Youth America Grand Prix Remains Best Platform For Young Ballerinas

America's largest student ballet competition, the Youth America Grand Prix comes to Chicago. Every year young dancers flock to the competition, hoping for name, fame, and scholarship.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Youth America Grand Prix offers scholarships worth $250,000 to the selected participants. The scholarship helps the dancers get trained in the best dance institutes. The esteemed list boasts of names like Alvin Ailey American dance Theatre and the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

The Youth America Grand Prix was founded by former dancer couple of the famous Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow, Gennadi and Larissa Saveliev 18 years ago. They started the competition to stay involved in dancing after moving to New Jersey in 1995.

The Youth America Grand Prix participants are mostly girls, aged between 9 and 19 years. They are classified as per their age and each dancer has to perform a short solo act, duet or ensemble in front of a panel consisting of six judges. The dancers follow a compulsory routine of practicing for more than three to four hours per day. They tend to balance their studies and dance meticulously and sometimes they finish their school homework during dinner. It requires incredible stamina for the little dancers to keep up with the hectic routine of school and the rigorous ballet dancing.

According to the Chicago Tribune, The Youth America Grand Prix is a hard nut to crack. There is no expert commentary nor the judges post their scores publicly. The qualifying rounds take place all over the world, including countries like France, South Korea, Japan, Brazil and Australia apart from the US. The ones selected go on to participate in the finals and the best of them win scholarships from the most prestigious dancing institutes.

The Youth American Grand Prix offers top trainers and prizes hence attracting many non-regular dancers to participate and get a feel of the professional dancing world. Many of the newcomers take up dancing as their main profession after going through the rituals of the Grand Prix.

TagsDance, Ballet, Grand Prix, Chicago, Ballerina