As she crouched low, professional ballerina Alice Alyse spread her hands more than a foot apart and smiled at the high school students doing jumping exercises before her inside the Vancouver Schools of Arts and Academics gym.
Moments before Alyse, a director with the elite New York-based Joffrey Ballet School, watched the students saute, or jump, timidly in place, their feet weighted to the ground. She used her hands to illustrate the height they should aspire to and her accompanying words to assure them they could reach heights unknown if they just believed.
“You have it. Just be confident in it,” she told the class. “Even if you make a mistake, make it look like you’re confident in it.”
Alyse visited VSAA on Thursday in conjunction with Joffrey Ballet School’s nationwide search for dancers to participate in its summer and post-graduate programs. Alyse is the Joffrey South Artistic Director, in addition to being the founder of the American Ballerina Foundation and an acclaimed dancer and choreographer.
Forty-two students from VSAA and two other local dance troupes exhibited their ballet skills before Alyse during the morning session. Around 60 students participated in Thursday afternoon’s modern dance tryout.
Before she left Vancouver, Alyse did not indicate how many students, if any, she would choose from the area, said VSAA dance instructor Jackie Sacks. VSAA freshman Anna Hooper trained with Joffrey Ballet School last summer.
Sacks called Alyse’s appearance at the school an “honor” that students of all experience levels, including beginners, would benefit from.
“Even if they’re not planning on being a dancer, the experience to be able to audition is great practice,” Sacks said Wednesday on the eve of the audition. “It’s like getting in front of a crowd and giving a speech.”
VSAA offers dance classes to between 150 and 175 students for physical education and fine arts credit. Members of Columbia Dance in Vancouver and Velocity Dance Center in Seattle also participated.
While some dancers held hopes of following in Hooper’s delicate footsteps, many others viewed Alyse’s visit as a chance to learn from a well-traveled professional. Regardless of their goals, most dancers said they battled nerves.
Alyse’s affable personality and passion for her art won students, including Sariah Hayford, over.
Hayford, an 18-year-old senior at VSAA, enjoys her school’s master dance classes, but has no aspirations of pursuing dance as a career. She plans to attend BYU in the fall to study either archaeology or neuroscience.
“The way she spoke to us was very relaxed and reassuring,” Hayford said. “After she had been teaching for a while, I opened up and danced more, rather than worrying about technical mistakes.”
Others like Tia Chen hoped to catch Alyse’s eye.
Chen said she does not plan to continue dancing in college. Her plan is to study engineering at Washington State University. But if Alyse selected her for the post-high school program, she would gladly accept.
Chen focused hard on smiling during her exhibitions. Doing so is not always easy, she said.
“I knew she was looking for personality,” Chen said of Alyse.
For Hooper, dancing could one day become more than a passion. But on Thursday, she was focused on the present and winning a return trip to New York this summer.
Hooper’s experience dancing with the Joffrey Ballet School has made her accustomed to the critiques and the rigors that come with dancing on a high level. Most of the 15-year-old’s classmates were auditioning for the first time.
“I thought it was incredibly brave for some people to come in and present themselves in front of a professional ballet dancer,” Hooper said, flashing her braces as she spoke. “I was very proud of my fellow students.”
