ABT William J. Gillespie School Celebrates a Decade at the Segerstrom Center
- Lauren Harvey
- 9 hours ago
- 4 min read
The school will host a special master class series featuring former ABT Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie.
When American Ballet Theatre premiered Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Nutcracker” at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in 2015, there was one missing piece.
“Every ‘Nutcracker’ needs children in its production,” said Kevin McKenzie, ABT’s artistic director from 1992 to 2022.
So the next logical step, he said, was to train young dancers in Orange County. With funding from local arts philanthropist William J. Gillespie, who died in 2020, ABT and the Segerstrom Center unveiled their dance school in 2015.
Over the last 10 years, the ABT William J. Gillespie School – whose counterpart is the ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School in New York City – has launched the careers of dancers who have gone on to the Dutch National Ballet, New Orleans Ballet Theater, Kansas City Ballet and more.
To mark its 10th year, the Gillespie School will be hosting a special master class series led by prominent figures from ABT’s history – including McKenzie himself, who is scheduled to teach March 22.
“It turns out to have been such an amazing thing for the students,” McKenzie said. “The center brings in all kinds of world class productions, and those kids really get up-close exposure to working artists.”
Mallory Sweeney, a Huntington Beach native, joined the first cohort of students at the Gillespie School in 2015 and trained through her junior year of high school. Last year, she was promoted to an apprentice at Nevada Ballet Theatre.
“The environment was amazing, and it encouraged you to grow and push yourself to do better, which is what you need as a dancer,” Sweeney said of her training. “I think that’s how I became the artist that I am today, because they never let me think that there was a limit to where I could grow.”
A major draw of the Gillespie School is that it follows the ABT National Training Curriculum, said associate director Sarah Jones, who’s been involved with the school since the beginning. The comprehensive, nine-level curriculum doesn’t follow a syllabus, but instead focuses on age-appropriate exercises and the "development of the whole child," McKenzie said.
Sweeney, who originally trained in the Vaganova method, said the ABT curriculum was an adjustment at first, but she’s now grateful for her strong foundation. When she joined BalletMet out of high school and trained in the Balanchine style, she found it easy to adapt.
“You’re prepared to take on anything,” she said.
The Gillespie School is open to students ages 3 to 18. While pre-primary and primary dancers are free to sign up during open enrollment at the start of the year, students must audition for Level 1A and above. For even the youngest dancers, every ballet class is accompanied by live piano.
“It’s about teaching the whole child, stopping in the middle of class and saying, ‘Does anybody know what that music is we’re listening to?’” McKenzie said. “Just to inform them of as much as we can about what it is that they’re doing and why it is they innately love to do it.”
Additionally, the Gillespie School hosts a summer intensive preparation event every fall for its pre-professional students. It includes lectures on injury prevention, professional portraits and a mock audition. Support also continues year round; physical therapists work with the more advanced dancers to assess their strengths and weaknesses and recommend exercises to target individual needs.
Students at the Gillespie School have opportunities to perform throughout the year, including in ABT’s “The Nutcracker.” For the 10th anniversary, the school will be holding its year-end showcase off the Segerstrom Center campus for the first time at Chapman University’s Musco Center for the Arts on May 30.
“We’re trying to engage more of the public, not just our families and staff here at the center,” Jones said.
Running weekly on Sunday from Feb. 1 to May 3, the master class series allows students outside the school to come in and train without having to commit to a full school year. The classes are open to intermediate and advanced dancers ages 12 to 22, and female dancers are required to have prior pointe experience.
“Hopefully it serves as an inspiration to connect the technique of ballet to the joy of dancing,” McKenzie said of his upcoming master class. “The exercising that you have to do to perfect your technique of ballet has to convert to fun.”
McKenzie may have retired from his post at ABT, but he’s proud to see what the Gillespie School has become.
“You can plant a seed, but if you don’t put it in the right place – it doesn’t have the right amount of water and good soil – it’s not going to bloom,” McKenzie said. “We seem to have planted the seed in the right place.”
