English National Ballet’s Emerging Dancer sees six finalists perform in front of a panel of judges.
Alongside the recipient of the People’s Choice Award, which is voted for by members of the public, the 2016 finalists are:
- Isabelle Brouwers: trained at English National Ballet School, joined English National Ballet in 2014, has performed in Swan Lake, Nutcracker and as an Odalisque in Le Corsaire.
- Jeanette Kakareka: joined ENB in 2013, having graduated from San Francisco Ballet School, performed in Swan Lake, Rudolf Nureyev’s Romeo & Juliet and Liam Scarlett’s No Man’s Land, part of Lest We Forget.
- Rina Kanehara: the youngest dancer in the company, trained at the Princess Grace Academy, Monaco and joined ENB after winning the Prix de Lausanne 2015, performed as an Odalisque in Le Corsaire and as a Lead Snowflake in Nutcracker.
- Cesar Corrales: joined ENB in 2014, promoted to Junior Soloist at the end of the 14/15 season, performed as Mercutio in Rudolf Nureyev’s Romeo & Juliet, the Nephew in Nutcracker and as Ali and Birbanto in Le Corsaire.
- Daniele Silingardi: joined the company in 2013 upon graduating from the Royal Ballet Upper School, performed as Paris in Romeo & Juliet, Second Breath by Russell Maliphant, and Dust by Akram Khan, both part of Lest We Forget.
- Erik Woolhouse: trained at the Royal Ballet Upper School and joined ENB last year, performed in Romeo & Juliet and in the Russian dance in Nutcracker.
Previous winners of the Emerging Dancer Award include Yonah Acosta (2012), who is now Principal of ENB, Shiori Kase (2011) and Junor Souza (2014), who have since been promoted to First Soloist, and Jinhao Zhang (2015), recently seen performing in the lead roles of Ali and Lankendem in Le Corsaire at the London Coliseum in January this year.