Grand Rapids Ballet’s ‘From Russia With Love:’ Love note to audiences, beloved retiring dancer
This October, the company celebrates some of the greatest ballets in history with Russian roots and pays tribute to 15-year company member and audience favorite, Dawnell Dryja.
With all the current political turmoil over Russia’s involvement in the recent U.S. presidential election, Grand Rapids Ballet (GRB) opens its 47th season highlighting one area of Russian influence we can all get behind: ballet.
In “From Russia With Love,” October 6–8 & 13 at GRB’s Peter Martin Wege Theatre, the company celebrates some of the greatest ballets in history with Russian roots including excerpts from “Giselle,” “Flames of Paris,” “Raymonda,” and more.
In addition to celebrating Russian ballet, the program will also pay tribute to 15-year company member and audience favorite Dawnell Dryja, who will be making her final stage appearances for the company in it.
“Dawnell is iconic to Grand Rapids Ballet,” says Patricia Barker, GRB Artistic Director. “I don’t think we think of Grand Rapids Ballet without thinking of Dawnell and her many beautiful performances.”
A Canton, Michigan native, Dryja grew up in a dance household. Her mother Dawn Greene had polio when she was a child living in Scotland, and moved to the U.S. with her family for successful treatment of the disease. This allowed her to become a dancer, dance teacher, and owner of the Grosse Ile Academy of Dance in Grosse Ile Township where Dryja received her dance training beginning at age two.
“My mother didn’t want me to become a dancer,” says Dryja. “She told people I was going to become a doctor or lawyer. I was the one who wanted to take dance classes—and as soon as I was allowed to I did.”
Dryja says her mother was her primary teacher. Other than summer courses at Cleveland Ballet, Ballet Chicago, Milwaukee Ballet, and others, Dryja says she never wanted to train with anyone else. At 16, when an older friend invited her on a whim to accompany them to an audition for Metropolitan Ballet Theatre of Detroit, Dryja says she was offered an apprentice contract with the company.
“I worked it out with my school counselors to dance with the company for a year,” says Dryja. It was that experience, she says, that got her hooked on wanting a career as a dancer.
She went on to dance professionally with Dayton Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, and Tulsa Ballet before coming back to Michigan in 2002 to join Grand Rapids Ballet. In her career, Dryja has danced leading roles in many ballets, including “Swan Lake,” “Giselle,” “Coppelia,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and “Where The Wild Things Are,” as well as in several George Balanchine classics such as “Jewels,” “Serenade.” and “Concerto Barocco.” She has also worked with a multitude of esteemed choreographers such as Val Caniparoli, Suzanne Ferrell, Stanton Welch, Mario Radacovsky and former GRB artistic director Gordon Peirce Schmidt.
Now 41, Dryja says she decided to take a step back from her full-time performance career to spend more time with husband Bryce Black, a history teacher, and their 4-year-old daughter Tevyn, who like her mother, loves to dance. She’ll also be running her own dance studio, Comstock Park’s Academy of Dance Arts. While retiring as a company dancer, Dryja will remain with GRB as its new artistic coordinator aiding GRB artistic director Patricia Barker who is hop scotching hemispheres to simultaneously run both GRB and The Royal New Zealand Ballet.
Barker, who is back in town throughout the run of “From Russia With Love,” says she wanted to create a program that would interest everyone from the casual ballet goer to the most serious ballet enthusiast.
The company will be perform the second act from the ballet “Giselle” with Dryja in the lead role October 6 & 7, the pas de dix from the ballet “Raymonda,” the show-stopping pas de deux from “Flames of Paris” and dance competition favorite, Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky pas de deux, that Dryja will dance in every performance with fellow veteran GRB dancer Nicholas Schultz.
“We don’t often see bravura pas de deuxs in Grand Rapids and I wanted to make sure there were a few on the program,” says Barker.
To honor Dryja even further, there will be a special one-night-only program entitled “From Dawnell With Love” on Saturday, October 14 at the Peter Martin Wege Theatre. It will feature highlights from some of Dryja’s favorite roles including the first pas de deux she ever performed from the ballet “Esmeralda” along with excerpts from “Giselle,” “Don Quixote,” and a special performance with retired GRB dancer and current GRB school director and junior company artistic director, Attila Mosolygo.
While the two hour production will be a farewell for Dryja, it will also be a welcoming to the 13 new dancers joining GRB this season.
Although Dryja is retiring from dancing with GRB full-time, there is a good chance she may be called on to do character roles with GRB in the future—and she already has guest appearances with other troupes lined up.
“I’m not done. It’s just now performing can be on my terms,” says Dryja. “And that is nice.”
Grand Rapids Ballet performs From Russia With Love, 7:30 p.m., October 6, 7 & 13 and 2 p.m., October 8. The special tribute program “From Dawnell With Love” will be performed 7:30 p.m., October 14; Peter Martin Wege Theatre, 341 Ellsworth SW, Downtown; $46–48; (616) 454–4771 ext. 10 or grballet.com.
