English National Ballet announce 2015’s Emerging Dancers

Posted on January 27, 2015

English National Ballet has announced the finalists for its Emerging Dancer competition. Held on March 23 at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, the competition is deisgned to recognise and nurture talent within the company.

This year’s finalists are Isabelle Brouwers, Anjuli Hudson, Jeanette Kakareka, Katja Khaniukova, Vitor Menezes, James Streeter, Max Westwell and Jinhao Zhang.

English National Ballet’s dancers, artistic team, orchestra and administrative staff chose the eight nominated dancers. At the Final performance, directed by George Williamson, the eight emerging dancers will perform for the audience and a panel of judges. At the end of the evening, the Emerging Dancer Award-winner is announced, along with the recipient of the People’s Choice Award, voted for by members of the public. The competition is supported by Talbot Hughes McKillop.

Junor Souza, joint winner of last year’s Emerging Dancer Award with Alison McWhinney, said: “Winning Emerging Dancer was great as it meant all the hard work I had done over the past year came together. As a dancer I like to challenge myself, and become stronger all the time, and it was recognition of that.” Souza was interviewed as Dancer of The Month in our January 2015 issue.

Picture: Junor Souza and Alison McWhinney, winners of last year’s Emerging Dancer Award. Photograph: ASH

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.