West Windsor resident Stephen Campanella, who began dancing with Princeton Ballet School when he was five, performs as a principal dancer with American Repertory Ballet, the school’s professional program. His earliest stage appearance was as a mouse in ARB’s “The Nutcracker.” A year later, he appeared in ARB’s production of “Our Town,” where he was carried onstage in the arms of then ARB principal dancer Douglas Martin, now the company director. Now he is dancing professionally for those who trained him. (“A Dancer Comes Full Circle,” The News, November 19, 2010).
Campanella is dancing the role of Prince Ivan in the upcoming production of “Firebird,” one of Stravinsky’s early scores, at McCarter Theater on Wednesday, March 12. It shares a program with “Rite of Spring” and “Afternoon of a Faun,” all three created by the early 20th century dance company Ballet Russes (Russian Ballet).
“I am committed to keeping great 20th century works alive by both continuing to perform those great works and by creating new versions with my personal takes on those themes,” says Martin. “These Diaghilev-era ballets opened the West to Eastern pageantry and lore. They introduced Western audiences to the artist that would go on to define art in the 20th century. Exploring that history and expounding upon it is essential to the identity and personality of my work.”
When Campanella was 10, his family moved to West Windsor to be closer to PBS. Throughout his youth, he continued to take classes at PBS. He left High School South to attend Rutgers University. After graduating in 2007 with a degree in history, he left New Jersey for a position as a trainee with Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. He returned in 2008 as an apprentice with ARB.
Campanella also attended San Francisco Ballet School and ABT Alabama summer intensives on merit scholarship for three years in a row. He went on to the graduate program at Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, where he performed the role of Sancho Panza in PBT’s production of “Don Quixote.”
He was an apprentice at American Repertory Ballet before joining New York Theater Ballet, where he performed at Carnegie Hall in a Lerner and Loewe concert with the New York Pops. His repertory while at NYTB also included Ashton’s Capriol Suite, Limon’s Mazurkas, the pas de deux from Agnes de Mille’s Carousel, and an ugly stepsister in Donald Mahler’s Cinderella.
He is currently a company member at American Repertory Ballet where he has performed the Arpino ballets Confetti and Viva Vivaldi, Philip Jerry’s Our Town, and Cavalier in The Nutcracker, among numerous other works.
Campanella has taught at Princeton Ballet School for four years and is an ABT certified teacher in primary through level 7 of the ABT national training curriculum.
“Ballet is cyclical,” Campanella says. “We train, we dance, we teach others. It is an incredible opportunity to be able to dance and teach in the same organization that trained me; I now not only pass on to others all the love and knowledge of the art instilled in me by the teachers and dancers here, but am privileged to do it alongside those same people.”
Firebird, Rite of Spring, and Afternoon of a Faun, American Repertory Ballet, McCarter Theater, 91 University Place, Princeton. Wednesday, March 12, 7:30 p.m. 609-258-2787. www.mccarter.org.
