Watching Eric Finest navigate the sensuous curves of Stanton Welch’s Tapestry, throughout Houston Ballet’s Jubilee of Dance [in December 2023], the dancer’s circulate and exactitude merged right into a seamless entire. His beneficiant port de bras caressed the house, drawing out Welch’s nuanced choreographic traces. Along with his crisp approach, refined swagger, and beguiling fluidity, Finest catapulted from the corps de ballet to soloist on the opening of the season, and audiences can’t get sufficient of him.
Firm: Houston Ballet
Age: 21
Hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana
Coaching: Dance Creations Academy, Houston Ballet Academy, Houston Ballet II
Vacation spot Houston: Finest bonded with Houston Ballet throughout his first summer season intensive there in 2018. “I improved a lot and made so many associates. I felt this can be a place the place I can develop and be taught,” he says. Throughout his subsequent summer season, in Los Angeles at a Debbie Allen Dance Academy intensive, he met visitor instructor Lauren Anderson, who’s Houston Ballet Academy’s affiliate director of training and neighborhood engagement. “She stated, ‘Oh, you want to get again to Houston, like, immediately.’ So I did.”
Fast rise: After becoming a member of Houston Ballet II in 2021, Finest apprenticed with the principle firm in 2022, and sailed into the corps in 2023. After a flurry of lead roles, he was promoted to soloist firstly of the season, a time he describes as “taking that leap of religion and going alongside for the journey. I’ve shocked myself with what I used to be truly able to doing and due to Stanton [Welch] and Julie [Kent]’s help and religion in me.”
Midsummer doubleheader: Houston audiences acquired to know simply how a lot Finest was able to when he landed main roles—Lysander and Puck—in each casts of John Neumeier’s A Midsummer Evening’s Dream in the beginning of this season.
What the co-artistic administrators are saying: “Eric has such bodily intelligence, his thoughts–physique connection is extraordinary,” says Julie Kent. “There’s a divine high quality to his dancing. Additionally, he appears nice at each angle.” Stanton Welch shares that “Eric is an outstanding expertise. He’s so musical, and brings such element to my ballets. I get to choreograph with out restrict, and he makes me need to be a greater choreographer.”
Talking the identical language: Finest’s affinity for Welch’s intricate choreography comes via within the rising checklist of Welch’s ballets he’s carried out to this point. “Now I can go into his new works figuring out what he’s going to carry and what he’s in search of,” says Finest. “I simply attempt to are available with the identical vitality, able to work.” Clear, initially created after 9/11, made a profound influence on Finest. “Each time I watch this ballet or I carry out it or rehearse it, I at all times discover one thing new that ties to the narrative of it.”
Past dancing: Finest loves drawing and sketching. “Principally self-portraits, folks, typically superheroes. I’m very captivated with artwork and wish to take extra lessons,” he says. “I at all times need to guarantee that I maintain doing the issues that curiosity me apart from dance.”
