The Irvine Barclay Theatre, located on UCI’s campus, hosted the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) the weekend of Feb. 4-6. YAGP is a world-famous ballet competition known for helping young dancers achieve their goals of pursuing dance as a career.
Started in 1999, YAGP is the biggest ballet competition in America, recognized all over the world for its prestige. Dancers from ages 9-19 all over the world compete in this annual competition with hopes of pursuing their passion in a dance career. YAGP’s mission is to support dancers in this journey and shape them into “world class dancers … by providing scholarship auditions, performance and education opportunities, and by serving as the global network of dance, connecting students, teachers, schools, dance companies, dancers, and audiences.”
YAGP is widespread while also very selective. There are 25 annual competitions in the United States and 8 competitions internationally. The New York Finals is a week-long competition of the best scoring dancers from the previous competitions.
With over 100,000 participants in workshops, auditions and master classes as well as over $4 million raised in scholarships for dance schools, YAGP has made a name for itself over the past two decades. The program is continuously working toward bringing dance into the eye of the conventional, everyday person.
The scholarship aspect of YAGP alone sets itself apart from other dance competitions that just give out plastic trophies and titles. The master classes are taught by professionals like company directors, dance teachers and professional dancers; the competition judges also have extensive backgrounds in the dance industry, making for a very comprehensive, reputable competition.
Scouts also attend the competitions, searching for prospective students for summer intensives or trainee programs. This competition is the reason many young dancers gain exposure to companies and get their foot in the door for a career in dance. While this might not seem very important, especially in regards to young dancers, starting to think about and prepare for the future from an early age is vital in this extremely shaky, unstable business. To progress and succeed in the dance industry, a dancer must secure a company role or full-time job.
Because YAGP demands the attention of companies all across the globe to recruit dancers for their programs, there have been an unbelievable number of success stories to come out of this competition. Dancers like Lauren Lovette, Skylar Brandt, Lex Ishimoto, Juliet Doherty, WanTing Zhao, Tyler Donatelli and countless others have made names for themselves because of their excellence and achievements in YAGP.
A silver medalist for YAGP in both 2004 and 2008, Skylar Brandt began her dance career with the American Ballet Theatre as an apprentice in 2010 and joined the corps de ballet in 2011. In 2015, she became a soloist, and in 2020, Brandt was promoted to principal dancer, the highest rank for a dancer in a ballet company.
Irvine local Lex Ishimoto trained at West Coast School of the Arts in a multitude of genres. From the time he was young, he was already performing professional gigs and at the age of 19, he won season 14 of “So You Think You Can Dance,” a popular dance competition show. At YAGP, he won the “Outstanding Choreography Award” twice in a row and qualified for the New York Finals. Ishimoto also won the “Youth American Grand Prix Award” at the Los Angeles Regionals in 2015. In that same year, he trained with the Boston Ballet Trainee program, and was promoted to Boston Ballet II, their second company, the year after. In 2018, Ishimoto danced with Travis Wall’s Shaping Sound company in “After The Curtain.” More recently in spring of 2021, Ishimoto choreographed “What Happens If…” for the virtual Boston Ballet Ball.
Juliet Doherty won gold medals twice at YAGP and is known for her roles in “High Strung: Free Dance” and “Driven To Dance.” Trained by her own mother, she studied at Fishback Studio of Dance and moved on to the San Francisco Ballet School where she later became a trainee. Doherty has been a speaker at TEDx, and she performs around the world as a “guest artist… most recently appear[ing] in the role of ‘Lise’ in the Tony award-winning musical, ‘An American in Paris’ at the Hale Centre Theatre.”
WanTing Zhao was born in Anshan, China and received the silver medal at YAGP in 2010. She joined the San Francisco Ballet in 2011 as a corps de ballet member and became a soloist in 2016. Zhao was promoted to principal dancer at the San Francisco Ballet in 2018, and she was chosen to be the Snow Queen in The Nutcracker during her first year with the company.
Another local dancer, Tyler Donatelli, grew up in Huntington Beach and trained at Southland Ballet Academy. In 2012, she was awarded a silver medal from YAGP, and the following year, she joined Houston Ballet II, becoming an apprentice in 2014. In 2015, Donatelli became a member of the corps de ballet, then was promoted to demi soloist in 2017 and soloist just a few short months later.
The ballet competition offers a lot to the participants, but features tough competition and remains very exclusive. While the stories of success are plentiful, there are also dancers that compete for practice, experience or just for fun.
YAGP has vowed to conduct their competitions according to the “latest health and safety guidelines issued by the U.S. government, state and local/city governments, and theater policies.”
Lillian Dunn is an Entertainment intern for the Winter 2022 quarter. She can be reached at lbdunn@uci.edu.
