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For Katherine Barkman, Falling Onstage Led to Her Latest Job Offer

Katherine Barkman with Rolando Sarabia in the Black Swan pas de deux at The Washington Ballet. Photo by Mena Brunette of XMB Photography, Courtesy The Washington Ballet

Katherine Barkman's career reads like a storybook: At 18, she left Pennsylvania and moved to the Philippines to become a principal at Ballet Manila. She danced Juliet, Giselle, Odette/Odile and Kitri, but three years in, it was time for new challenges. Late last year, Barkman joined The Washington Ballet, bringing her scintillating, pure Vaganova technique and her warm stage persona to U.S. audiences.

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News

The USA International Ballet Competition Has Just Announced Its List of 2018 Competitors

Younji-Grace Choi at the 2014 USA IBC. Choi is now a dancer with Cincinnati Ballet and will return to the USA IBC as a senior competitor this summer. Photo by Richard Finkelstein, Courtesy USA IBC.

Exciting news today: the USA International Ballet Competition has just announced its list of invited competitors for the summer 2018 competition. The USA IBC has invited 119 dancers from 19 countries out of over 300 applicants to compete in Jackson, MS June 10-23.

Since the last USA IBC in 2014 the competition has expanded its age limits; the junior category now allows dancers ages 14-18 and the senior category dancers ages 19-28. Of the 119 competitors this year, 53 are juniors and 66 are seniors. The United States has the highest number of competitors invited (52), followed by Japan (23) and South Korea (14). The other countries represented are Armenia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Mexico, Mongolia, Peru, Philippines, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

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Ballet Stars

Ballet Manila's Katherine Barkman on Moving From Pennsylvania to the Philippines at 18

Katherine Barkman as Kitri in Ballet Manila's "Don Quixote." Photo by G-nie Arambulo

At age 18, Katherine Barkman packed her bags to move nearly halfway around the world after receiving an email from Ballet Manila's artistic director Lisa Macuja-Elizalde. A competition dancer with no professional experience, Barkman submitted a video to Macuja-Elizalde, and jumped at the opportunity to start her career as a principal with the Southeast Asian company. "It was an unconventional path, but I had to just go for it!"

Barkman's journey started in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where her dance training quickly progressed from recreational classes to studying the Vaganova method with Nadia Pavlenko at the Academy of International Ballet Theater. By 16, she was training privately with Pavlenko for six to seven hours a day. "Most children start that syllabus at age 10, so I had to learn quickly," she notes. "It was difficult, but the Russian style worked for my body and set the tone for me as a dancer."

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