Click on the picture to see more images of Daniil Simkin

Men's Gold Medal, Senior Division

Coach: Mother Olga Aleksandrova Simkin

Birthplace: Novosibirsk, Russia

Home: Wiesbaden, Germany

Academic Schooling: Attended regular school

Ballet Training:

Olga Aleksandrovna Simkin

Other Recent Accolades:

Grand Prix

Helsinki Int'l Ballet Competition 2005

First Prize

Varna Int'l Ballet Competition 2004

Click on the picture to see more images of Brooklyn Mack

Men's Silver Medal

Coach: Radenko Pavlovich

Birthplace: Columbia, SC

Academic Schooling: Montessori

Ballet Training:

Columbia School of Classical Ballet,

Universal Ballet Academy

Other Recent Accolades:

Kirsti Paakenen Encouragement Prize

Helsinki Int'l Competition 2005

Best Male Contemporary

Youth American Grand Prix 2004

Click on the picture to see more images of Toshiro Muraoka-Abbley

Heinz-Bosl-Ballet Foundation Great Hope Prize

Coach: Mark Antonio Lopez

Home: Lomita, California (L.A.)

Academic schooling:

Home-schooled by mother Alice Abbley

Ballet Training:

Lauridsen Ballet Centre, Ballet Pacifica

Other Recent Accolades:

ABT Nat'l Coca-Cola Scholar 2006

First Place:

The L.A. Music Center Spotlight Award 2006

(One of only two men to ever win this award)

DANIL: I was born in Russia. When I was two we moved to Germany. When I was 9 my mother started to teach me privately every day in a studio at a theater in Wiesbaden. From when I was 6, I stood on the stage and danced small things in performances. And then came the point when my mother said, “You're not a kid anymore. You have to get technique. You have to get the base.” And I often dance alongside my father Dmitrij Simkin; he's also a ballet dancer. He still dances. He graduated from the Moscow Choreographic School (Bolshoi Academy). Then he danced with Novosibirsk. And when I was two we moved to Germany. He danced at Dusseldorf, and he dances still at the Wiesbaden Opera. He couldn't come to this competition because he has a premiere. He's dancing, he did the stage design, the video projection, arranged the music, the concept for the production.

BROOKLYN: When I was 12 I saw a benefit performance and the dancers were amazing. The male dancers really impressed me with their amazing athleticism, and that inspired me. I went home and asked my mom about it, and she was shocked. She'd been a dancer and immediately started looking around for schools. She stumbled upon Radenko's school and could see that there was good training there. Radenko looked me over and said, “Well, he has terrible feet and his legs are okay. But if he wants to do this he'll have to come six days a week. And he'll have to study with people who've already been dancing for six and seven years.” My mom looked at me and said, “Do you want to do that?” And I said, “Sure. Why not?”

TOSHIRO: As my mom tells it, I was imitating a Michael Jackson video one day and told her I wanted to dance. When she told my father he said, “Absolutely not. No son of mine will be dancing.” She said, “ If the child wants to dance, who are you to stop that?” So he said, “Okay. Find a school and I'll pay for it.” I started when I was 6 with tap. I took a little ballet on the side when I was 11 but I wasn't really interested in that – I was a tapper. Then when I was 13, after getting to play Fritz in a San Pedro production of the Nutcracker, I started to get serious about ballet dancing.

DANIL: If you had asked a lot of people if a mother could train her son, they would have said it's not possible. She's been teaching me now for ten years. She coached me for this competition. The contemporary piece that I will dance, Les Bourgeois, was originated for my father. My mother is a good pedagogue. Her teaching style suits me very well. She has a Russian base but when she arrived in the West she saw a lot of things and kept developing. She finished her pedagogical degree in the Ukraine just four years ago because she needed this certification to work as Director of the Frankfort Conservatory. Her teacher was Alisa Nikiforova, a graduate of the last class of Vaganova and a student of Vera Kostrovitskaya. Nikiforova is still alive in Berlin and my mother always sends her our videos of me. She is very critical but she likes me.

BROOKLYN: Age 12 is a little bit later than most dancers start, so I had some catching up to do. But working six days a week paid off really quickly. I started with people at a higher level, so I had things to look at. I went to the library to get every ballet book and video I could find. I tried everything I saw on the videos. That and the training I got at Radenko's -- which is very thorough and hard and strict and strenuous and time-consuming - helped me get where I am. In 2001 I went to Universal (or Kirov) Academy of Ballet and graduated in 2004. The teachers who influenced me most were Vladimir Djouloukhadze and Anatoli Kucheruk. The boys took separate classes so we could focus on the men's work. Then I went to the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago for one year as an apprentice, and the following year I went to ABT 2.

TOSHIRO: From age 13 I studied Monday through Saturday and I took two classes a day for three or four years at South Bay Ballet in Torrance, CA. I worked with Alicia Head, Charles Maple, the school director Diane Lauridsen, and Colleen O'Callahan. After that I started going to summer intensives with Houston Ballet and ABT. I studied this past year at Ballet Pacifica in Irvine with John Gardner and Amanda McKerrow. Gardner took me to the next level of career training. When he first saw me he said "You have good technique and a really good jump, but you just don't have any strength." He really worked with me to get my dancing stronger and smoother, so I didn't look so out of control. I've done a lot in the past year. And now I'm here.

DANIL: A ballet dancer has to continue doing classes. If you have the base of good training you can keep constructing on it. I just learned some Bournonville combinations from a video. You can copy what you see and try your best to learn it. To watch is very important for a ballet dancer. A lot of companies come to Frankfort and we always watch and educate ourselves.

BROOKLYN: You have to have a lot of perseverance and a bounce-back attitude. Not too many things come easy, and they take time. I remember getting so frustrated with my feet - stretching them and stretching them until they felt like they were going to break. And then the next day I'd have to start all over again. I'm like, "Why don't they just stay there?" It takes time to see results. So you have to be really determined, tenacious. Turn off the TV and work on what you need to work on. Or if you can do it while watching TV - like stretching your feet - do that. Take every opportunity to work on anything you think could be better.

TOSHIRO: Keep your schooling up because a lot of teachers, choreographers, and directors like to work with someone they can speak with. It's really helpful when they say this person really understands and he gets it. It's what you do with the knowledge you have -- how you apply that. That's what's most important.

DANIL: In school only a few people know I am in ballet. I'm in a regular high school and ballet is not popular. If I were playing football at this level, everyone would go crazy. It's been really hard but I wanted to stay at home and earn my high school degree and have a normal education in the normal subjects. I did well enough to study whatever I want now. It would have been a pity if I didn't do it. My main subjects were English and Art. I loved mathematics. If I didn't do ballet, I would do photography or painting. Normally if you're dancing at a competition level, you're completely focused on ballet. But I try to be open and have not only ballet in my life - and that's important.

BROOKLYN: Last year I competed in Helsinki, Finland at the IBC there. These competitions are a great opportunity for a number of reasons. For exposure - because so many people from so many places around the world come to watch. And it's a great experience dancing among some of the best young dancers in the world. They pick the crème-de-la-crème of the dancers. Also, the journey you take preparing for something of this magnitude is not like anything else. Even being a company and rehearsing for eight hours a day is not the same as when you prepare for something like this. It's so much more intense and you always find out new things about yourself. Every day you find out something new.

TOSHIRO: I've met a lot of dancers that say "I want to do 540 air tours and triple saut de basques and a million pirouettes." That's not what they're looking for in competitions or companies. If a person says, "You only did three pirouettes on stage," my answer is, "Yeah, but were they clean? Was I lifted? Was I turned out? Did I use my plié well? Were my shoulders up? Was my butt sticking out?" I try to keep it as clean as possible. I want to be a very well rounded dancer. I work the left side and not just the right because it's going to help me. When you're going to a company and the choreographer wants you to be able to go to your bad side. If you can't do anything to the left, you're lost. What are you going to do?

DANIL: I would love to dance all the classical roles-all the princes, or demi-character roles like Bazilio, like Ali. But I would like to grow as an artist and do modern roles, too, like Kylian, like Mats Ek. I'd really love to do some Balanchine, and Bournonville of course. I would like to do everything.

BROOKLYN: I aspire become one of the best dancers in the world and a principal in a reputable ballet company in the next couple or years, and travel the world sharing my art with different people and cultures. Dance is a beautiful form of expression and one of the few languages that is universally understood besides math, and therefore I feel it is extremely important to preserve and share it because so little in the world unites us at present. I want to touch audiences around the world, while enlightening the world's youth to arts through my dancing - especially the African-American and minority youth in America because I feel that the majority is severely underexposed. I hope that I can change the world one audience at a time, if not, to just make a little difference for the better.

TOSHIRO: I do want to choreograph. I have two dances here that I've done - Troika, which I'll be performing Sunday evening, and if I get to the third round I'll be performing a segment from one of the ballets that I've choreographed, and that's my contemporary piece for this competition. A few years ago I did a piece called Erna to music from Alegria, Cirque du Soleil, and it was selected to be presented at Regional Dance America as emerging choreography. So far I've set three pieces but I have many more that I want to do. I'm dying to do something complete - that's not just the same thing over and over again. Even if the music's repetitive you need to keep the audience involved. Otherwise you just fall asleep.

DANIL: I'm going to dance for the Vienna Opera Ballet. There were two companies and they merged. I know the director quite well. He had invited me to galas in Budapest, where he is the former director. It's a big company and it's just on the rise. There are more than a hundred members and they have a good repertoire - all the classics are on one stage and a lot of modern is on the other stage. It's a good opportunity and not far away from my family in Germany, so I can go there weekends, or whatever. They took me as a demi-soloist, and they have no principals so it's really like being a soloist. They have the corps de ballet and demi-soloists and soloists. So I'm joining as kind of a soloist and can get my experience fast without waiting years to get some roles. I get the opportunity immediately to dance.

BROOKLYN: I return to New York to rehearse for one day before flying to California, where a handful of us from ABT Studio Company perform for some of ABT's biggest donors. I dance a solo created for me by an amazing choreographer named Sean Curran to the music of Handel's Aria. Then I go to Martha's Vineyard to guest in Le Corsaire with Lorraine Graves and Friends. After weighing many options, I decided to go to Orlando Ballet for at least one season to work with Bruce Marks, who expressed interest in developing me as a dancer and artist. I start as a principal in Allegro Brillante and Midsummer Night's Dream, which is very new and exciting to me. I am hoping that through my diligent work ethic, the challenges being thrown at me, and the guidance of a great director that I may gain much knowledge and growth this coming year.

TOSHIRO: Hopefully I will get a company contract so I can start dancing professionally. I want to dance with a company that does classical but also contemporary ballet, and has new artists coming in, so you always get a new chance to express yourself through your dancing. There's more to dance than just doing Swan Lake and Don Q and your set classical ballets. Classical ballet doesn't have to tell a story. Like what George Balanchine did with Concerto Barocco or Symphony in C. It's just about the dancing. You don't have to use the entire symphony and combine it with a full-length story ballet. That's mainly to me what dance is about - whether it's jazz, or hip-hop, or whatever the music is.

[Update: Toshiro debuted internationally Nov. 26 in Germany at the Bayerische Staatsoper National Theatre. Now at the Heinz-Bosl-Stiftung school under Director Konstanza Vernon, he has a written contract with Miami City Ballet, but has been asked to audition for Het National Ballet in the Netherlands. His teachers have said he should begin his professional career as a soloist in 2007.]