Janus Walters: Reflections ballet, Carolina Performing Arts, audition tour

Julie Janus Walters staged excerpts from the Gerald Arpino ballet Reflections for the spring mainstage concert, ChoreoLab, danced by the Duke Ballet Repertory Ensemble. Acting as répétiteur for the Gerald Arpino and Robert Joffrey Foundation, she created an educational opportunity for Duke Dance Program students to learn and perform this classic Arpino work. Julie was pleased to have this opportunity to work with the foundation in preserving Arpino’s repertory.

2013 also marked the 100th anniversary of Vaslav Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring. In collaboration with Carolina Performing Arts and in conjunction with The Rite of Spring at 100 Academic Conference at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Julie hosted a lecture at Duke with visiting dance historian and critic, Lynn Garafola. As part of the celebration, Julie was invited to lecture at UNC on the historical context and modernism of Nijinsky’s work and the reconstruction of Le Sacre du Printemps for Prof. Erin Carlston’s seminar: International Modernism and the Arts. In concurrence with The Rite of Spring at 100 project, she was a panelist, along with Tyler Walters and three other guest scholars for the UNC- Chapel Hill Royster Society of Fellows. The interdisciplinary panel focused on exploring and answering the question, “How Did The Rite of Spring Make it New?”

Julie continued to develop the Master Class Ex- change Program between Carolina Performing Arts and the Duke Dance Program. This past year a select group of Duke Majors, Minors and Dance Program students attended master classes and events at UNC- Chapel Hill from visiting companies; Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Nederlands Dans Theater 1, Martha Graham Dance Company and The Rite of Spring Dance Masterclass with Millicent Hodson.

As Assistant Director of the Ruth S. Shur Carolina Ballet Summer Intensive, Julie completed a national audition tour for the Summer Intensive adjudicating over 400 students. The program enrolled more than 140 talented students over the five-week intensive.

Julie also created a new choreographic work for The Carolina Ballet Summer Intensive Performance which recently premiered at the A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater in Raleigh on July 27, 2013.