By Kathy Collins
(Photo by Gianna Grace Photography)
The 2016 winner of the Richard Munro Memorial Scholarship from the Brandon Ballet is 15-year-old, Alexis Griner, a home schooled student. Griner is dancing as a Pre-Professional in the day program at the Brandon Ballet. She has been training in dance for the last four years. Griner has participated the last two years in summer intensive programs at the Brandon Ballet and the Joffrey Ballet.
The Richard Munro Scholarship was established to honor the late Richard Munro who spent his life nurturing the art of ballet as a ballet master and artistic director and a ballet academy founder in Kentucky and Texas. He spent the last six years of his life teaching, coaching, choreographing and performing for the Brandon Ballet.
The $500 scholarship is available to any dancer in the greater Brandon community who is classically trained in ballet and between the ages of 13 and 18. The recipient may use the scholarship to offset the cost of any summer ballet intensive program to which the recipient has been accepted during the year in which the scholarship is awarded.
“Brandon Ballet is fortunate in having truly dedicated dancers in our ballet company,” said Paige Kolm, president of the Board of Directors for the Brandon Ballet. “Our Artistic Director, Octavio Martin and Executive Director, Alice Holden Bock, possess true gifts for drawing out the very best efforts from our dancers. Alexis works very hard in her training and is quite single-minded in her focus and goals. The Brandon Ballet is charged with providing her with the highest quality of classical ballet training. Awards like the Richard Munro Scholarship prove that we are on the right track.”
The Brandon Ballet’s summer Intensive program is three weeks of detailed ballet instruction with an emphasis on Technique, Pointe Work, Pas de Deux (certain levels only), Variations, Men’s classes, Character, Jazz, Modern, Flamenco and Conditioning for dancers. Admission is by audition only. For more information, visit www.brandonballet.org.
