After a very busy yet incredibly rewarding year of YOU dance shows and company performances as an Apprentice with The National Ballet of Canada, I am so grateful to be joining as a member of the Corps de Ballet for the 2010/11 season. I am particularly excited for the wide range of repertoire planned for this season and can’t wait to start rehearsals in August for Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, which I will be understudying. I’m also looking forward to start working with the new Apprentices on a Hip Hop piece I choreographed for YOU dance.

Ever since I was little, I remember hearing people talk, always quite favorably, of the National Ballet. So when I came here last August, I had built up this image of the company as an ideal place to be, solely in terms of my dance career. What I did not know then, was how close everyone in the company is with one another. They are truly like a huge family. The relationships that everyone has developed offstage are not only visible onstage but they make the dancing so much more meaningful for both the audience and the dancers. For me, what makes the National Ballet’s performances unique is that they are not focused on what the dancers can do but rather who they are. I am looking forward to becoming a part of this family next year and I can’t wait to start the new season!

Additional dancers who will be joining the company as members of the Corps de Ballet are: Adji Cissoko, Allynne Noelle, Joseph Steinauer, Ji Min Hong, Jaclyn Oakley and Giorgio Galli.

[Photo by: Sian Richards.]

While surrounded by the beautiful Rockies here in Banff where I am performing this summer at The Banff Centre as part of the Professional Dance Program, I can’t help but think back at what an extraordinary year this has been for me.

It’s just like reading a book where you are taken to new places and introduced to so many wonderful new characters. Whether I was a fairy giving the gift of a beautiful voice to Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, acting as the notes of music in 24 Preludes by Chopin at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad, an Italian Princess trying to win the heart of a Prince in Swan Lake or giving a little Puerto Rican/New York spice as Anita in West Side Story Suite, I loved every moment. But the icing on my wonderful cake had to be at the season closing party. I’ve never needed waterproof mascara more than at the moment I heard Karen Kain say that I was being promoted to Second Soloist. It was a dream come true. It’s a good thing I’ll be performing up in the mountains because I am still on “cloud nine.”

I couldn’t ask for a better year and for the next three weeks, I will be making even more amazing memories working here at Banff with Lindsay Fischer, Artistic Director of YOU dance/Ballet Master, Mandy-Jayne Richardson, Senior Ballet Mistress, and Jean-Yves Esquerre, Assistant to the Artistic Director of San Francisco Ballet, who have been so wonderful helping me shape myself into the next level of dancer that I want to be. And now… on to Le Corsaire!

[Photo 1: Jordana Daumec by Sian Richards. Photo 2: Rockies by Jordana Daumec. Photo 3: The Nutcracker by Bruce Zinger.]

After months of rehearsal and countless hours of preparation, I made my debut in the title role of Onegin on Thursday, June 24. It was a special time for me. My mom, dad, and grandmother had come all the way up from South Carolina to see me perform.

The night before the show I must have had only 3 hours of sleep. I have to say that I was more excited than nervous, but sleepless none the less. I had butterflies in my stomach all day until I finally put my costume and makeup on. I looked at myself in the mirror and all of my nerves went away. I was ready to get this show on the road!

The performance itself was a journey on its own. After finishing the first act (which I must say is the most grueling act for Onegin with it’s adagio solo and high flying “mirror” pas de deux), Principal Dancer Jiří Jelinek walked up to me, gave me a high five, and with his Slovak accent jokingly said, “All right man! Now you can enjoy the rest of the ballet.” And enjoy it I did. All the way up until the final curtain call.

When the curtain finally came down, I broke down with it, relieved and exhausted – emotionally and physically. I felt like I had climbed to the top of Mount Everest and won the Super Bowl all at the same time. It is a feeling that is very hard to explain. It was also such an honor to share my debut with Heather Ogden, my Tatiana, Bridgett Zehr, who played Olga, and Brett van Sickle, who was Lensky. I could not have done it without them!

McGee Maddox is a Second Soloist at The National Ballet of Canada.

[Photo by Sian Richards.]