I never competed at Youth America Grand Prix. As a young ballet dancer, I found the very idea intimidating. These were the children with extraordinary feet, impossible extensions, and the sort of turnout I certainly didn’t possess.
More than two decades later, I found myself at Jacob’s Pillow, watching a new generation of YAGP artists perform. By the end of the weekend, I was sitting among some of the biggest names in American ballet, trying unsuccessfully to behave like a professional journalist.
Founded in 1999 by Larissa and Gennadi Saveliev, Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) is a nonprofit organization and the world’s largest student ballet scholarship audition. For more than 25 years, it has connected dancers ages 9 to 19 with leading schools, companies, teachers, and artistic directors through scholarships, master classes, auditions, and performance opportunities.
The Ballet Herald had previously covered a controversy involving the organization, and I was familiar with that reporting. I approached the invitation with an obligation to evaluate what I saw onstage, rather than arrive with a verdict already in mind.
YAGP at Jacob's Pillow
The occasion was Fresh Voices in Dance, presented October 16-18, 2026 at Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Theatre. The approximately 82-minute program featured emerging choreographers and young performers from institutions including American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, Boston Ballet II, Houston Ballet II, Alberta Ballet School, the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program, and USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance.
It also introduced work developed through YAGP’s Marcella Hymowitz Creative Fellowship for Choreography, an initiative supporting young choreographers in the creation and presentation of original work.
For an organization so closely associated with competitive ballet, this emphasis on choreography interested me.
YAGP has spent decades identifying exceptional young dancers. Here was an opportunity to see what happened when young artists were entrusted with making the dances themselves.
William Dugan’s Sit in It was among my favorites. Performed by Dowon Byun, Rafe King, Chiara Marambio, Samuel Marçal, Ekaterina Pichkova, and Alisa Zakovics, the work featured music by Hudson Mohawke, Nikki Nair, iammaxxwell, and Tayla Parx.
I particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of classical technique and contemporary popular music.
Ballet has such a recognizable visual vocabulary that changing its musical context can alter the way we perceive familiar steps.
The precision remains, but the rhythm and phrasing invite a different response. I have always enjoyed seeing pointe work removed from the expectation that it must accompany a traditional ballet score. Dugan’s contribution made me appreciate the possibilities of that approach. Rather than treating classical training as an end in itself, the choreography placed it within a broader musical and stylistic conversation.
The dancers’ technical foundation was evident, but the pleasure came from seeing that training used in an unfamiliar context.
Braylon Browner made two appearances on the program, first as choreographer of the eight-minute world premiere What You Came to See, performed by dancers from the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program to music by Nico Muhly and Rival Consoles.
But it was his solo in Wild Is the Wind (for which he was also the choreographer), set to Nina Simone and presented with USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, that left me undone.
Browner has a quicksilver movement quality. There was something remarkable about the fluidity of his dancing, the way movement seemed to pass through his body without interruption.
His phrasing was so absorbing that I stopped thinking about technique altogether. I was simply watching an artist dance.
And I cried.
I don’t often find myself moved to tears by a solo, but there was something about the combination of Browner’s dancing and Simone’s voice that got me. The music already carries an extraordinary emotional weight, and Browner brought his own physical intelligence to it without losing that intimacy.
Nina Simone and Braylon Browner. Forever.
Alexander Mockrish’s White Rabbit, performed by dancers from Boston Ballet II and the Donna Egan Graduate Program, offered a contrasting visual experience. I was struck by the formations, the clarity of the lines, and the attention to spatial composition.
There is an architectural quality to excellent ensemble dancing.
The relationship between bodies can become as compelling as the individual performers, particularly when the choreography depends on precise spacing and coordinated movement
In White Rabbit, the dancers demonstrated the discipline required to make a group function as a coherent visual whole. Their formations gave the work a strong sense of structure, and I found myself watching the ensemble rather than searching for a particular dancer to follow.
Elsewhere, the program demonstrated considerable musical and choreographic range.
Nnamdi Nwagwu’s 1+1 drew on Pérez Prado and Donny Hathaway, while Davidson Farias’s Tipping Point was set to John Adams. Manoela Gonçalves’s All Directions used music by Son Lux, and Isabella Howard’s Je t’ai vue featured 11-year-old Sylvie Win Szyndlar of Master Ballet Academy. The evening also included My’Kal Stromile’s Answers Will Vary, set to Johann Sebastian Bach.
What also struck me was that some of these choreographers may never have danced principal roles with a top-ten ballet company themselves.
And so what?
They were visionaries who could create beautiful, beautiful dances that could be performed, witnessed, and felt. That is what an artist does.
That observation brought me back to a question I have been considering for years:
What, exactly, constitutes success in ballet?
The Pursuit of Excellence
I sometimes think what American ballet needs is fewer prima ballerinas and more acceptance. Or perhaps that’s not quite right. We don’t need fewer prima ballerinas. We need to stop treating the prima ballerina as the only successful outcome of a ballet education.
Classical ballet is extraordinarily demanding, and its physical ideals have historically favored particular anatomical characteristics. The structure of your feet, the shape of your hips, your spinal alignment, and your natural range of rotation influence what you can achieve. Turnout can be improved, strength can be developed, and technique refined through years of training. But anatomy imposes limits that determination alone cannot erase.
Physical suitability, however, is not the same as artistic worth.
A dancer may lack the proportions favored by a classical company and still possess exceptional musicality, dramatic intelligence, or choreographic imagination. Another may have extraordinary physical attributes without developing the artistry necessary to sustain a professional career.
I know something about the distinction. I didn’t have the turnout.
I didn’t have the motivation, either.
It would be convenient to attribute my unrealized ambitions entirely to anatomy or ballet’s aesthetic ideals. But I also have to acknowledge my own choices. I loved the art form. I simply wasn’t prepared to devote my life to meeting its most demanding professional standards.
Most children who study ballet will never become professional dancers. Some become teachers, choreographers, administrators, or producers. Others become donors, critics, and lifelong patrons who remember how difficult it was to execute a clean pirouette.
A dear friend of mine who danced with me throughout my childhood grew up to become a podiatrist specializing in ballerina-feet in our community. That’s niche.
And some become people who write press in exchange for free tickets.
All perfectly respectable outcomes, if you ask me.
A successful concert dance performance requires an entire ecosystem: choreographers, composers, musicians, stage crews, lighting designers, costume designers, administrators, publicists, marketers, and producers. So do the people who raise money, donate it, and purchase tickets.
The dancers may be the reason we gather, but they are hardly the only reason the curtain goes up.
Finding Another Way to Belong
This is why YAGP’s investment in emerging choreographers seems particularly valuable. An organization recognized for identifying exceptional young performers is also creating opportunities for artists who will develop the repertory those dancers perform. Choreographers need rehearsal time, collaborators, production resources, and audiences willing to encounter unfamiliar work.
YAGP has always represented an intimidating standard of excellence. There are winners, scholarship recipients, and dancers whose achievements open doors to prestigious institutions. There are also participants who do not place.
Does that make the others losers? Absolutely not.
I say this as someone who was never a competition winner myself. I understand the disappointment of not being selected, recognized, or called forward.
But the outcome of a competition should not determine the value of having participated.
Young dancers encounter peers from around the world, different approaches to training, unfamiliar choreographic ideas, and artistic perspectives beyond those of their own schools. That experience has value regardless of whether their names are announced at the end.
But watching the artists at Jacob's Pillow reminded me of the distinction between loving ballet and committing oneself to its highest professional demands.
This was my first visit to Jacob’s Pillow, and I fell in love with the place. For dancers, it is something of a mecca. Walking the grounds, I was struck by the history of the property and the generations of artists who have passed through it. I also discovered the archives, an extraordinary resource devoted to preserving dance history.
At one point, I found myself sitting at a table with some of the most influential figures in American ballet. Among them was Sascha Radetsky.
Yes, Center Stage Sascha Radetsky. Charlie himself.
I tried to play it cool. I did not. Within moments, I had made a Center Stage reference, effectively undoing whatever credibility I had managed to establish as a serious dance journalist.
I also had the opportunity to sit with YAGP founder and artistic director Larissa Saveliev. What struck me wasn’t simply that she had built an international organization connecting young dancers to leading institutions. Beneath the responsibility and ambition, I encountered a fellow ballet nerd.
She loves ballet.
That might sound obvious, but I appreciated the enthusiasm with which she spoke about the art form and the opportunities being created for young artists. Building an organization of YAGP’s scale requires persistence, difficult decisions, and an extraordinary commitment to its mission. I found Larissa warm, direct, and genuinely invested in the future of ballet.
Our conversation felt real.
I did not come away believing that every aspect of competitive dance was beyond criticism, nor would I want to. An institution can accomplish important work and still deserve thoughtful scrutiny.
But I gained a better appreciation for what YAGP makes possible. The organization that once intimidated me as a child looked different from this side of the stage. I could see the dancers benefiting from its opportunities, the choreographers developing original work, and the teachers, directors, and advocates gathered around them.
Sitting among these people, I began to appreciate the peculiar path that had brought me there.
I had not become a professional dancer or won a major competition. Yet I was surrounded by artists whose work I had admired for years, participating in conversations about an art form that had shaped much of my life.
How did I get there?
By remaining a fan.
By becoming a writer, a patron, and someone who never quite stopped loving ballet.
Featured photo of dancers from Ailey/Fordham BFA Program in Braylon Browner’s What You Came to a See at Jacob’s Pillow. Photo by Little Corgi Studio.
