Aidan Buss of Old Greenwich, our ballet star in the making, is ever closer to that stage career. He is entering his sixth and final year at London’s esteemed Royal Ballet School (RBS) at Covent Garden. Home for a month before returning to school in September, and turning 19 in October, he is asked if his heart still burns to be a professional ballet dancer. He replies, “Of course. I definitely say its increased because of the Coronavirus pandemic.”
Covid lockdowns had stolen away Aidan’s onstage RBS performances for two years. “We normally have our summer performances in June and July as our year group [finally] did this year.” Included in those performances held at the Royal Opera House were, “a class demonstration that gave you an inside view into our training and how we kept in shape, and a piece choreographed for us by a member of the Ballet Company called ‘Playfully So,’ and it was really fun to dance because it was very acting based…all of these teenagers playing with each other. And then we did a contemporary piece called, ‘Is to Be.’”
Aidan has been in training nearly the entire year. He left the RBS in July for the San Francisco Ballet School’s summer intensive. Now taking a breath, he’s signed onto a few weeks of classes at the Greenwich Ballet Academy before hopping on a plane to return to Covent Garden.
So, what does he dream to dance? Last year it was the ballet, “Onegin.” “That’s one of my favorites, but this past year we were working more on pas de deux and I’ve grown to love pas de deux. It’s working with somebody else. It’s making it a partnership. It’s working together to get the lady on her balance, so she doesn’t look like she’s about to fall. Sometimes she’ll tell me, ‘Could you maybe hold me this way, or can you open my leg to the side so it looks nicer.’ Pas de deux has opened a whole other part of the vocabulary to me. ‘The Nutcracker’ pas de deux is one of my favorites. It’s a classic and everyone knows ‘The Nutcracker,’ but the pas de deux is just so regal.”
Read more at the: Greenwich Sentinel