People moving from California to Texas have become a regular occurrence in recent years, yet seldom do they make the leap for a new dance adventure. But such is the case of San Francisco Ballet star Angelo Greco who will join the Houston Ballet in July as a principal dancer. CultureMap recently spoke with the international dance star — he has almost 150,000 followers on Instagram — as he prepares to join the Houston Ballet team.
Born in Sardinia, Italy, Greco trained in his teens at Il Balletto di Castelfranco Veneto and then the world renowned La Scala Ballet Academy in Milan before joining La Scala Ballet where he was offered a life contract. While such a contract might have kept the European dance spotlight on him for his entire career, in 2016 he decided to find a new home at the San Francisco Ballet when he was only 21. That need to move and take risks seems the motive for his next jeté forward to Houston.
“In the last few years I was feeling very comfortable. Sometimes as an artist you need a new start, a place where you get new motivation to grow,” he told CultureMap, adding, “Sometimes you don’t think about it. Sometimes you need a change to start a new adventure, otherwise you just sit and get too comfortable.”
Greco had worked with both Houston Ballet co-artistic directors, Stanton Welch and Julie Kent, in the past. He first met Kent during her own career as a superstar prima ballerina when he was training in Italy, and Greco work with Welch when he choreographed new work for the San Francisco Ballet. Greco says he actually reached out to Kent when he began to contemplate his next move.
“From there it was very quick how it happened. It felt a bit like a wave crashing over me. But as soon as I talked to both of them I felt that energy.” Greco says once he made the decision, he knew it was the right one.
“This is the thing I need to motivate myself to do something new and have a new experience.”
We spoke to Greco while he was in rehearsals for Swan Lake, his last production for the San Francisco Ballet as a principal dancer, and he said this swan song performance is a very emotional experience as he says goodbye to the people and city he has grown to love, but he seems to keep an explorer or adventurer’s philosophy with his Arrivederci.
“That’s part of life. You fall in love and then you move on.”
As Greco looks forward to new challenges at the Houston Ballet, he discussed his previous work with Stanton Welch when the San Fransisco Ballet premiered Welch’s Bespoke to the world in 2018.
“I’m very difficult to work with sometimes,” Greco admits with a laugh, explaining that he usually prefers classical ballet over some contemporary movements. “But I did love the way I felt on stage, because his [Welch’s] movements, I believe, are very classical. Since I love classical, that was perfect for me.”
Over the years, Greco has worked with some of the most acclaimed choreographers on world premiere dances including Yuri Possokhov, Helgi Tomasson, Dwight Rhoden, Christopher Wheeldon and of course Welch. One fascinating quirk of dance terminology is that when choreographers create a new dance, it is describes as creating a work “on” the dancers. Asked about what it means to have a new dance created “on” him, Greco became a bit pragmatic and poetic.
“As dancers we’re sort of words. I’m not a choreographer, but for them it feels that they come in and they’re trying express their own thoughts, their own imagination and so to express that, they use us. So we are their words. They’re trying to create a story but they use us to express something that they want to say.”
He admits sometime dancers don’t necessarily want to be those exact words, but that’s part of the communication process.
“Sometime when you work with someone, it does mesh and sometimes it doesn’t. So it means maybe that dancer does not think the same words that the choreographer wants to express and so it doesn’t work.”
But when it does work, some great ballets are born.
When talking of the recently announced Houston Ballet 24-25 season, Greco looks forward to the classics in the lineup, like Sleeping Beauty, and also the possibility of tackling Welch’s technically demanding Velocity. But he seems most excited to perhaps be a part of Welch’s next world premiere the full-length classic story ballet Raymonda.
Photo by Erik Tomasson. Courtesy of San Francisco Ballet.
Angelo Greco in Helgi Tomasson's Caprice.
Along with exploring new dance worlds onstage, he says he’s anticipating getting to know Houston, especially the city's art scene and museums. While he’s still processing the dramatic change in scenery, he knows Houston is the right decision.
“Sometimes you don’t know why you make a change. Sometimes you just go with your feelings because it feels right. And then you grow from there,” he says, and also describes they feeling he had during an earlier trip to Houston to visit his new ballet home, “That’s the way that I felt when I walked in the building. It felt exactly like I wanted to feel, calm and ready to work. That’s the only feeling that an artist needs. When you feel ready to work that’s when you can create and grow.”
