Boston Ballet artistic director Mikko Nissinen has announced the company’s roster for the 2021–22 season, which will see the Ballet return to the Citizens Bank Opera House for the first time since COVID-19 caused the suspension of live performances in March 2020. The season will begin with “The Nutcracker” (Nov. 26–Dec. 26) and continue with four productions in the spring, concluding with “Swan Lake” (May 26-June 5). “We have all been waiting for this reemergence and the return to live performances,” Nissinen said. “It is a pleasure to welcome our new dancers to the company and Boston Ballet II for this renaissance. I am looking forward to working with these artists and sharing their special talents with our audiences.”
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This season’s arrivals include a new soloist, Ángel García Molinero, and a new second soloist, Michaela DePrince. In all there will be 51 dancers in the main company and 12 in the apprentice troupe, Boston Ballet II (BB2). Eleven countries are represented in this season’s Boston Ballet: Armenia, Australia, Brazil, China, Georgia, Ireland, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Spain, and the US. The company continues to have a strong home base: 36 percent of the dancers are alumni of BB2, and 25 percent are Boston Ballet School alumni.
The new soloist, García Molinero, is from Madrid; he joined Spain’s Compañía Nacional de Danza in 2015 and was promoted to soloist in 2018. The new second soloist, DePrince, is from Sierra Leone; after being adopted by American parents, she appeared in the 2011 film “First Position” and subsequently joined Dance Theatre of Harlem before moving on to the Dutch National Ballet, where she became a soloist in 2016.
Joining Boston Ballet as “artists of the company” (the company’s name for its corps members) are Nastia Alexandrova, Primrose Kern, SeokJoo Kim, Nikolia Mamalakis, and Schuyler Wijsen. Boston native Mamalakis will be familiar to audiences, since she’s graduating to the main company from BB2.
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Of the rest, Alexandrova (Pacifica, Calif.) comes from American Ballet Theatre and Kern (Cairns, Australia) from Paris Opera Ballet. Kim (Busan, South Korea) graduated from South Korea’s National University of Arts this year; in 2020 he won the gold medal at the Seoul International Dance Competition. And Wijsen (Berkeley, Calif.) is a 2021 graduate of the School of American Ballet.
Eight of the 12 dancers on this year’s BB2 roster will be new. Joining BB2 from Boston Ballet School are Joseph Boswell (Spokane, Wash.) and Johanna Sigurdardottir (San Jose, Calif.). Rounding out the list of arrivals are Finn Duggan (New York, N.Y.), Henry Griffin (Ambler, Pa.; he actually joined in the middle of last season), Brock Maye (Stafford, Va.), Kyra Muttilainen (Richmond, Vt.), Rimi Nakano (Tokyo), and Brooke Wilson (Dover, N.H.).
Jeffrey Gantz can be reached at jeffreymgantz@gmail.com.
Jeffrey Gantz can be reached at jeffreymgantz@gmail.com.