This Halloween season, Northern Colorado’s Canyon Live performance Ballet (CCB) will carry the haunting and chilling story of Dracula to the stage. The manufacturing, choreographed by Creative Director Michael Pappalardo, provides drama, romance and suspense…good for the spooky season. Principal Dancer Natsuho Noguchi will carry out the function of Mina, an element that not solely calls for unimaginable method but additionally wealthy storytelling.
“The model is dramatic, atmospheric and, at occasions, virtually cinematic, with attractive large units and projections,” Noguchi says of CCB’s manufacturing. “[Mina] is such a dramatically complicated function to painting, requiring each vulnerability and power. She goes via quite a lot of totally different and sophisticated feelings, human and supernatural. It’s each a problem and a pleasure to painting her journey.”
Noguchi was born in Japan, and raised in Milan, Italy, the place she started her ballet coaching. Later, she continued her research on the Ballet Division of Showa College of Music in Japan, coaching with main Japanese professors and worldwide visitor lecturers. After graduating, she began dancing professionally within the U.S. with Metropolis Ballet of San Diego and later freelanced in Japan throughout Covid earlier than becoming a member of CCB, the place she is now a principal.
Maybe it’s this various upbringing which permits Noguchi to carry such depth and realness to complicated roles equivalent to Mina in Dracula. “My worldwide background has given me the power to ‘really feel’ the function, giving it actuality,” she says. “Particularly for a task like Mina, the place she goes via each sort of difficult scenario in a classical ballet language, having a background of interacting with very totally different individuals and cultural conditions has helped me give it a deep dramatic vary, nonetheless rooted in exact classical method. I actually take pleasure in roles that push me to transcend the steps, embodying a personality absolutely, and this ballet permits me to discover it.”
Noguchi provides, “Rising up between very totally different cultures undoubtedly formed my inventive expression, and it taught me that dance is mostly a common language. Self-discipline, precision and subtleness from Japan, ardour and explosive openness of feelings from Italy, and varied areas of the U.S. have all the pieces in between. They appear the other, however they’re each important in dance. This combine permits me to attract deeply from character and storytelling whereas staying rooted in robust method.”
And now, it’s Colorado that she calls residence. Whereas she admits that she does miss her household, and the cultural richness and the meals of Japan and Italy, Noguchi says that Colorado has grow to be an exquisite place to name residence. “I actually love the heat of the individuals right here,” she shares. “It additionally looks like a full circle second; the very first place I traveled overseas on my own, for an audition, was Colorado!”
And he or she is fast to level out that she has introduced all of her upbringing’s influences along with her into this new chapter of her profession. So, her previous is along with her it doesn’t matter what she does…or dances.
Noguchi notes that, in actual fact, there’s quite a lot of range at CCB. “Many ballet corporations name themselves ‘various’ however usually nonetheless inside a really restricted most popular vary relating to top, physique sort, tradition, model, however right here, you could find just about each sort of human being.”
Except for her main function as Mina, Noguchi has danced Aurora in The Sleeping Magnificence, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and Giselle from Giselle, all of which she says have challenged her each technically and emotionally. “Sharing them with our viewers has been extremely rewarding,” she shares.
After Dracula, Noguchi is trying ahead to performing in CCB’s The Nutcracker because the Sugar Plum Fairy, adopted by Swan Lake and Alice in Wonderland. “I’m so excited to delve into these and deepen my artistry via various repertoire,” she says. “I additionally hope to increase my expertise into educating and workshops, as inspiring the following technology of dancers is one thing I care about deeply.”
And maybe with any educating or teaching that Noguchi does, she will be able to move on her distinctive capability to each dance dramatically and technically superbly whereas additionally being a storyteller, and present how a various, cultured background – and even simply an openness to those issues – can inform one’s efficiency.
“Ballet can typically really feel unique, however particularly with photoshop and AI showing, as a substitute of 1 very best normal ‘perfection’, which will probably be simply made by AI very quickly, I feel extra human range, the guts and uniqueness inside, and the human traits of ballet will probably be extra valued,” Noguchi notes. “I imagine ballet is an artwork that’s alive and accessible for everybody, and as a dancer, I hope to maintain sharing the emotional and human facet of ballet — storytelling that speaks to audiences throughout cultures and generations.”
Canyon Live performance Ballet will current Dracula from 31 October – 2 November. For tickets and extra data, go to www.ccballet.org/2025-2026season.
By Laura Di Orio of Dance Informa.
