Ingrid Silva of the Dance Theatre of Harlem (left) and Julia Erickson of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.
“Victoria is a beautiful girl,” said Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre artistic director Terrence Orr. “She’s a beautiful dancer. We have a very diverse company—dancers from seven different countries at this point. I look for people who are gifted in our art form. Victoria is a new addition from our school and she’s just beautiful.”
Since joining the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre family, Watford has performed in mainstage productions of “The Sleeping Beauty,” “The Nutcracker,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Western Symphony,” “Peter Pan,” and on tour at the 2015 Chicago Dancing Festival in “Sandpaper Ballet.”
But her most exciting times with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre came when she got the chance to perform with the Dance Theatre of Harlem when it collaborated with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre this past March.
The mixed-repertoire program marked the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s first-known collaboration with another professional company. Each performance celebrated the diversity, talent and style of American ballet.
VICTORIA WATFORD
“When Arthur Mitchell founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969, he really wanted to create a way for people to look at the art form of classical ballet in a new way,” said Dance Theatre of Harlem artistic director Virginia Johnson. “One of the things that he was trying to bring to this art form was the idea of inclusion. From the very beginning, Dance Theatre of Harlem has been a very diverse company with dancers from around the world and also of many different ethnicities. It’s the notion that ballet belongs to everyone.”
With five works in each independent program, audiences got to see dances from choreographers Robert Garland and Glen Tetley and music from Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Pittsburgh’s own Billy Strayhorn. Each company performed signatures from its own collection and collaborated on the mesmerizing “Black Swan Pas de Deux.”
“I knew about Dance Theatre of Harlem. it was always in the back of my mind, ‘oh there’s a company of dancers who look just like me,’ but ever since the 2016-2017 season premiered, all anyone could talk about was the Dance Theatre of Harlem coming here. But it didn’t set in for me that there were going to be all these dancers around who look like me until we had our first class together,” Watford said. “I was blown away and I was like, ‘I want to spend as much time as possible with all of you.’”
Watford will perform in productions like “The Nutcracker” and “Swan Lake” during the Theatre’s 2017-2018 season. For a complete list of upcoming Theatre events, visit www.pbt.org.
Watford said she learned many valuable lessons from the Dance Theatre of Harlem dancers.
“I learned that there’s so much out there and the way they dance is so beautiful and fluid,” she said. “I also learned that this—the city of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre—is my place. When they were leaving, they told me, ‘you belong here. This is great for you.’ It was like reassurance that I’m where I need to be.”
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