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Jete With Jordan

Atlanta Ballet Soloist Teaches Master Class

Jordan Leeper, a soloist with Atlanta Ballet, instructing students at Chautauqua Regional Youth Ballet during a master class. Photo by Daryl Simons Jr.

The Chautauqua Regional Youth Ballet welcomed home Jordan Leeper to teach a master class at its studio on Third Street.

“I started dancing here when I was 12,” Leeper said. “A year prior, I had been involved in the Nutcracker, but didn’t start taking lessons until next year with CRYB.”

This class lasted nearly two hours, and was offered to intermediated to advanced level students, with 15 students in attendance. Leeper frequently worked hands-on with the students, pointing out various corrections and ensuring that proper technique is being developed.

“This is going to be a standard ballet class, back to the basics and the roots of ballet technique,” Leeper said.

Ballet contains a variety of variations, consisting of different mixtures and blends of movement patterns, jumps, and steps. As such, different instructors often teach different types of variations, which challenges the body physically with muscle memory and growth, and allows for further maturation technically.

Students performing the variations provided by Jordan Leeper. Photo by Daryl Simons Jr.

As Leeper’s story will demonstrate, technical prowess in ballet does not happen overnight.

Born and raised in Jamestown, Leeper has had an adventurous career so far, from training with CRYB, to moving to San Francisco, then back to the east coast to Charlotte Ballet.

“I had gotten a full scholarship and tuition ride to the San Francisco Ballet School,” Leeper said. “I left Jamestown my senior year in high school, leaving when I was 17, and finished my schooling while out west.”

He trained with the San Francisco Ballet School for a year before heading back east. He received an apprenticeship with North Carolina Dance Theater, now known as Charlotte Ballet, moving to Charlotte, North Carolina.

He then spent six years dancing with Charlotte Ballet. From Charlotte, he eventually moved down to Atlanta to dance with Atlanta Ballet, where he is going on his fifth season there.

Charlotte Ballet had performed Minus 16 by Ohad Naharin, an Israeli dancer and choreographer, at the Chautauqua Institution last summer. While Leeper did not perform this piece while with Charlotte Ballet, he almost did with Atlanta Ballet.

“I didn’t actually get to perform Minus 16 due to an injury the day before the show,” Leeper said, “but I did run through the entire rehearsal process of the piece, learning it and familiarizing myself with Ohad’s technique, up until we got to the theater.”

CRYB has not always been located downtown. Leeper said that he is really excited to teach here in this building.

“When I was growing up in this school, this wasn’t our location. We were located behind the Sheldon house, off of Lakeview.”

Though an established and successful ballet soloist, Leeper appreciates the chances that he has to return back home.

“It is always great to be back,” he said. “I only get to come back twice a year, if I am lucky. It is a chance for me to see all my family and catch up with my friends.”

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