Awards for student Antoine Boitel-Le Moal and former students Nancy Burer and Nienke Wind

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On 30 November, the Frenchman Antoine Boitel-Le Moal, who is student in level 7 of the National Ballet Academy, was presented with a Prix de la Vocation from the prestigious Fondation Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet pour la Vocation, at the Théâtre de Paris. Two weeks before that, former NBA students Nancy Burer and Nienke Wind each received an Incentive Award from Stichting Dansersfonds ’79, in DeLaMar Theater, in Amsterdam.

 

On 30 November, the Frenchman Antoine Boitel-Le Moal, who is student in level 7 of the National Ballet Academy, was presented with a Prix de la Vocation from the prestigious Fondation Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet pour la Vocation, at the Théâtre de Paris. Two weeks before that, former NBA students Nancy Burer and Nienke Wind each received an Incentive Award from Stichting Dansersfonds ’79, in DeLaMar Theater, in Amsterdam.

Antoine Boitel-Le Moal (20) was a late starter. Although he took his first amateur dance lessons at the age of nine, his father was dead set against him taking up ballet professionally. ‘Anyway, ballet was just not done. The boys in my class were only interested in rugby and sailing’. It was not until his parents divorced that Antoine (who was already 15) decided to pursue his dream. He studied for one year at the conservatoire in Brest, but moved to Paris when his teacher – a former principal dancer with Ballet Nacional de Cuba – left the school. There he trained first at the Conservatoire de Paris and then at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse, after which he continued his training at the Conservatoire National Supérieur Musique et Danse in Lyon, in 2013. Last summer, he took part in the Amsterdam International Summer School, which resulted in him moving to the National Ballet Academy. ‘I’m always hungry’, he explains. ‘Hungry for new experiences, new people and new repertoire’.
Last year, a friend of his, who is training for musicals in London, won a Prix de la Vocation – which is actually a study grant – from the Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet Foundation. ‘She knew that I’d been paying for my training for years through loans, so she encouraged me to submit an application as well’. To Antoine’s great surprise, he is now one of the twenty chosen ones. The Fondation Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet pour la Vocation supports talented youngsters in all areas of the arts and sciences. This time, the jury member for the eight-thousand-Euro dance grant was Thierry Malandain, artistic director of Ballet Biarritz and a former winner of the Prix de la Vocation himself.

Spiritual experience
On 16 November, dancers Nancy Burer, Nienke Wind and Floor Eimers all received an Incentive Award from Stichting Dansersfonds ’79. The awards were presented at the foundation’s Ballet Gala (which will be held annually from this year on). Nancy (22) and Nienke (24) both received all their training at the National Ballet Academy. Nancy embarked on her professional career in 2013 with Dutch National Ballet’s Junior Company, and transferred to the ‘adult’ company at the start of this season. Nienke has been dancing with Introdans since 2012.
In the opinion of the Dansersfonds jury, the three winners displayed great personality in a huge variety of works, showing that ‘the true spiritual experience of dance is played out on a whole different level to merely demonstrating extreme physical feats’.
The Dansersfonds annual Merit Award went this year to Gerald Tibbs, who is celebrating his 25th anniversary as artistic director of the youth company Nederlands Dans Theater 2 this year.




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