The new facility will be located in the Meriwether Building
When the Sun Valley Ballet School starts its 39th season this fall, it will have a new permanent home in the Meriwether Building in downtown Hailey. The new facility will have more than 3,000 square feet with two studios and a dressing room, along with a spacious lobby with viewing window. Renovations are under way and should be completed by the end of August. The new space will also be used as a black box theater. The Meriwether Building is 10 years old, yet no business has ever occupied the space.
Formerly located in a small, older building on Silver Street, Sun Valley Ballet will join a burgeoning Hailey cultural center, with the Sun Valley Center for the Arts’ Company of Fools housed just across the alley at the Liberty Theater.
The Ballet School will also welcome a new artistic director, Anna Duvall.
Duvall was a first-place scholarship recipient of the Denver Ballet Guild and among the first Americans invited to study at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow. She has taught ballet domestically and overseas. Duvall will join Sun Valley Ballet in August.
In December of 2015, Duvall completed her Master of Arts at New York University on scholarship, to further her teaching credentials and study the American Ballet Theatre’s Pedagogy Master’s Program.
American Ballet Theatre’s National Training Curriculum also has a special focus on the health of the student and proper developmental stages of teaching.
“The program takes an in-depth look at the health guidelines, laid out by leading physical therapists in the ballet field, and I have learned to fully implement those practices into my ballet classes,” Duvall said.
There are five other instructors on the faculty. The school’s Summer Intensive, which runs from Aug. 1-12, will have guest dance teachers including Phyllis Affrunti, a principal dancer with Ballet Idaho; Jake Casey, from Cincinnati Ballet; Colton West, from Ballet Idaho; and Adrienne Kerr, a principal dancer who is also with Ballet Idaho.
The Ballet School is a nonprofit organization, which accepts all students regardless of means, said Nadia Hirner, Sun Valley Ballet’s longest serving board member.
“Our programs, facilities and staff rely on yearly giving to provide support for every child that wishes to dance,” Hirner said.
The current enrollment is about 125 students, of which approximately 24 percent are on scholarship. Children as young as 3 years old may enter the program, and stay through high school. The program offers a great variety of choices: hip-hop, jazz, modern, tap and classical. There is also a competitive team going to assorted venues throughout the Intermountain West.
Enrollment will start mid-August through the end of the month. Dancers will perform “The Nutcracker” in December and “Coppélia” in May 2017, both at the nexStage Theater in Ketchum.