New competitors for the Bruhn prize. (News).

The late Erik Bruhn, premier danseur and former artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, posthumously endowed a competition to encourage promising young dancers. The National Ballet of Canada administers the event, which is held every two to four years and is judged by participating company artistic directors. The Sixth International Competition for the Erik Bruhn Prize took place in Toronto on May 20, and this year NBC Artistic Director James Kudelka invited San Francisco Ballet and Stuttgart Ballet to send competitors. In the past, all dancers came from the National Ballet of Canada, The Royal Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, and American Ballet Theatre--the four companies with which Bruhn felt most closely associated (although upon occasion another company has been invited to send a dancer if one of the core groups could not).

The female winner was ABT's Michele Wiles, 22, who performed Gsovsky's Grand Pas Classique and the bedroom pas de deux from MacMillan's Manon with partner David Hallberg. The male winner was Stuttgart Ballet's Friedemann Vogel, 22, who danced the pas de deux from Giselle and Forsythe's In the middle, somewhat elevated with Alicia Amatriain.