International dancers of Akjun Ballet Theater company call Central Avenue home for the summer, offering world of possibilities for local youth

Friday, 50 international dancers arrived on Ontario Street and got to work. 

Since 2000, the Akjun Ballet Theatre has been spending its summers in Albany, bringing some of the world’s finest dancers right to our doorstep. Each year, ArtPartners/Tsehaya & Company, a local dance company housed in an old firehouse right in Albany’s urban core plays host to 50 company members, welcoming them with open arms and ready feet. The Akjun will perform two ballets at The Egg, and during their off-hours, they will serve as adjunct instructors at Tsehaya & Company, introducing youth ages 6-16 to new moves—and new possibilities.

ArtPartners/Tsehaya & Company, Inc. is a community-based dance company, founded to provide dance programs and services to the community, including an “Alternatives for Youth” Dance Program that focuses on the arts as a deterrent to delinquent behavior and fostering performance skills for at-risk, children of low income single parent families and residents of Arbor Hill and West Hill for 18 years.

For many of these students, the experience can be life-altering. “Most haven’t left New York, some haven’t even left Albany,” says Tsehaya Smith, Executive Artistic Director of ArtPartners/Tsehaya & Company. “They have the opportunity to work with dancers from Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Milan. They see that these are real people, not just figures on a stage.” The kids also take an active role in introducing the dancers to their new city, packing ‘buddy bags’ for the new arrivals to help make their dorms at the Albany College of Pharmacy feel a little more like home. “The ideas come from the students. We ask them, ‘What do you think you would need in your bag if you were to arrive in a brand new city far from home?’” Smith says. The students fills the bags with bus schedules, maps, toiletries, bedding and other niceties, anything they feel would help ease the transition for their new teachers, she says.  

Many of the youth also perform in the international company’s ballets at the Egg, giving them the opportunity to put their new skills to immediate use and teaching them valuable cultural lessons that will serve them for a lifetime.  

This year’s performances, Les Misérables (Sunday, July 21, 2013, 7:30pm, The Egg) and La Bayadère (Saturday, August 10, 2013, 7:30pm, The Egg) were carefully selected. The 136-year old La Bayadère has only been recently reconstructed, providing an intriguing lesson on dance dramaturgy. It is also the last ballet Rudolph Nureyev chose to perform before dying of AIDS in 1993.

Les Misérables, which takes on the French Revolution, offers students a whole new perspective on economic strata, says Smith. In the ballet, the characters are able to overcome their narrow economic destiny in order to create a better tomorrow.  “Being poor is just a mindset,” says Smith. “It’s not a way you have to act.”  

La Bayadère will be performed Saturday, August 10, 2013, 7:30pm at The Egg. Free and discount tickets are available to the performance by contacting the Central BID at (518) 462-4300.