Choreographer Ethan Colangelo is making waves in dance

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At age 17, choreographer Ethan Colangelo cut a Faustian deal with the university admission gods.

He applied to about 10 schools: one for dance, the rest for business or health sciences. When a call came from the Juilliard School, his first reaction was to laugh.

“I thought it was a friend of mine playing a prank,” he said.

It wasn’t.

Since he got into the prestigious New York arts school, Colangelo went all in for dance. By his sophomore year, the Toronto-born Colangelo had become “obsessed” with choreographing dances for his classmates. Submitting student studio work to competitions led to performances, which led to commissions once he graduated in 2019.

He’s picked up gigs guest choreographing at conventions and studios, including CLI Conservatory, a pre-professional school for commercial dance in the U.S., and Break the Floor, a touring dance convention. In 2021, that company came under scrutiny for abusive practices; Colangelo emphasized that he taught only a single class at a 2019 event associated with that group, and reaffirmed his commitment to safe spaces in dance.

In the concert dance world, Colangelo’s first major break came in 2021, when he received a commission from Ballet BC. Now, at 25, Colangelo began his tenure July 1 as the new choreographic associate at National Ballet of Canada.

The company’s artistic director Hope Muir first saw his work at the 2022 Copenhagen International Choreography Competition, where his duet Reoccurence made the program after winning the Audience Choice Award in 2021. Muir was excited to spot a young Canadian with a “distinctive and fresh voice.”

“It was a beautiful duet,” she said in an e-mail, and recalled speaking with Colangelo after the performance.

“I was so impressed with his openness and generosity that I immediately knew I wanted him to work with our artists at the National Ballet,” Muir said.

Colangelo replaces Alysa Pires, who was brought in by former artistic director Karen Kain in 2019. (In May, Pires became the first Canadian woman to have a new work premiere with New York City Ballet.)

Colangelo is slated to develop three works for the National Ballet over the next five years, under a contract that also allows him take on other dance projects. He spent June at Orsolina28, a prestigious Italian residency that receives 1000 applications each year. For three weeks, Colangelo choreographed in a hillside studio surrounded by vineyards. That experience of “diving deep” with hand-picked (mostly) Canadian dancers allowed him to take the “biggest jump” of his career so far, Colangelo said.

He spoke with The Globe and Mail in Toronto, shortly before leaving to spend the rest of the summer in Vancouver, creating his second work for Ballet BC.

My favourite Ethan Colangelo fact is that you were in National Ballet’s Nutcracker as a kid. What parts did you dance?

I was a party guest the first year, and the second year I did Misha, the lead boy role, when I was 12. It’s very exciting to be that young and on such a large stage at the Four Seasons Centre. At that age, when I was at National Ballet School, my dream was to be a principal dancer with the company. But I was also big into snowboarding. That was a huge part of my life, and I couldn’t do it all.

So you quit ballet to go snowboarding?

I did. I went to competitive snowboarding for a few years. And then I went to Elite Danceworx, a competition studio in Markham. I was there from 14 to 17, and I was exposed to so much contemporary dance. The founder, Dawn Rappitt, was brilliant about bringing in so many different types of artists.

You mentioned that you have a ‘tough body’ for ballet. What do you mean by that?

Tough body in the sense that it’s tough for me to do European classical ballet. I don’t have a lot of rotation and my hips are super tight. My legs are inflexible. My back is inflexible.

How do those limitations influence your choreography?

I’ve had to adapt to create pathways for bodies that are more malleable. Like, I have this quick twitch that I like dancers to do. I connect to that very easily, but it can be a challenge to translate that.

And snowboarding. How has being a competitive freestyle snowboarder influenced your choreography?

It’s funny. Whenever people see the way I like to twist my body and do all these quick little jumps, they always say, “Of course you snowboard.” I still snowboard. I find it massively inspiring for creating movement.

A major challenge of contemporary dance is making your work stand out from other choreographers. Where do you see yourself on that continuum?

My goal is not to just have virtuosity and a bunch of tricks. I’m trying to see how I can create an atmosphere or world where people feel enthralled. In terms of how I can make my voice different, that’s a massive challenge. When I was first starting out, there were a lot of influences on my work, especially from Crystal Pite: She’s such an inspiration to me. But the more I can strip down to the root, and to the core of what I want the experience to be, that’s when I’ll find my niche. And I’m still on that journey. I’m only 25.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Break the Floor as Burn the Floor, and was missing the chronology of Colangelo's involvement. This version has been updated.

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