Crystal Pite

But yes, I have a strong admiration and deep love for classical ballet and deep respect for it.

So my career, although it went more towards the contemporary side, I feel like my approach is really influenced by the many amazing mentors and educators that I came across, the incredible choreographers that I've had the opportunity to work with, most of whom are working in the classical ballet world as well, people like Crystal Pite and William Forsythe, Ohad Naharin.

I've had direct contact and experiences with them.

First and foremost for me is the mentorship and guidance that I can offer to the space over-- maybe sometimes over refining them technically.

Oh my gosh.

And then for her birthday last year, she was offered Silent Eyes as well as other works from myself and from Crystal Pite as well, where four of our dancers went to Las Vegas to perform for her.

What an incredible experience that must have been.

Oh, it was incredible to meet an artist like her, such an icon and artist.

She has, like, the world of dance lives in her brain.

Like, it's insane, the knowledge, the years, and, like, how many dancers she has put forward who are some of the most, like, the biggest names in contemporary dance who go on to Netherlands dance theaters, countless others that get picked up by Crystal Pite or...

Sharon et al.

It's very unique.

But the whole reasoning of us going is a collaborative performance with the Dutch National Ballet Academy,

where we

performed the season's canon with a live orchestra by Crystal Pite, which... is huge it was so amazing that was like the whole purpose of us going but we wanted to make an opportunity out of that and so we did our own shows separate to that too like in rotterdam in the the black box in amari which is where ndt is um like even like we performed in like really cool like creative spaces like one time like they transformed a library into a performance setting and it was just so

cool and like it was so funny

It's no longer the Royal Ballet sort of primarily dancing Ashton Macmillan and Petipa.

It's now they're dancing McGregor, they're dancing Crystal Pite, they're dancing Harfesh and Paul and Sol this season, Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon.

So dancers are expected to, I think, be able to sort of handle anything.

And then, of course, I threw some tap into Alice in Wonderland.