Gifted ballet dancers are born, not made.
The thing is, sometimes they are born in remote places with no cultural infrastructure, or into economic circumstances that make dance instruction unaffordable or travel to auditions impossible.
But the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) has been working, successfully, to change that.
In Palm Beach, the Ladies — and Gentlemen — Who Lunch are helping them with a benefit luncheon.
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‘Youth, Beauty, and Talent; Celebrating 25 Years of Opportunity in Dance’ took place April 28 at The Colony Hotel and marked the silver anniversary of YAGP, a New York-based non-profit dance education organization with a mission to support and develop world-class dancers of all economic, ethnic and geographic backgrounds.
Kamie Lightburn was chairwoman for the event, which also served as a kickoff to the organization’s New York gala at Lincoln Center.
In addition to an East Garden reception and lunch, the afternoon offered an up-close look at the talent nurtured by YAGP in the form of performances by Brady Farrar of American Ballet Theatre and Nayara Lopes from the Philadelphia Ballet.
More than 100 people attended, including Valerie Cooper, Hannah Griswold, Myrna Haft, Cheri Kaufman, Michel Cox Witmer, Alexandra Lind Rose, Tom Murray, David Sagami, and a bunch more who know their pas de bouree from their pas de deux.
Proceeds from the afternoon assist YAGP, which for 25 years has been changing the way the world’s dance schools and companies look for talent by traveling country-to-country, city-to-city, to conduct auditions and provide dancers of diverse ethnic, cultural and economic backgrounds with resources and visibility to institutions, offering school scholarships and company job contracts.
Currently, 450 YAGP alumni are members of 80 professional dance companies globally. More than 100 of them have achieved the rank of soloists and principal dancers in prestigious companies such as the American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet and The Royal Ballet.
