- November 23, 2024
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Ormond Ballet is striving to create high levels of art.
With a focus on a professional, disciplined and yet inclusive and warm training environment, Artistic Director Michelle Boutros wants Ormond Ballet to stand out from other dance schools. A former ballerina, and one who comes from a family of ballerinas, the St. Petersburg native has decades of dance and art administration experience, having danced with groups such as Les Jeunes Danseurs and Ballet International, and worked at various dance schools throughout the U.S. before coming to Ormond Beach, where she previously worked as the artistic director for the European School of Performing Arts.
Boutros wishes that Ormond Ballet — which opened at 1240 Hand Ave. in Ormond Beach on Jan. 3 and currently has 49 students — incites the same excitement in the public as an impressive art exhibit.
"My goal is for us to be set apart, just so that people notice what we do," she said. "I don't want to be like everybody else. Even as a kid, I didn't want to be like everybody else — I was trying to be different. So we really strive to offer something that maybe you might find with Orlando Ballet, but with us."
Ormond Ballet co-owner Jeremiah Garner, also a dancer himself, added that they also aim to instill in their students a level of discipline that will help them for the rest of their lives, no matter what path they decide to follow.
"If you don't want to become a professional ballet dancer, you'll still gain a lot coming here because we don't teach people how to become professional ballet dancers," Garner said. "We teach people how to become professionals, and the discipline, and the artistry and the work ethic that they learned from here will push them to be excellent in everything that they do."
Ormond Ballet held its first show on April 23, at the Ormond Beach Performing Arts Center. "The Gathering" explored the human condition through dance, and featured Port Orange homeschooled high school senior Mary Beth Stitts in the principal role.
It was a fun experience, and one unlike anything Stitts said she had ever done before in her 13 years of dancing.
"I really opened my mind up to a lot of different styles of dance and new variations, and I really enjoyed it," Stitts said. "It pushed me as a dancer, my confidence levels specifically."
She was among the group of former ESPA students who followed Boutros to the new school. Stitts said as an instructor, Boutros is focused on the individual dancer and how to help them grow.
"It's not as much of a competition between each other, but more against yourself and all the specific things that you can work on," she said.
Father Lopez Catholic High School senior Caroline Chanfrau and 20-year-old Olivia Tegner also switched from ESPA to Ormond Ballet. Chanfrau said they've also learned more about dance in general under Boutros' direction, and it's been interesting seeing her fellow peers love of dance grow as a result.
"It feels like we come here for a purpose and we come here for a reason," Chanfrau said. "And I think that it breeds focus in a way."
Being in a new building, which spans 4,800 square feet and has three separate studio spaces, also makes the students feel like they're in a professional environment, said Tegner.
"I think that the new building carries a more positive atmosphere, for sure," Tegner said. "I think this is like a fresh start and a new experience."
Though Boutros and Garner spent two weeks almost nonstop at the end of 2021 working to open Ormond Ballet, the idea for a new school began forming over last summer. Boutros took over ESPA in June, and knew pretty quickly that it wasn't a good fit for what she wanted to accomplish.
But she didn't take action to open a new school immediately. Her sister died unexpectedly soon thereafter, and she found herself juggling that life-altering event with putting on a productions for her students. Near the end of the year however, she and Garner, who in addition to dancing also has a background in piano and different areas of production, decided to go forward with Ormond Ballet, having found the new building over Thanksgiving.
And now, they are excited for what the summer will bring.
"We're bringing in a lot of cool guest artists, professionals in the dance world from around the world," Garner said. These include principal dancers with Mariinsky Ballet and Hamburg Ballet.
Dance training when they were children completely changed their life, Boutros said. They want to do the same for future generations.
"So whether they become photographers, doctors, bankers, or dancers, this training will give them a blueprint of their life, and one thing too that they will learn from us is grit," Boutros said. "They will learn to persevere. ... We're going to celebrate becoming the best version of ourselves."
