20th Oct 2022 10:44
English National Ballet School
English National Ballet School alumnus Jonathan Batista has made history as the first black principal dancer at Pacific Northwest Ballet.
Jonathan, from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, was a scholarship student at ENBS. Since graduating in 2011, he’s performed with the Miami City Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Boston Ballet, and the Cincinnati Ballet.
Jonathan described the promotion as ‘an honour’.
Of his training, Jonathan said: “You have to really be invested in order for you to become a ballet dancer, a professional ballet dancer, you have to invest all your time in your being, your mind, and your body. And once I started traveling and communicating with people, I think that is when I fell in love with ballet. It was the people, and the community that was important to me.”
Since joining Pacific Northwest Ballet, Batista has danced leading roles in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker (Cavalier, Candy Cane); Alejandro Cerrudo’s One Thousand Pieces; Ulysses Dove’s Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven; Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Roméo et Juliette (Tybalt); Crystal Pite’s Plot Point; Kent Stowell’s Swan Lake (Prince Sigfried); Twyla Tharp’s Brief Fling and Waiting at the Station; and Robyn Mineko Williams’ Before I Was.
20th Oct 2022 10:44
English National Ballet School
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