Watching Eric Greatest navigate the sensuous curves of Stanton Welch’s Tapestry, throughout Houston Ballet’s Jubilee of Dance [in December 2023], the dancer’s circulate and exactitude merged right into a seamless entire. His beneficiant port de bras caressed the area, drawing out Welch’s nuanced choreographic traces. Along with his crisp approach, delicate swagger, and beguiling fluidity, Greatest catapulted from the corps de ballet to soloist on the opening of the season, and audiences can’t get sufficient of him.
Firm: Houston Ballet
Age: 21
Hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana
Coaching: Dance Creations Academy, Houston Ballet Academy, Houston Ballet II
Vacation spot Houston: Greatest bonded with Houston Ballet throughout his first summer time intensive there in 2018. “I improved a lot and made so many pals. I felt it is a place the place I can develop and study,” he says. Throughout his subsequent summer time, in Los Angeles at a Debbie Allen Dance Academy intensive, he met visitor instructor Lauren Anderson, who’s Houston Ballet Academy’s affiliate director of schooling and group engagement. “She stated, ‘Oh, you have to get again to Houston, like, immediately.’ So I did.”
Fast rise: After becoming a member of Houston Ballet II in 2021, Greatest apprenticed with the primary firm in 2022, and sailed into the corps in 2023. After a flurry of lead roles, he was promoted to soloist originally of the season, a time he describes as “taking that leap of religion and going alongside for the experience. I’ve stunned myself with what I used to be truly able to doing and due to Stanton [Welch] and Julie [Kent]’s assist and religion in me.”
Midsummer doubleheader: Houston audiences acquired to know simply how a lot Greatest was able to when he landed main roles—Lysander and Puck—in each casts of John Neumeier’s A Midsummer Night time’s Dream initially of this season.
What the co-artistic administrators are saying: “Eric has such bodily intelligence, his thoughts–physique connection is extraordinary,” says Julie Kent. “There’s a divine high quality to his dancing. Additionally, he appears to be like nice at each angle.” Stanton Welch shares that “Eric is an outstanding expertise. He’s so musical, and brings such element to my ballets. I get to choreograph with out restrict, and he makes me wish to be a greater choreographer.”
Talking the identical language: Greatest’s affinity for Welch’s intricate choreography comes via within the rising checklist of Welch’s ballets he’s carried out to date. “Now I can go into his new works realizing what he’s going to carry and what he’s searching for,” says Greatest. “I simply attempt to are available in with the identical vitality, able to work.” Clear, initially created after 9/11, made a profound influence on Greatest. “Each time I watch this ballet or I carry out it or rehearse it, I all the time discover one thing new that ties to the narrative of it.”
Past dancing: Greatest loves drawing and sketching. “Principally self-portraits, folks, generally superheroes. I’m very obsessed with artwork and wish to take extra courses,” he says. “I all the time wish to be sure that I preserve doing the issues that curiosity me in addition to dance.”
