GILROY
– They say serious dancers don’t have time to bother themselves
with things like a college education, but that wasn’t going to stop
Elizabeth Farotte.
Instead of being like dancers who usually try to get a job right
out of high school and learn through experience, Farotte had other
plans.
GILROY – They say serious dancers don’t have time to bother themselves with things like a college education, but that wasn’t going to stop Elizabeth Farotte.
Instead of being like dancers who usually try to get a job right out of high school and learn through experience, Farotte had other plans.
It wasn’t the way that most dancers make career moves, but the Gilroy native has sautered her way from Gilroy High School to the University of Califonia at Irvine and into the big time, landing a job at the highly touted BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio.
“Usually you want to go right into it,” said Farotte, who graduated with a degree in dance in June. “You usually don’t go to college. It was a bizarre way to do it.”
However, Farotte said she wanted to experience life on a university campus, and she also got a lot of experience both in life and in dancing to take with her from UC-Irvine.
“I think I wasn’t quite ready right out of high school,” she said. “In the long run, I’m glad I went to college. I got to do a lot of neat stuff there.”
Farotte has been dancing since she was just a little girl, and getting to do it professionally is a dream come true.
“I was 4. Like most little girls, I said, of course, ‘I want to be a dancer,’ ” she said. “When you’re little, it’s funny. You run around and you dress up.”
However, by the time she turned 9 years old, she found that it was going to take up a lot more of her time if she wanted to be serious.
“You can take ballet two times a week and play basketball and be on student council,” she said. “Around fifth or sixth grade, they want you to be around five times a week.”
Farotte decided it would be worth the effort to continue to dance, and she began to see the fruits of her efforts as she danced in a few John Biceglie’s local plays and also took part in ballets for San Jose ballet companies, including taking part in “The Nutcracker,” through San Jose Cleveland Ballet.
Farotte also had a chance to spend her summers away from home dancing ballet at Boston Ballet, the Royal Academy of Dancing in New York and the Cleveland Ballet. She said the experiences learning to dance was fun, but it was even more fun to see places she had never been before.
“Getting to stay in the city when you’re 14 is great,” she said.
Those opportunites to see the world continued even at UC–Irvine. Farotte was a member of the Donald McKayle’s Etude Ensemble and was given the opportunity to go to Paris and perform through an exchange program at the Conservatoire de Paris’ “Danses de Mai.”
“It’s a neat way to see a city – touring instead of being a tourist,” she said.
And while all that traveling has pulled her away from a lot of family time, Farotte said her parents have been behind her since the beginning.
“They’re all for it,” she said. “Sometimes I think that I’m being more hesitant about it than them.”
And now, after going through strenuous auditions for several ballet companies across the United States after graduation from college in June, Farotte is a professional ballet dancer.
“It’s a ridiculous number of dancers and such a small number of holes. To get in a ballet company, you have to audition,” said Farotte, who said she auditioned at a couple of ballet companies in the Midwest before a tryout consisting of more than 500 dancers at BalletMet in Ohio. “(The director) invited me and a few other dancers to stay. … I followed up on it and I ended up with a contract.”
Farotte was given a standard six-month deal, but she’s working hard to make sure she sticks.
“I probably would have been happy and take anything I could have gotten to get my foot in the door,” she said. “but I really did want to come to BalletMet. “I was more than happy to come.”
And why wouldn’t she. BalletMet is one of the 15 largest dance companies in the nation, houses one of the five largest dance training centers in the country and draws more than 125,000 people a year.
“It’s hard because the caliber of dancer is a lot higher than in college,” she said. “It’s pushing me to be better technically. It’s different being on the bottom and having to prove myself.”
Farotte has taken part in a production of “Jewels” by George Balanchine and now is working on a two-week production of “Dracula.”
But while being a rookie often means bad parts or back-up roles at many ballet organizations with ranking systems for its dancers, Farotte said there is plenty of opportunity at BalletMet.
“They call it a no-star-all-star system,” she said of BalletMet, which does not rate its dancers although it does pay by experience. “You do have a chance to do great things, get great roles.”
