datapointe

Fifty Years of Prix de Lausanne

Companies & schools where the ballet competition's winners have gone

By Ilena Peng | Data from Prix de Lausanne's website

For the best experience, please read this on a laptop!

February 2, 2023

It takes several weeks for me to finish watching, but it's always worth it. The competition is the best of ballet's young talent and has always placed some amazing dancers on my radar, who I now delight in following on social media. Just being selected to compete places the up-and-coming dancers in the footsteps of ballet legends who once competed as well, including:

  • Principal dancers Gillian Murphy and Hee Seo, as well as former principal dancers Stella Abrera, Ethan Stiefel and Marcelo Gomes (former) — American Ballet Theatre
  • Principal dancer Diana Vishneva — Mariinsky Ballet
  • Étoile Sae-Eun Park and première danseuse Hannah O'Neill — Paris Opera Ballet
  • Principal dancers Madison Young, Julian Mackay, Jinhao Zhang and first soloist Shale Wagman — Bayerisches Staatsballet
  • Principal dancers Misa Kuranaga, Nikisha Fogo — San Francisco Ballet

    • That list, notably, omits the number of prominent Prix alumni currently and previously at the Royal Ballet. One of the most wonderful parts of the Prix de Lausanne is that prizewinners are awarded a one-year scholarship to a partner school or an apprenticeship at a partner company, depending on the dancer's age. The opportunity has kickstarted careers — and many have begun at the London-based company and affiliated school, which have together accepted at least 74 prizewinners in the past 50 years. Almost surely, another dancer will join that list once 2023's competition is over.

    *"At least 74" because data for older years is unfortunately messy, and I could not manually check all of these entries. I relied solely on the website in putting together this dataset for consistency, and in doing so, have missed certain school placements. Miyako Yoshida, for example, joined the Royal Ballet after winning the Prix, but the competition's website doesn't have a partner school/company listed.

    The Royal Ballet — past and present — is filled with former Prix de Lausanne prizewinners. Legendary Royal Ballet dancers Alessandra Ferri (1980), Leanne Benjamin (1981) and Miyako Yoshida (1983) are all Prix de Lausanne alumni.

    Prix alumni Mayara Magri (prizewinner in 2011), Akane Takada (2008), Steven McRae (2003) and Ryoichi Hirano (2001) are all now principal dancers at the Royal Ballet.

    Some more recent prizewinners now at the company include: artists Marco Masciari (2020), Sumina Sasaki (2019) and Yu Hang (2016), first artist Sae Maeda (2014), soloist Leticia Dias (2013).

    Currently, Darrion Sellman (2022) is the company's Prix de Lausanne dancer.

    Other prizewinners who go to the Royal Ballet will eventually take their experience at the Royal Ballet elsewhere, like Julian Mackay (2015) who is now a principal at Bayerisches Staatsballets.

    One last thing to note: The entire competition is somewhat of a grand audition, and so plenty of dancers have been invited to attend these schools and join these companies regardless of whether they have won. Isn't it marvelous?

    Watch the 2023 competition from January 29 to February 5 — and/or binge all the past years — on YouTube.

    P.S. I should say that these very long bar charts are clunky but assuredly intentional, in case crazy bunheads like myself were curious to know that only one prizewinner has gone to Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet as a partner company after the competition. And what might seem like repetition to some — for example, three separate bars for San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Ballet School, and San Francisco Ballet's Trainee Program - was also intentional, because they are all distinctly different despite being affiliated with the same institution.