 DINING
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| CULTURE |
| By Bill Ernst |
Photos by Michael Cairns |
For the past four years, Orlando Ballet has performed under the direction of Fernando Bujones, the company’s artistic director. In that time, the stature of the ballet, the technical and artistic standards of the dancers, and the excitement and professionalism of the performances have increased. This is in no small part due to the influence of Bujones and his wife, Maria.
One of the three premier male ballet dancers of the 20th century, Bujones is known and respected throughout the world. With Rudolph Nureyev as his mentor, and having danced with and under the direction of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Bujones is world-class. As a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater for more than 20 years, he has traveled the globe, performing in more than 60 ballets in 33 countries. His stellar reputation enables Orlando Ballet to attract some of the top young male dancers from around the world to study under him. His affiliations with several top ballet companies worldwide also help attract accomplished female dancers, as well.
Bujones’ reputation and the recent awards the dancers have won have elevated the Orlando Ballet to one of the top three U.S. ballet companies of its size. BE
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Born in Miami in 1955, Fernando Bujones’ first formal ballet classes were in Cuba, his parents’ homeland. He studied at a state-sponsored ballet school for about a year and a half, but his real development as a dancer came later, when in 1967 he won a scholarship to the School of American Ballet, the official school of the New York City Ballet Company. He studied there for about five years; his teachers were some of the world’s premier ballet instructors, such as Stanley Williams, André Eglevsky, and José Imendez, his private coach. After graduating, he joined the American Ballet Theatre where, at 19, he was not only one of the youngest principal dancers in the world, but the youngest principal male dancer in ABT’s history. It was during that period that Baryshnikov defected from the Soviet Union and joined ABT in 1974. They worked together as dancers for six years, after which Bujones worked under Baryshnikov’s artistic direction.
It was also in 1974 that Bujones won the Gold Medal at the International Ballet Competition in Bulgaria—the first American male dancer to win the top prize in what was then considered the Olympics of dance. Not only did he win the gold in 1974, but he competed as a junior in the senior category.
Throughout his career he was influenced by dancers such as Erik Bruhn, Edward Villella and especially Rudolph Nureyev, whom Bujones has always considered his ideal.
During his years with ABT and his experience as guest performer at some of the most prestigious ballet companies in the world, Bujones learned that when hard work, dedication, discipline and integrity come together, they produce positive results. And he imparts this ethic to his dancers. “This is the kind of quality work that I have pursued with Orlando Ballet,” he says. “Our dancers have understood that discipline and devotion and hard work does pay off, and they have seen it for themselves with their own success,” he says. But he adds that “great camaraderie is important, too. Individually, it is important to succeed and excel. But when the company works together as a team, it brings more power and success to the company. And this is something that they have achieved under my artistic direction.” And it shows. S
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Backstage with Fernando Bujones
The dancers look terrific and strong. Tell me about the caliber of Orlando Ballet’s dancers.
We are very fortunate to have a well-balanced company—we have both excellent male and female dancers. What makes us special is that the outstanding level of our male dancers is unique for a company of our size. Usually you will find five, six, eight or ten in a larger company of 60 or 70 dancers. But when we are only 25 dancers, that the majority of our dancers are really outstanding is an achievement for our company, and something that I am very proud of.
How do you recruit dancers? Some of them come from very far away.
Some of them I inherited when I joined Orlando Ballet, which is great. Others came on board because some of them I had worked with before. Others, such as our Japanese dancers Nobuyoshi Okada and ballerinas Kyoko Masudo and Chiaki Yasukawa, came to us because they heard about the success of our company and . . . that we are rising.
We also have several wonderful ballerinas from Mexico. Katia Garza, one of our main ballerinas, and her husband Israel Rodriguez, who is Cuban but had been working in Mexico, came to us from the company that I had previously directed, the Ballet of Monterey. So I invited them to become a part of our company the moment I was hired because I knew of their outstanding qualities and how they could enhance our roster here.
Orlando Ballet School recently won “Best School” at the Youth America Grand Prix semi-finals, and will be hosting the competition here in February. Tell me about the school and the event.
We have two schools now, the main school in downtown Orlando and another in the Dr. Phillips area. We have around 400 students between the two schools. We are very proud of the level that the school has risen to . . . because of the leadership that the school has. [The] director of the school, Peter Stark, has done an outstanding job . . . his teachers and his staff have accomplished work of excellence. Our students’ bodies are shaped differently today, and [so] the techniques have grown. They have been challenged with good works of dance both from the school’s repertory and the company’s repertory. We have a wonderful training program where the dancers dance both with the school and with the company’s repertory throughout the year. This allows the school’s more advanced students to get stronger and get to a higher professional level, [and] if there is the ability, to perhaps participate with the company in the future.
How do you challenge yourself now? What drives you?
It has been said that “Being an artistic director is solving problems 25 hours a day.” That is a challenge I take on because, all of my life, my career has been about challenges. I don’t succumb to a challenge—I take it on. The idea that there is a challenge motivates me to give my utmost. That in itself is my philosophy.
You’ve been producing some first-rate original works. Ballet to Tango, Latin and Jazz, and the world premiere of a full-length, classical interpretation of Camelot is coming soon. How does the artistic director/choreographer relationship work?
Camelot will be choreographed by Samantha Dunster, our ballet mistress. We’ve been working together for almost five years now. Her main role is to take care of the ballet, to polish them and . . . add finesse to each ballet under her command. We also have a ballet master, Orlando Molina. Between our ballet master and [ballet] mistress, the repertory is cleaned up, polished—that is their main function. But aside from that, they also have the opportunity to choreograph ballets I give them.
That’s the way Camelot came about. Camelot is an opportunity for Samantha to choreograph a world-premiere work. It works wonderfully for the company because a full-length ballet like Camelot has never been done before. It is an enriching experience for her, which she is very excited about it. We are all enriched and excited about it, because it adds an extra full-length ballet that is totally original.
How would you rank Orlando Ballet compared to other ballet companies, even major-city ballets?
In terms of a smaller-size company, with the amount of dancers and budget that we have, I would say we are one of the top three in the country. There are other companies like American Ballet Theatre and San Francisco Ballet . . . that have a larger number of dancers and budget, which facilitates attracting talent. However, there have been people that have seen other companies of that size perform and have said that we—for what we are—have produced as exciting a show as those large companies.
Maria, your wife, is the Assistant to the Artistic Director—your assistant. How do you divide tasks, and how do your styles complement or contrast?
Both of us understand the meaning of the word “professionalism,” and we separate the professional behavior from the personal relationship we have. We understand that the only way we are able to work together is if we really respect each other’s role, functions, profession. We understand that the “professionalism” has to be carried out even in the most challenging moments. And that is what has allowed us to work together now for many, many years.
How did you and Maria, meet?
We met very beautifully. I was invited to guest perform with the Stuttgart Ballet in Germany, and Maria was one of the ballerinas with the company. I met her there and was captivated the moment I saw her. I said, “Maria, you look like Pocohantas to me.” With her hair down and her band tied across her head. It is such a beautiful image. I always say, “I went to perform Sleeping Beauty, and I met my beauty without sleeping.” And she says to me, “And I met my prince.”
Where do you want Orlando Ballet to be in five to ten years? Do you see yourself here then?
I hope to be here. It is a wonderful feeling to know that you’ve invested in a company that the results are now more than ever starting to show. We have a good company in place, we have a very good repertory to rely on, and we bring works back from that repertory to create our future programs. And we have a full-length repertory established, and full-length ballets the company owns—scenery, sets and costumes, [which] they don’t have to rent now from other companies. That was a program I established here—that had never been done before. So all of this now comes into play, and is in place for the good of the company and for the future of the company. There has been an investment made on my part to make this company have a legacy. So I would like to continue for a few more years to continue enriching that legacy.
Having said that, more than ever we need the community—the City of Orlando and its surrounding communities—to understand that this company is at a level it has never been at before. That it’s at its most dynamic, its most exciting period historically. And in order to preserve that quality, that status, and the excitement the company is producing for the community, it needs all the support it can get from the city, from the state, from the surrounding communities and from United Arts. We need all of the financial support we can get . . . only by growing the company’s budget can we sustain the quality dancers, productions, staff and direction of this company, and continue this tradition and legacy that I so very much dream of seeing this company maintain. S
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Click below to visit the Orlando Ballet's Web Site . . .
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