On April 25, the dance company Ballet Hispanico returns for its season at City Center with performances that will run through April 27. This year, the company will celebrate Eduardo Vilaro’s 15th season as artistic director. Featured on all programs, except the Family Matinee, on all three days will be Vilaro’s newest work, the World Premiere of “Buscando a Juan.” The piece was inspired by the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibition, “Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter,” which ran last spring and summer.
Although mostly known as the subject of Diego Velasquez’s 1650 portrait “Juan de Pareja,” de Pareja became a skilled painter in his own right.
Tasked with interpreting the life of this historical figure is dancer Leonardo Brito. He has been based in New York City for the past eight years, and can be considered a true New Yorker at this point, but Brito was born and raised close to Rio de Janeiro. In a recent interview with the Amsterdam News, Brito said that what he loves most about his hometown is “the nature all around us. It’s just stunning. Also the culture. There is music and dance everywhere. All of that combined is just really a dream.”
Brito’s first memory of dance was his exposure to the artform of capoeira—originally a form of martial arts disguised as dance, it has evolved into a combination of the two, incorporating elements of spirituality as well. “My dad introduced me,” Brito recalled. “I remember at the age of 3 and 4, I have photos of me all dressed up in my capoeira uniform. My dad would just go and we would watch.”
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His first actual foray into dance came as something of a fluke. “There was a program in my hometown, founded by two very hardworking women who really just wanted to give [an] opportunity for neighborhood kids,” he said. “One day, the dancers were performing at a street party. I was with my grandma and my mouth was hanging open. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.”
Staff from the program noticed and offered Brito dance classes. He was on his way to not just a whole new skill he loved, but a life he had never dreamed of. “I grew up very poor in Brazil. And as soon as I saw that dance was like taking me places—I was able to travel all over, for example, I think that’s when I was really like, ‘Okay, I think I should commit to this because I think I’m good at it and I’m seeing a future I didn’t know existed for me before.’”
Unlike many other young men who decide to go into ballet, Brito, who has also danced with the Mariinsky Ballet, Dance Theater of Florida, and Alvin Ailey; modeled; and appeared on the FX series “Pose,” found his family eagerly supportive of his decision to pursue it. “I didn’t grow up with my mom or dad—it was Grandma taking care of her grandson and granddaughter, and she wanted us to be busy, so she supported us.”
In fact, Brito’s community came together to support his endeavors. “It was hard financially, so people in the neighborhood would buy me shoes, another person buying me costumes, another buying bus tickets so I could get to class.”
Another program in his hometown, the Brazilian Congress of Modern Dance, sponsored Brito’s trip to New York to train at the Ailey School for a month, during which time he got chosen to receive a scholarship to train at the school. He was offered a few scholarships, but chose to train with Ailey.
As he evolves as a dancer, Brito has taken care to expose himself and train in diverse dance forms. “I’ve taken jazz, tap, contemporary, and have gotten my certificate in capoeira,” he said. “I try to be as versatile as I can.”
About Ballet Hispanico, where he has now been for five years, Brito said, “There’s something so special about a place where you feel like you are understood and valued and celebrated.”
For ballet dancers, there is often pressure to fit European standards physically in addition to being technically proficient. Companies like Ballet Hispanico offer an environment without such stresses. “When I started in ballet, I was stuck in the Russian esthetic and I was trying to change my body and all these crazy things,” Brito said. “With Ballet Hispanico, for instance, I can use my capoeira, which is awesome. I’m asked to do some capoeira, I’m asked to do a little bit of samba. It’s a celebration for us to be able to tell the stories we tell.”
Brito called it “liberating” to portray the character of Juan de Pareja “for me as a Black man who really hustled and who was liberated because of art, because of dance, who was given a future I didn’t even know there was a possibility of finding. Juan de Pareja also got free through his art and it’s special to be able to bring that story to the stage.”Visit https://www.nycitycenter.org/events-tickets/ for more details.