{"id":11384,"date":"2021-04-27T13:55:14","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T13:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/?p=11384"},"modified":"2025-04-21T07:16:24","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T07:16:24","slug":"noel-wallace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/2021\/04\/27\/noel-wallace\/","title":{"rendered":"Noel Wallace"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Noel Wallace<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Wayne Sleep and Company<\/strong>
\nLondon Festival Ballet (English National Ballet) (1985-1987)<\/strong>
\nB\u00e9jart Ballet<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Noel Wallace, born in Bow, East London to Jamaican parents, was introduced to dance by his foster parent Debbie Holme, who noticed his talents in her class. He attended ArtsEd at the Arts Education School as a scholarship student and the Houston Ballet Academy also on scholarship (Bourne 227). Though Black students at ArtsEd were often pressured into pursuing musical theater rather than ballet, Wallace was \u201cpassionate about ballet\u201d (239).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Wallace started his career with Wayne Sleep and Company and was initially rejected after auditioning for London Festival Ballet\u2019s artistic director Peter Schaufuss. Denzil Bailey, formerly of the English National Ballet, reported that the company was threatened with defunding if they didn\u2019t \u201cemploy one or two black people by summer.\u201d Schaufuss then hired Wallace, who became the first Black male dancer at the London Festival Ballet (now known as the English National Ballet). On his experience with the company, Wallace said, \u201cIt was hard to fit into a company\u2026. But I stuck to it because that discipline became a very calming influence on me\u201d (Hereford Times).<\/div>\n
After dancing with the company for three years, from 1985 to 1988, he joined B\u00e9jart Ballet.<\/div>\n
Ben Stevenson of the Houston Ballet called Wallace \u201cone [of] the most gifted dancers of his generation\u201d (FAB Research).<\/div>\n
Wallace has been hired by numerous companies to choreograph. In 2000, he created a modern version of Petrushka<\/em>, set at the Notting Hill Carnival. His research on nutrition has been shortlisted for the National Endowment of Science Technology and the Arts Dream Time Award.<\/div>\n
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