— Kanji Segawa, New York-based Dancer / Teacher / Choreographer
Metropolitan Ballet Company (MBC) was founded by Artistic Director Lisa Collins Vidnovic in 2001 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing scholarships and performance training for student dancers with master classes, guest artists, and outreach programs designed to bring ballet to the community. The region’s first pre-professional classical dance company, MBC grew from programs initiated by Metropolitan Ballet Academy, which was founded by Vidnovic in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania in 1996. MBC’s renowned Boys’ Scholarship Program, launched in 1999, offers tuition-free dance training for boys ages 7–18 and has received national acclaim. MBC also enjoys significant media attention and public support for the high quality of its performances and its young dancers.
MBC presents a broad repertory ranging from traditional classical ballets to new contemporary and classical works created or set for the Company by New York-based and other noted choreographers. Since 2006 MBC has added an astounding eleven new works to its repertoire, including: Kanji Segawa’s Toward the Light, Eternal Space, Peter Pan, and Sakamoto Suite; Folk Tales by Katarzyna Skarpetowska; Trying Round by Francis Veyette; two new children’s ballets by Jennifer Sommers: The Rainbow Fish and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; a revival of Richard Tanner’s Skin and Steel; Lichine’s comic Graduation Ball; and a staging of Swan Lake, Act III by Bolshoi soloist Natalya Zeiger.
Enhancing its core programs, MBC also performs for a wide range of audiences, traveling to elementary schools and senior centers and also partnering with other cultural institutions to provide unique performing opportunities for its dancers. MBC annually presents a production with Settlement Music School, whose talented young musicians provide live accompaniment for selected dances. MBC dancers have performed in Temple Opera Theater’s Falstaff, and will be seen in this season’s production of Cunning Little Vixen. MBC also regularly provides dancers for Pennsylvania Ballet’s The Nutcracker as well as other Pennsylvania Ballet productions. In 2005 MBC was proud to be accepted as a full Performing Member of Regional Dance America, a national association of ballet companies, where it has consistently been selected to perform for the RDA/Northeast Festival’s prestigious Friday Concert and Saturday Gala evenings.
MBC is very proud of its growth as a cultural resource for our community, presenting dance to approximately 5,000 people each year. Since 2008 we have added a free Friday matinee for school and community groups to our Family Concert Series, so that more children will have access to a high-quality live cultural performance. We are thrilled to partner with two Philadelphia elementary schools and with the Philadelphia Reads/ Prudential Cares program, enabling more than 400 children to attend our performance this year. Additionally, in Fall 2009 we began a pilot program that provides six weeks of introductory level ballet and jazz classes for every second grade student at each of our partner elementary schools in the Philadelphia School District.