How to Spring Relevé
Sally Rojas- Houston Ballet Academy Faculty Member

How to Spring Relevé

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Sally Rojas, faculty member with Houston Ballet Academy shares pointers for how to correctly spring to relevé.

Sally Rojas was born in Caracas, Venezuela. At the age of ten she moved to Miami, Florida where she began her dance training with Thomas Armour, Robert Pike, and Judith Reece Newman. She went on to study at the School of American Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, and at sixteen became a member of American Ballet Theatre II Company.   Ms. Rojas joined the Houston Ballet Company where she became a soloist. She danced many principal roles including, Ben Stevenson’s The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Snow Maiden, Peer Gynt, Cleopatra, and Dracula; Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, Song of the Earth, Gloria, and Elite Syncopations; and Ronald Hynd’s The Merry Widow. Ms. Rojas also enjoyed dancing lead roles in contemporary ballets including, Stanton Welch’s Indigo, Garden of Mirth, and Bruiser; Ben Stevenson’s Miraculous Mandarin, Four Last Songs, Dusk, and Bartok Concerto; George Balanchine’s Serenade, Agon, La Valse, and Four Temperments; William Forsythe’s In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated; Nacho Duato’s Without Words; Jiri Kylian’s Sinfonietta; Trey McIntire’s Second Before the Ground and Peter Pan; Christopher Bruce’s Ghost Dances, Rooster, Sargeant Early’s Dream, Land, and Cruel Garden; and John Selya’s Ingredients. Since her retirement in 2004, Ms. Rojas has been teaching the upper school at Houston Ballet Ben Stevenson Academy. She has taught master classes at the Regional Dance America South West Festival, Southern Methodist University, and the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Ms. Rojas has also been an adjudicator for the Children’s Foundation for the Arts and Sam Houston State University. Recently, at the invitation of Geraldina Baca-Spross with the Organization for the Arts at Francisco Marroquin University, in a joint partnership with the Houston Ballet Academy, Ms. Rojas has been involved in a three-year project that includes traveling to Guatemala and holding teacher workshops and teaching master classes. Ms. Rojas is also the artistic coordinator of Pink Aware, a program choreographed by Jane Weiner to promote breast cancer awareness through dance and the arts.

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