Five new ballet pieces will be premiered tonight in Little Rock as part of Ballet Arkansas’ second VISIONS choreographic competition.

VISIONS began as the vision of Ballet Arkansas’ Artistic Director, Michael Bearden, who wanted to create a event that would give choreographers an opportunity to have their works seen and appreciated by audiences and the dance community, as well as have the opportunity to receive a contract to have their choreography fully produced.

This season, Ballet Arkansas will present Visions Choreographic Competition at the UALR Center for Performing Arts on August 22, 2015 at 7:00 pm.

Thirty-one emerging choreographers from around the country competed for five spots in this year’s competition of which the winner will receive a commission to expand their new work for Ballet Arkansas’ company dancers for our spring mixed repertory show.

This year’s selected choreographers include Boston Ballet’s Boyko Dossev, former Houston Ballet’s Ilya Kozadayev, former Ballet West and Visceral Dance Chicago’s Tom Mattingly, former Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Barry Kerollis and Post: Ballet’s Aidan DeYoung.

A week before the VISIONS Competition, the choreographers drafted their cast of dancers and have a total of 11 rehearsal hours over 5 days to set their choreography on their cast. The night of the competition, the resulting works of choreography are performed for 4 judges, 3 of those judges are professionals in the local and national dance community, with the audience counting as the 4th judge.

The big finale of the competition is the announcement of the VISIONS Winner, who receives a contract with Ballet Arkansas to expand their choreography to have it fully produced for performance in Ballet Arkansas’ spring mixed repertory show, “Under the Lights”, to be held May 20-22 at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre.