. So head on over to our website and find out all our details and check out all of our cute covers. There's something for everyone. Speaker 2 (15:17) So buy yours today. And back to the episode. Speaker 4 (15:23) Where do your dancers typically live if they are coming from out of the area? Do you offer housing? Do you have like apartment complexes that you work with? Because your trainees do start pretty young. They start at 15. Speaker 2 (15:36) That's Speaker 4 (15:36) a Speaker 2 (15:36) great question. And so it's true. And that's why we don't see a lot of students who are 15 move from outside of Charlotte to here in order to do the trainee program because we do not provide housing. And they are really very often the students will the dance. I'm saying students, but I'll let you, Allie, also talk about how second company dancers do this. But they will often live together in an apartment. But even to share an apartment, a dancer needs to be 18 years old or at least 17. We've seen a number of instances where someone has a family member. in the region or in Charlotte and they come and they move to live with a family member in order to come. But Speaker 1 (16:25) that helps to shape the, Speaker 2 (16:27) right now, the student body because we are not providing that housing. These are generally dancers who, the dancers who come and join our training program are generally a little bit older and ready to live mostly independently in that way. And Allie, I don't know if you see that happen. Yes, Speaker 1 (16:47) it's very similar with the second company. Usually once all of those contracts are signed, we put them in touch with our director of artistic operations. And she kind of helps connect the dots. The company dancers and returning second company dancers also have a big group chat. People are always looking for new roommates, but it's really on the dancer to kind of figure out their housing. Speaker 3 (17:13) That's really helpful. And housing is always like, that's always the big thing. When you're moving, you don't know the area. And it's nice to hear that you guys have like, you can point them in a couple of different directions for potential housing opportunities. So I want to ask you about the amount of