On a rainy September night, friends, family, and students of Hillsdale gathered to see the Grand Rapids Ballet performers glide across the stage in a fusion of ballet genres. 

Part of the college’s Professional Artists Series, the ballet featured five dances that blended classical and contemporary ballet. The program included “a Mozart Symphony,” “Presto,” and “Rendezvous” by James Sofranko, “soirée” by Issac Aoki, and George Balanchine’s “Serenade.”

James Sofranko, artistic director of the company, intentionally combined ballet forms in an attempt to captivate the audience. 

“This performance is made up of five separate ballets,” Sofranko said before the performance. “Some have a narrative, while others are completely abstract. In either case, the dancer must shine through the technique and draw the audience into the world that has been created on the stage.”

For Sofranko, ballet is the pinnacle of artistic achievement that celebrates the human experience. There’s an implicit moral duty for it to be showcased to the world, he said. 

“In the same way that the ‘Mona Lisa’ and a Beethoven symphony are considered masterpieces and treasured by our society, the art of ballet and specific choreographic masterpieces, such as ‘Serenade’ by George Balanchine, is a testament to the artists’ ability to translate a story, an energy, or an emotion into a work on the stage,” Sofranko said. 

Graduate student Erin Felvus said she found the performance an enchanting escape from real life. 

“It was a little nostalgic and serene. It was nice to look at this world and take a little break from my own,” she said.

Felvus danced for 12 years before coming to Hillsdale and said attending the performance symbolized her gratitude for ballet and artistic expression.  

“I’ve been a fan of the arts for a few years,” she said. “I always try to support them because I think of how I felt when I danced and how much it meant to have people there. So I like to give back.”

One memorable highlight of the performance was “Rendezvous.” 

“I liked how ‘Rendezvous’ had just the two couples in blue and white,” Felvus said. “It was a very nice juxtaposition,” Felvus said. “The lighting was especially good for that one.” 

Freshman Erica Kibel, who had a sister in ballet, was also inspired by it.  

“The dance, Rendezvous, was my favorite. It was kind of like a love story.”

 The contemporary dance, “soirée,” added a new dimension to the whole show by departing from the more traditional ballet forms already performed. It was suspenseful for those who had not experienced ballet’s more eccentric side.

“It was exciting to see ‘soirée,’” Kibel said. “It was just so inventive. You didn’t know what to expect, and it kept you on the edge of your seat.”

Before the performance, Sofranko taught a master class on campus to dance minors and members of Tower Dancers. 

“It was very fast-paced,” junior Emma De Nooy said. “Sofranko only had an hour and 15 minutes to get an entire technique class in, which is really short.”  

Students who took the master class gained skills from Sofranko’s expertise while practicing techniques from a new perspective.

“It gives you different exposure to different teachers who focus on different things,” sophomore Laura Luke said. “So that’s what a master class does. It gives you some variety to learn from another master.”

De Nooy took classes at the Grand Rapids Ballet Company from the start of her ballet career. She laments over how many students choose other arts over ballet. 

“Take a ballet class or a dance class in general,” De Nooy said. “We often talk about the importance of the liberal arts. Everyone here is usually involved in theater or music or voice, and I think dance is pretty overlooked here. But dance should be an integral part of a liberal arts education, even if you are really bad at it. It’s still really important because we are holistic beings. So it’s not just our minds. It’s not even just our voices. It’s also like our bodies.”

Luke found the class to be nostalgic of her home studio in Philadelphia. She views ballet as a union of gymnastic and musical education with moorings in classical antiquity. 

“Aristotle says that liberal arts education is both about music and gymnastics,” Luke said. “Education and ballet are kind of that beautiful in between where it connects the beauty and the art with the athleticism.” 

After all his hard work choreographing the show, Sofranko said he hopes the ballet performance provided the Hillsdale community with a love for the arts. 

“My hope is that anyone who saw a performance of Grand Rapids Ballet is inspired by the beauty and the craft of the art of dance,” he said.