Introducing Our 2026 “25 to Watch”
Whose careers will skyrocket in 2026? Our editors and contributors from across the dance world have a few predictions—namely, the artists on our annual “25 to Watch” list. These dancers, choreographers, directors, and companies are already doing exceptional work, but we’re betting on them to break through in a major way in the year to come.
Dominika Afanasenkov |Agora Artists |Dasia Amos |Bullyache |Mia J. Chong |Gheremi Clay |Randi “Rascal” Freitas |Laura Fúnez |Sumi Ichikawa |Kashia Kancey |Shi Jean Kim |Kris Lee |Jade Manns |Anthony and Kel Matsena |Takumi Miyake |Emiko Nakagawa |Juliette Ochoa |William Okajima |David O’Matz |Ángel Ramírez |Jasmine Amy Rogers |Deniz Erkan Sancak |Yuki Takahashi |Sayako Toku |Durante Verzola
Dominika Afanasenkov
Soloist, New York City Ballet
It requires courage to take on a role that’s strongly tied to both its originator and one of your company’s current star ballerinas. But when New York City Ballet corps member Dominika Afanasenkov walked onstage for Balanchine’sErrante—a ballet (originally titledTzigane) created onSuzanne Farrell and memorably reprised last year by principalMira Nadon—she not only held her own, but gave the role a distinct flavor. Afanasenkov was more authoritative than hot-blooded; she plunged into lunges and backbends with sharp attack while her pliant upper body softened the edges, giving her movement lushness.
Afanasenkov, 21, moved frequently as a child, studying dance in Russia and Switzerland before settling in the Tampa area. At age 14 she entered the School of American Ballet, where she was later featured in the Disney+ docuseries “On Pointe.” Within months of joining the NYCB corps in late 2022, Afanasenkov was cast in Jerome Robbins’Afternoon of a Faun. Since then, she’s enjoyed a steady stream of opportunities, including Balanchine’sMovements for Piano and Orchestra (another Farrell role) and Ulysses Dove’s spikyRed Angels, which artistic director Jonathan Stafford calls a “turning point” for her. “That ballet gave her the opportunity to show a real dynamic attack and boldness that we hadn’t seen before,” he says. “Her level of technical execution has always been high, but it’s her artistry that has really set her up for success.” Expect to see her tackling more featured roles in the coming months: She was promoted to soloist at the end of NYCB’s fall season.
Agora Artists
Dance service organization
In a sprawling city like Dallas, where most existing resources are geared toward companies over freelancers, it takes energy, vision, and infrastructure to create a home for independent artists. That’s whatAgora Artists, an evolving dance service organization founded in 2017 by Avery-Jai Andrews, aims to become. Today based at Arts Mission Oak Cliff, Agora is on a mission to develop Dallas as a hub of activity for independent dancers, educators, and choreographers. In 2025, it presented theinaugural Dallas Indie Dance Fest, which featured 20 works across three programs and two weekends. Monthly pop-up classes are laying the groundwork for a robust professional class culture outside of local company classes. Earlier initiatives, such as Seeds, a program providing self-production resources for rising choreographers, and the one-day workshop and performance event Mini Movement Fest, are going strong. Andrews has also teamed up with local company leaders to leverage resources and organize action, such as advocating for sprung floors for a new Dallas performance venue, and has established connections with independent artists in Austin. “I want Dallas to be a home for dance artists,” says Andrews. “We can be a connection builder. When people tell me that they feel welcomed at Agora events, I think: That’s the work.”
Dasia Amos
Swing and assistant dance captain,MJ: The Musical
Dasia Amos’ career is uninhibited by genre or industry labels. In 2023, while still a student at University of North Carolina at Greensboro studying dance and musical theater, she joined the Broadway cast ofMJ: The Musical as a swing. The show’s choreography requires a blend of the intricate, accented moves Michael Jackson made iconic and Christopher Wheeldon’s fluid, full-bodied contemporary ballet technique, a complex duality that Amos embodies with ease. Last February, she performed with Camille A. Brown and Dancers inI AM at The Joyce Theater, deliveringBrown’s raw, intensely rhythmical, and dynamic movement with fearless attack and a stamina that seems infinite. Whatever she’s dancing, her ability to tell a story or communicate an emotion through her movement seems natural.
Amos grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, and began her training at local dance studio The Pointe! Company and Technique Conservatory. NowMJ: The Musical’s assistant dance captain, she dreams of also working in film and exploring her own choreography in whatever arena calls to her. “I just want to continue being a student and honing my craft,” she says. “I’m honored to be a vessel.”
Bullyache
Contemporary dance duo
British duoBullyache explores the overload of contemporary life through queer and working-class lenses. Founded in 2021 by Rambert-trained dancer Courtney Deyn and multidisciplinary artist Jacob Samuel, the duo describes its works as “live music videos for the stage,” and to date their work has been celebrated in visual art publications such asFrieze. While their success in this space might suggest a focus on striking aesthetics over choreographic rigor,last summer’s premiere ofA Good Man Is Hard to Find brought both visual daring and physical intensity to theVenice Biennale stage.
Inspired by the 2008 financial crash, the work sees five performers engage in ferocious movement sequences, masculine bravado, and ritual humiliation within a postapocalyptic boardroom setting. Surreal scenes—such as a drag-inspired investment banker beauty pageant—cut through the brutality, casting the characters as both perpetrators and victims trapped in a performative cycle. Due torun at Sadler’s Wells in May, it’s a much-needed nuanced examination of modern masculinity, balancing sharp critique with flashes of empathy.
Other works in Bullyache’s oeuvre are equally timely: 2024’sWho Hurt You?, restaged at London’s Southbank Centre in November, conjured a world where, as the program note reads, “theatres have closed, no money is left, but people still drag themselves to perform.” As reality edges ever closer to the dystopias they stage, Bullyache’s work seems primed to increase in resonance.
Mia J. Chong
Founder and artistic director, EIGHT/MOVES, and co-artistic director, ODC/Dance
Mia J. Chong works their magic in two ways: crafting lush dances and inspiring dancers’ full commitment to her vision. Both are epitomized byEIGHT/MOVES, the San Francisco Bay Area pickup company the former ODC/Dance and Post:ballet dancer founded in 2023. In the company’s performances this fall, the highly technical seven-person ensemble explored its range with dancing that was both full and soft, dramatic and introspective. It was only the company’s second season, but it already has a stellar track record of bringing together choreographic rigor, top-notch performers, and an ambitious roster of collaborators,Rena Butler andKT Nelson among them.
Behind the scenes, Chong is creating a more compassionate work culture with care and intention, prioritizing clear communication about expectations, contracts, compensation, and more. “The more honest we can be with one another, the safer the environment can be, which allows the work to be free and expansive,” they say. EIGHT/MOVES is anchored by eight core actions that shape the company’s guiding values, including uplifting marginalized voices and building a sense of community, both with the audience and within the ensemble.
In July, EIGHT/MOVES will come together with ODC/Dance for Chong’s second commission for the latter company, where she just began her tenure in thenewly added co-artistic director post in December.
—Jill Randall
Gheremi Clay
Director and choreographer, Clay Collective
ChoreographerGheremi Clay is a well-established voice in Los Angeles, but his latest venture,Clay Collective, has a particular magic. The company showcases a sharp, smart blend of street and concert styles, a reflection of L.A.’s dance scene that expertly highlights the individual dancers’ styles. Sultry, stylized heels work might be studded with unexpected nuggets of contemporary ballet or floorwork in the same groovy house routine.
Clay’s multifaceted approach to dance comes from his education in both technical styles and musical theater, lending him a dynamic approach to theatrical storytelling. He values a dancer’s versatility, encouraging them to bring their own personality and natural movement into the collective work. Nurturing a consistent crew of dancers—which includes both former students and frequent collaborators—while challenging them to expand was the impetus behind establishing Clay Collective, which gave its first performance in November 2024. “The biggest thing that I look forward to when it comes to Clay Collective,” he says, “is for them to be able to find the confidence and the willpower to create their own pathway.”
Randi “Rascal” Freitas
Breaker
Randi “Rascal” Freitas primarily identifies as a breaker. But she doesn’t let that limit her. With the floor as their base, they dance like a DJ, sampling moments of popping, house, or waacking. The result is a mash-up you never want to end, because you don’t know where it might go next. “There are just so many different things I want to express,” she says.
Freitas straddles the underground and the industry world. They regularly battle on the Red Bull circuit and were ranked fifth American b-girl in the lead-up to the2024 Olympics; she’s also performed at Coachella and the Grammys, in the movieSpirited, and with artists like Justin Timberlake and SZA. Recently, she co-produced “Passing the Crown,” an ongoing concert series celebrating women in hip hop that premiered at Lincoln Center. She also runsOmega Flow Floorwork, an online platform open to anyone but focused on teaching women and the LGBTQ+ community floorwork.
As a gender-expansive artist in a very binary-based dance form, Freitas isn’t afraid to embrace the unconventional. “It’s about fighting to be seen in a world that has a very small view of what a woman is and where her value lies,” she says. “But all of this, it’s really unlimited.”
Laura Fúnez
Escuela Bolera and flamenco artist
Laura Fúnez effortlessly leaps, twists, and stalks across the flamenco stage—not in the form’s traditional heeled shoes, but in slippers. Fúnez is a pioneer, transforming Escuela Bolera, a ballet-based Spanish dance style typically performed to classical music, into a vibrant, intricate element of the flamencotablao performance. Respecting the complicated musical structure of flamenco, she creates inventive interpretations of flamenco songs that encompass impeccable technique, wildness, and repose, accented by the playful teasing of rapid-fire castanets, allwithin the confined space of the traditionaltablao stage.
At 29, Fúnez has already worked with major artists, such as Jesus Carmona, and in Spain’s besttablaos, as well aspresented her own evening-length concert,FÚNEZ, at the III Suma Flamenca Joven in Madrid. She has launched a series of workshops to teach dancers the neo–Escuela Bolera style she’s innovated. Now, she has created her own company, Compañía Laura Fúnez, which will premiere a new work in February. “I want to give Escuela Bolera the greatest possible visibility,” she says.
Sumi Ichikawa
Dancer, BalletMet
Sumi Ichikawa’sdebut as the Lilac Fairy in Edwaard Liang’sSleeping Beauty was a revelation. Previously, the BalletMet company member had predominantly performed corps de ballet roles, but her ear-kissing extensions, long-lasting balances, and elegant quality of line were complemented by a newfound confidence. This fall, her performance as the defiant yet vulnerable Rebel Captive in artistic directorRemi Wörtmeyer’sRite of Spring solidified her status as an artist on the cusp of company stardom.
The 22-year-old Ichikawa is now in her third season with the company, but she’s long been a part of the BalletMet ecosystem. Born in Columbus, Ohio, she trained from age 6 at BalletMet’s Academy, rising through the company’s trainee program and BalletMet 2 before joining the main company in 2023. Wörtmeyer is quick to praise not just her work ethic and technique but also her “very positive personality.”
Says Ichikawa, “I hope that when audiences see me dance, time freezes for them. It’s how I feel when dancing.”
Kashia Kancey
Independent choreographer
A dynamic presence when performing withUrban Bush Women,David Dorfman Dance, and other notable artists,Kashia Kancey achieved lift-off for her own choreographic work in 2025. Thanks to a Fresh Tracks residency at New York Live Arts, the Brooklyn-based artist developed and performedI’m in the Middle of the Ocean, and I Can’t See You, inspired by Kate Chopin’s novel,The Awakening.Four dancers costumed in petticoats and ruffled nightgowns simultaneously deliver dramatic monologues, wreck a piano, and otherwise careen ferociously. Kancey conjures a dreamlike state with visual and kinetic punch.
“I’ve always been super-dramatic,” says Kancey, who started dancing in church and at the Overtown Youth Center, then went on to study at Miami’s New World School of the Arts. “One of my biggest corrections when I was younger was to stop singing the words when I danced.” Next up, Kancey will stage her workThe Closties Variety Hour,developed during a Triskelion Arts fellowship last year,for the Live Artery Festival in January, and take up an early-stage creative residency at The Chocolate Factory Theater in the spring. “I’m now able to blend all of my worlds into one,” she says, “and show up as my full self in whatever work I do.”
Shi Jean Kim
Corps member, Tulsa Ballet
An athletic powerhouse,Shi Jean Kim is gifted with bravura technique and astonishing ballon. But the 24-year-old also imbues his performances with artistic sensitivity, curiosity, and whimsy, whether he’s portraying a crazed Renfield in Ben Stevenson’sDracula or the frenetic White Rabbit in Kenneth Tindall’sAlice in Wonderland. “He is a very special dancer with a great sense of humor,” Tulsa Ballet artistic director Marcello Angelini says of Kim, who joined the main company as an apprentice in 2024 after a season with Tulsa Ballet II.
A native of South Korea, Kim began his ballet training at age 7. He matriculated toKorea National University of Arts at 16 and was a top placer at several ballet competitions before landing in Tulsa, where he is now a member of the corps de ballet.
“When I first discovered ballet as a child and the way my body naturally moved with the music, and how my heart felt free in those moments, it was a way to express emotions that I could never fully capture otherwise,” says Kim. “Onstage, there is a sense of fulfillment and joy that nothing else in life can match.”
Kris Lee
Freelance dancer
Using their technical skill and athletic prowess as tools for play,Kris Lee merges opposites into simultaneities: hard and soft, resistance and surrender, harmony and rebellion. With a sense of fine-tuned control shot through with a sly renegade streak, the 28-year-old brings transformative power to queered (and re-queered) takes on the dance archive. They electrified in the role of Mac the Station Attendant inMatthew Lutz-Kinoy’s reimagining of Lew Christensen’s 1938Filling Station and showcased their improvisational chops in the rambunctiousOO-GA-LA Reimagined, Ishmael Houston-Jones’rearticulation of his and Fred Holland’s 1983 “Wrong” Contact Manifesto.
Recognized by her family as a performer from an early age, Lee trained in ballet and modern dance in her native South Florida and expanded her creative vocabularies at the University of the Arts, from which she graduated in 2019. She burst onto the New York City experimental dance scene in 2022 and has quickly become a fixture, performing in works by Moriah Evans, Niall Jones, Ralph Lemon,Okwui Okpokwasili, Stephen Petronio, Julie Tolentino, and Andros Zins-Browne, and beginning to make her own work.
Lee’s fearless artistry is grounded in community. “I see my practice as a social dialogue,” they say. “I feel like I’m just getting started, and I want to keep digging deeper.”
Jade Manns
Performer, independent choreographer, and co-founder, PAGEANT
Jade Manns crafts work that is at once mysterious and frank in its unadorned immediacy. Her 2024Kingdom showcased her eye for formal shapes and symbols by way of images drawn from nature. InSuperposition, presented at the culmination of her 2025 New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks residency, she leaned into task-based improvisations to generate, in her words, “clarified physical ideas” through repetition. Though the two dances are tonally distinct, both bear her hallmark slippery structures, focused economy of movement, and attunement to the harmonic composition of space and time. “I’m trying to move into a bit of a new voice,” she says, “more off-balance—finding an energetic charge in the work.”
Born and raised in Calgary, the 28-year-old fell in love with New York City’s lineage of postmodern dance during her time at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. A co-founder of the artist-run performance spacePAGEANT in Brooklyn, Manns presents her fellow artists’ work and performs with others around the city, charting her own path in experimental dance while intentionally bringing others along for the ride.
As for what’s next, she takes inspiration from choreographerMiguel Gutierrez: “ ‘Dance isn’t a visual art form, it’s something else,’ ” she recalls him saying. “I’m looking for the ‘something else’ now.”
Anthony and Kel Matsena
Co-artistic directors, Matsena Productions
Welsh Zimbabwean brothers Anthony and Kel Matsena aren’t new names on the UK dance scene. Anthony was in Sadler’s Wells’ first cohort of Young Associates in 2018–19; the duo’s acclaimed showShades of Blue, an exploration of power structures, police violence, and what it means to be Black in the UK, wasincluded onThe Guardian’s list of the best dance of 2022. But 2025 took the Matsenas’ creative journey to the next level.
In May, they premieredKABEL, a reimagining of the Cain and Abel myth, at Sadler’s Wells East. Within a blood-red pool of light, the brothers played out an exploration of sibling rivalry through their signature blend of traditional African dance, hip-hop, krumping, and contemporary styles. At the Venice Biennale, they choreographed a stage work and an outdoor interaction withThe Herds, a public-art and climate initiative featuring animal puppets processing along a 20,000-kilometer route from the Congo Basin to the Arctic Circle.
Under the auspices ofMatsena Productions—which they co-founded in 2017, and which was a nominee for Best Independent Company at the 2023 UK National Dance Awards—their aim is to continue creating work that addresses the lack of diverse representation on stages and screens. With their expanding international profile and the evolving scope of their output, the Matsenas’ trajectory seems boundless.
Takumi Miyake
Soloist, American Ballet Theatre
Even among a crowded stage of villagers, American Ballet Theatre’sTakumi Miyake stands out. As one of the peasants in the company’s production ofGisellelast summer, he beamed with joyful energy. His fouetté sautés hung momentarily midair, perfectly placed, while his pirouettes spiraled endlessly upward, limited only by the fact that he had to finish with everyone else.
Now, Miyake, 22, is leaving corps roles behind him after his promotion to soloist was announced in July. He’s more than ready. In fall 2024, weeks into his first season as a corps member, he danced a principal role inÉtudes, astonishing audiences withnine consecutive double tours. Since then, he’s taken on a stream of featured roles with self-assured charm:Benno inSwan Lake, Eros in Sir Frederick Ashton’sSylvia,Clown in Christopher Wheeldon’sThe Winter’s Tale,and more.
A native of Japan, Miyake trained with his mother and grandmother, winning ballet competitions along the way. He later attended London’s Royal Ballet School before joining ABT’s Studio Company in 2022. “Takumi has a kinetic presence that commands attention,” says ABT artistic director Susan Jaffe. “There’s an electricity in his dancing that feels alive and fully in the moment.”
Emiko Nakagawa
Tap dancer
Emiko Nakagawa has a notebook where she writes down her goals, one of which last year was to be selected for “25 to Watch.” She’s used to making her dreams come true. Since moving to New York City in 2021, the Japanese tap artist, now 28, has performed with Dorrance Dance and Caleb Teicher & Company. She’s also been a featured artist and scholar-in-residenceat Vail Dance Festival.
Offstage, her fiery, intricate footwork has attracted a large followingon Instagram. In her popular videos, she dances at different spots around Manhattan to a soundtrack that has includedEminem,Kendrick Lamar, andDiana Ross. Her energetic, powerful movements almost spill over her small tap board as she unleashes captivating bursts of rhythm.
“All my friends back home want to come here, but it’s not easy,” she says. “I like to show them New York with my tap dancing.”
Nakagawa continues to make a name for herself in the city, performing with New York Circus Project andcollaborating with Teicher. But she still carries her homeland in her heart. “I want to be a bridge for tap dance between the U.S. and Japan,” she says.
Juliette Ochoa
Company artist, Oregon Ballet Theatre
WhetherJuliette Ochoa is executing whiz-bang pointe work or fluidly articulating through a contemporary piece, she moves with an eye-catching purity and totality. Trained at the School of Ballet Arizona, BAZ’s Studio Company, and Pacific Northwest Ballet School’s Professional Division, Ochoa later attended University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. There, she cultivated world-class contemporary skills and performed repertoire by Jiří Kylián, Dwight Rhoden, and more. She joined Oregon Ballet Theatre after graduating in 2021.
Ochoa has recently brought technical brilliance and a luminous stage presence to roles like Dewdrop in Balanchine’sNutcracker, Queen of the Dew Fairies inLoughlan Prior’sHansel and Gretel, and Norma Jeane inDani Rowe’sMarilyn. A confident mover who has excelled at OBT, where she’s in her fifth season, she has the versatility to thrive in diverse and challenging repertoire—and a palpable joie de vivre. “I’m just happy to be dancing,” she says.
William Okajima
Dancer, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham
To dance for Kyle Abraham, master of the stylistic remix, is to be a chameleon. ButWilliam Okajima shape-shifts with particular ease. His background in competitive and commercial dance—by 13, he was already working with Sia—means he knows how to make almost any movement look at home in his body. Since joining A.I.M in 2024, he has learned to use that power to not just grab but sustain our attention. In the December 2024 premiere of Abraham’sDearLord,MakeMeBeautiful, Okajima was quietly spellbinding, shifting smoothly between emotional gears: joyful, lonely, hopeful, vulnerable. A 2025 Princess Grace Award winner, Okajima is also a recent graduate of University of Southern California, where he earned both a BFA in dance and a minor in entrepreneurship, studying the intersections of dance and business. Maybe we’ll be seeing his chameleonic magic offstage, too.
David O’Matz
Soloist, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre
David O’Matz’s progression at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre came fast and furious. Each role the 25-year-old has danced since joining the company in 2022 has raised his profile, but something more seemed to click into place in the last year. As the Cavalier in Terrence S. Orr’sThe Nutcracker, his enviable facility, clean technical skills, and leading-man stage presencewere captivating. He was equally riveting as Tybalt in Jean-Christophe Maillot’sRoméo et Juliette, portraying an antagonist who was as likely to menace as seduce. Hisonstage promotion to soloist following his Tybalt debut last February came as no surprise.
A Pittsburgh native, O’Matz trained at the Ballet Academy of Pittsburgh before attending San Francisco Ballet School. He danced with The Joffrey Ballet’s Studio Company in 2020 and Orlando Ballet in 2021 before joining PBT. “David exhibits keen artistic sensibilities, and his technical abilities are exceptional,” says PBT artistic directorAdam W. McKinney. “He is a demonstrative performer who uses every opportunity to grow personally and professionally.”
Now, O’Matz is focused on becoming a more intuitive partner (“Being able to sense your partner’s needs and wants at any time is a hallmark of many of the best,” he says) and challenging himself to dive fully into his roles.
Ángel Ramírez
Dancer, Atlanta Ballet
Ángel Ramírez lives for moments onstage when he must push himself past exhaustion. “Just forget about being perfect,” he says. “Reach, go for it. That’s when the beauty comes.” Not that the 26-year-old Cuban dancer is anything less than a gifted technician, with effortless buoyancy, fleet precision, and breathtaking elevation. And since he joined Atlanta Ballet in 2021, his onstage magnetism has only grown, with each successive role pushing him to new levels of dramatic depth.
In Helgi Tomasson’sConcerto Grosso, Ramírez gained confidence, hovering in jumps with a bold and seamless lyricism. As Franz in Balanchine’sCoppélia, he inhabited his character with naturalness, then danced a breathlessly fast coda with easygoing radiance. Last fall, Balanchine’sProdigal Son drew out an even richer emotional range.
Ramírez grew up amid healthy competition with hisidentical triplet brothers, César and Marcos. All three trained at the National Ballet of Cuba’s school and danced with that company before attending Philadelphia’s Rock School for Dance Education. Last summer, the brothers (all now dancing professionally in the U.S.) came together for Festival Napa Valley, with Ángel dancing Ben Van Cauwenbergh’s casually virtuosic soloLes Bourgeois. Ángelembraced the tipsy character, tossing off aerial turns with playful nonchalance. He says: “I just looked at the audience—like ‘Hey, guys, what’s up?’—put my hands in my pockets, and started dancing.”
Jasmine Amy Rogers
Musical theater performer
How often does a star fall out of the sky and land on a Broadway stage? Not to discountJasmine Amy Rogers’ years of training or her work in the pre-Broadway Chicago run ofBOOP! The Betty Boop Musical. But from the moment Rogers-as-Betty struck her first perfectly beveled pose on the Broadhurst Theatre stage last spring, the musical theater world seemed to ask with one voice: Whois this diva? And how is this her Broadway debut?
InBOOP!, which concluded its run in July, the young performer’s blinding charisma shone with a special brightness in her dancing. To bring an iconic Jazz Age cartoon character to life requires a daunting physical specificity—the angles of every vampy pose, each so familiar, must be just right—and Rogers nailed it. And when she let it all go to Charleston and shimmy her way through the first-act closer, “Where I Wanna Be,” her own joy, as well as Betty’s, was infectious.
A Tony nomination later, the question now is less “Who is she?” and more “What will she do next?” First up, at least, is the off-Broadway revival ofThe 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which runs through February, followed by theEncores! production ofThe Wild Party in March.
Deniz Erkan Sancak
Freelance contemporary dancer
Armed with intellectual curiosity, physical receptivity, and a striking stage presence, the supremely versatile powerhouseDeniz Erkan Sancak has yet to find his limits. The 25-year-old New York City–based freelancer inhabits many worlds of movement with captivating naturalism: Stephen Petronio’s kinetic pyrotechnics, Douglas Dunn’s fluid formalism, Liz Gerring’s athletic gauntlets, Christopher Williams’ fanciful characters. “It’s about understanding the choreographer’s imagination,” Sancak says. “I can change, I can mold myself. Everything is a collaboration.”
Raised in a family of artists in Ankara, Turkey, Sancak’s upbringing was steeped in visual art, music, theater, and movement. In his late teens, he made the unusual leap from competitive Latin ballroom dance to training in ballet and modern dance with his teacher and mentor, Binnaz Dorkip. He expanded his training at Purchase College, State University of New York, where he earned a BFA in dance in 2022. Now, in addition to gracing the downtown scene, he’s in his second season with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, and is exploring his creative voice as he continues nurturing his connections with the dance community in Turkey. “I want to do whatever life brings me,” he says. “I can’t stop moving.”
Yuki Takahashi
Soloist, Pacific Northwest Ballet
“I’m a perfectionist,” says 27-year-oldYuki Takahashi. “I obsess over musicality and timing—I want my dancing to look effortless.” Takahashi made her stage debut at age 3 in Dallas, just a few months after her family had moved from Japan. As a teen, she danced with Mejia Ballet International and Ballet Academy East. Encouraged by her teachers andlittle brother, KJ (today a soloist at New York City Ballet), she auditioned for Pacific Northwest Ballet, joining the corps in 2019. Says artistic director Peter Boal, “Her clarity of line and clean technique suit any role—classical or contemporary—from thebravura ofSquare Dance to theromanticism of ‘Emeralds.’ ”
In Balanchine’sSquare Dance, she turns as if slicing through the air, quick and decisive, and in grand jeté, her legs are like darts. She plunges into the nonstop movement of Alejandro Cerrudo’sOne Thousand Pieces with exact timing and precision. Introspective in Jerome Robbins’Afternoon of a Faun, in which shedebuted last spring while still in the corps, she moves with stunning ease and breathiness, drawing the audience in.
Boal promoted her to soloist in November. “Her talent and experience demand a stronger spotlight,” he says. “It’s Yuki’s time to shine.”
Sayako Toku
Soloist, Houston Ballet
WhetherSayako Toku is unfurling a sumptuous développé or soaring through the air, she’s abright spark. Recently, she brought a dazzling array of talents to artistic director Stanton Welch’sVi et Animo at Houston Ballet: crisp attack in turns, buoyancy in jumps, balances that seemed to stop time, and a languid elegance, fully embodying the movement without excess showiness. Herunforced regality was in full view asPrincess Rose in Welch’sRaymonda andOlga in John Cranko’sOnegin, two of many standout roles she has debuted since her promotion to soloist last January. Houston Ballet artistic directorJulie Kent has been impressed with Toku’s energy, courage, and fearlessness since she joined the company in 2023. “Sayako wowed us with every opportunity she has been given,” says Kent. “I have loved watching her blossom.”
Durante Verzola
Ballet choreographer and educator
Durante Verzola’s ballets give crystalline classicism fresh sparkle. His ensembles often celebrate group-date conviviality, and his pas de deux dignify romances of all kinds. He tends to favor canonical music—Paganini, Gounod, Bach. Since Miami City Ballet premiered Sentimiento, his 2023 breakout South Beach–inspired suite to Ernesto Lecuona piano pieces, companies and educational institutions alike have increasingly favored his elegant creations: Luminescent for Collage Dance Collective, Bach Drama for Nashville Ballet’s second company, thecritically lauded Symphony for Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (which he calls a dream assignment).
After his early ballet training in the Kansas City area, this 30-year-old of Filipino heritage built his Balanchine base at Miami City Ballet School, where he is now resident choreographer, teaches in the pre-professional and student divisions, and leads the summer Choreographic Intensive. His mentors include school artistic directorArantxa Ochoa and former MCB artistic directorLourdes Lopez, who commissioned, among other works, Sentimiento. That balletreturns in March ahead of a large-scale Verzola premiereto Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F toclose MCB’s 40th-anniversary season. But first up is a new work for Kansas City Ballet, marking his first use of Dvořák and something of a full-circle moment, in January.
From teaching to his choreographic process, “It’s important to be a good person through it all,” Verzola says. “Kindness is the key to the success I’ve been lucky to receive.”
Header collage photo credits, top to bottom, left to right: Mia J. Chong, photo by RJ Muna, courtesy Chong; Gheremi Clay, photo by Jimmy Love, courtesy Clay; Durante Verzola leading rehearsal for Jacob’s Pillow’s Contemporary Ballet summer program, photo by Christopher Duggan, courtesy Jacob’s Pillow/Verzola; Anthony and Kel Matsena inKABEL, photo by Kirsten McTernan, courtesy Sadler’s Wells; Shi Jean Kim, photo by Josh New, courtesy Tulsa Ballet; Juliette Ochoa, photo by Christopher Peddecord, courtesy Oregon Ballet Theatre; Kris Lee in Ishmael Houston-Jones’OO-GA-LA Reimagined, photo by Rachel Keane, courtesy Lee; Sayako Toku as Princess Florine in Ben Stevenson’sThe Sleeping Beauty, photo by Amitava Sarkar, courtesy Houston Ballet; Rai Barnard and Avery-Jai Andrews of Agora Artists, photo by Corey Haynes, courtesy Agora Artists; Yuki Takahashi in Kiyon Ross’…throes of increasing wonder, photo by Angela Sterling, courtesy Pacific Northwest Ballet; Sumi Ichikawa as the Lilac Fairy inThe Sleeping Beauty, photo by Jennifer Zmuda, courtesy BalletMet; Randi “Rascal” Freitas, photo by Diyanna Monét, courtesy Freitas; Ángel Ramírez in Helgi Tomasson’sConcerto Grosso, photo by Kim Kenney, courtesy Atlanta Ballet; Dasia Amos, photo by Brandon LaVar, courtesy Amos; Takumi Miyake as Clown in Christopher Wheeldon’sThe Winter’s Tale, photo by Marty Sohl, courtesy American Ballet Theatre; Laura Fúnez, photo by Albiru Muriel, courtesy Fúnez; Emiko Nakagawa, photo by Sayaka Masumoto, courtesy Nakagawa; Bullyache’sA Good Man is Hard to Find, photo by Andrea Avezzù, courtesy Bullyache; Kashia Kancey in herI Believed It Too, photo by Emily Farthing, courtesy Kancey; Jasmine Amy Rogers inBOOP! The Betty Boop Musical, photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman, courtesy Boneau/Bryan-Brown; Deniz Erkan Sancak, photo by Jaqlin Medlock, courtesy Sancak; Jade Manns’Superposition, photo by Maria Baranova, courtesy Manns; Dominika Afanasenkov in Alexei Ratmansky’s Paquita, photo by Erin Baiano, courtesy New York City Ballet; David O’Matz, photo by Anita Buzzy Prentiss, courtesy Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre; William Okajima in Kyle Abraham’sIf We Were a Love Song, photo by Maria Baranova, courtesy A.I.M by Kyle Abraham
