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Episode 11 | Innovation II: Ben Rose
7 Plays8 hours ago
In this episode of At the Barre, we go behind the scenes with Madison Ballet company member and emerging choreographer Ben Rose.
Ben shares his unique path from competitive ballroom dance into ballet, and how that background continues to influence his creative voice. He discusses the structure of his new piece Tea for Two for Eight, built as a series of contrasting sections inspired by ballroom competitions, and his goal of highlighting both versatility and individuality within the dancers.
About Ben Rose
Benjamin Rose began his training in Houston at Vitacca Ballet school and The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. After 3 Summers at Houston Ballet School, he joined the full-time day program and began studying under the direction of Andrew Murphy. After graduating he began his professional career as a Trainee with Ballet West in Salt Lake City Utah and was able to perform roles such as The Lead male in George Balanchine's Walpurgisnacht and as “The Bear” in Willem Cristianstens the Nutcracker. While he lived in Utah, he was fortunate enough to also work as a guest artist and performed not only with the University of Utah but also around the country with companies such as NorthStar Ballet in Alaska, Nevada Ballet Theater in Las Vegas, AVA Ballet in Reno, and Queen City Ballet in Helena, Montana. From there he moved to Denver where he joined the studio company at Colorado Ballet and performed with Feel the Movement, a contemporary dance project based out of Denver led by Director Edgar Page. He then moved to Iowa and began dancing at Ballet Des Moines directed by Serkan Usta. After living in Iowa, Ben moved to San Antonio to dance for Ballet San Antonio under the direction of Sofiane Sylve. He was promoted to soloist his first season with company and danced in roles such as Basillio in Don Quixote, The Nutcracker Prince in The Nutcracker, and Bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream. On top of his career as a ballet dancer Ben is also a professional ballroom dancer competing in International Latin.
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/mynameisben10/
See Tea for Two for Eight by Ben in Innovation II @ Overture Center Promenade Hall May 8-10, 2026
🎟️ madisonballet.org/innovation-ii
Join the conversation!
MBSP WEBSITE: https://www.madisonballetspecialprojects.com/
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/madisonballetspecialprojects
Questions/comments? Email us at hello@madisonballetspecialprojects.com
Credits
PODCAST COVER PHOTO: Matthew Ulrich
DANCER: Madison Ballet Company Artist Lauren Thompson
MUSIC: Capet String Quartet - Ravel (Col. D 15057-60) 1928
BEN HEADSHOT: Lexia Frank Photography
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'At the Bar' Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
I'm Chris Ferenthal, director of Madison Ballet's Special Projects, and this is At the Bar, your behind-the-scenes look at the ideas, stories, and creative processes shaping Madison Ballet's work.
00:00:18
Speaker
Each episode brings our community a little closer to the dancers, choreographers, and collaborators who are making ballet in Madison right now. Whether you're a seasoned ballet domain, current or former dancer, or simply curious about how dance gets made, we warmly invite you into the room where it happens.
00:00:42
Speaker
Welcome back to at the bar with Madison ballet special projects.
Meet Ben Rose: Dancer & Choreographer
00:00:46
Speaker
I'm Chris Ferenthal director of special projects, and I'm joined today by Ben Rose, a colleague of mine, a dancer at Madison ballet, and also a choreographer on our upcoming innovation to show at promenade hall at Overture center, May 8th through 10th. Ben, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
00:01:07
Speaker
Thank you for having me. I've really enjoyed seeing you dance over the past couple of years, and I'm really looking forward to getting to know your work choreographically as we enter our Tech Week.
Ben's Dance Journey: From Ballroom to Ballet
00:01:20
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit about your journey into dance before we get into the nuts and bolts of what you're making on the ballet?
00:01:28
Speaker
The start of my journey to dance, I actually was doing ballroom dancing. And my mom put me in classes when I was really young. I was three. So till I was 16, I was doing a whole different style of dancing. My senior year of high school, I joined the Houston Ballet School.
00:01:46
Speaker
And I was in the academy there. And that was the start of my ballet journey. Wow. So you did ballroom from three to 16 with no ballet? I had a few ballet classes, but I wasn't training seriously, taking class every day. And that wasn't my primary goal at that point.
00:02:06
Speaker
Oh, that's fascinating. What technique wise did you find was more easily transferable from what you had been studying? And what did you find difficult in picking up when you started doing ballet more seriously?
00:02:20
Speaker
I think the endurance from ballroom dancing has really helped me in ballet, especially, you know, towards the end of like an hour show. I still feel like I'm able to like push and like be at 100%, which I think comes from just like when you do a ballroom competition, you're doing 10 minutes of just dancing all at once. So it's it's a lot different. My teacher, when I started ballet, I remember he was always very mad at me. He said, I moved my hips way too much for ballet. So that was something i always had to work on, you know. Well, that's really fascinating. So in your transition from ballroom to ballet, did you feel like it was a new muscle that you were ready to sort of stretch? Or did it just seem like the easiest way to make it into a professional dance career? Because there are ballet companies, but ballroom dance is not exactly as easily, i guess, found.
00:03:15
Speaker
That was something that I liked about ballet is there was a structure to it more. There's a season, you have a contract versus ballroom is like, it's just different. You're training for a competition and then you do your next competition. So I like the aspect of concert dance a little bit more than competitive. You know, with dance, it's very, it's an art form. And so I feel like a lot of that gets lost a little bit sometimes. Like in competition dance?
00:03:40
Speaker
Yes, a little bit. There's still really good aspects of competition dance like and how they're pushing like athleticism and everything. And there's still a lot of art, but it's different than like a performance, I would say. you know Yeah.
00:03:54
Speaker
That's definitely been an interesting aspect to talking to some of your colleagues who did come up through a competition dance pathway, because there are good things. like You learn to pick up a lot of choreography. Right.
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, and I actually teach you at a lot of competition schools and I really enjoy it and working with all the kids. Like, it's very fun. so Yeah. When you did move into ballet, did you transition to a pre-pro at Houston Ballet and then just from there into professional contracts? So I went to a magnet school in Houston starting my freshman year and I failed ballet my first semester there. And so I ended up taking classes outside of my school just so I didn't get kicked out of the dance program.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah. ended up really liking ballet, and so it became something I did occasionally. i would take some drop-in classes around Houston, but then my junior year of high school, I joined a pre-competitive studio, Vitaka Ballet. Now, it used to be Vitaka Dance Project, but they've grown a lot. It's really cool to see.
00:04:56
Speaker
I was there for a year. I was dancing there, and then I was also still competing as a ballroom
Balancing Academics with Dance: Ben's High School Experience
00:05:01
Speaker
dancer. So... That was a pretty tiresome year. Yeah, I bet. So at that time, like what is your daily life like? You presumably have to fit in some schoolwork at some point. But are you just dancing when you're not in school and then sleeping when you Yeah.
00:05:17
Speaker
Well, that year I was lucky because the dance program at my school was integrated with my academic stuff. I would get to school and I had physics. I remember from 7.50 8.45.
00:05:32
Speaker
And then starting at 8.50 till lunch, I would have dance. And then after lunch, I would go to my core classes. So that would be, you know, my algebra or chemistry, just different things.
00:05:45
Speaker
So it was a lot of fun. And then right after school, my dad would actually, he would get off work a little bit early. He would come pick me up and then he would drop me off at my dance studio. And then I would be training there from 5.30 till 9.30 or o'clock at night. Were your parents dancers or artistic folk or how did they relate to what you were up to? My mom is actually like a visual artist. She's a painter, but my dad is a a computer programmer. He plays the piano a little bit, but I think my mom definitely. Yeah, she's the artistic side of the family.
00:06:18
Speaker
And computer programmers have to do, i guess, plenty amount of creativity, but yeah, I'm seeing that in more of these interviews that there's a more artistically coded parent and then a more technologically coded parent, but they all kind of, you know, blend. So that's fascinating.
00:06:35
Speaker
Does the ballroom dance world work on a kind of you create the choreography for the piece that you're dancing? Like, did it encourage a choreographic turn in you earlier than otherwise might have been necessarily what ballet dancers generally deal with?
00:06:54
Speaker
I think it has given me a different point of view on like how I move maybe versus others, like just training in ballet. It's just a different coordination when you're when you're learning. And then especially because I learned when I was so young, I was, you know, I'll send you the video. I was three years old. Oh, I love to see that. You know, just learning these just basic steps. So were you making up dances early or did that kind of come later?
00:07:21
Speaker
Definitely later. I was in a dance composition class at my school and I did not have a fun time. Once I started doing a lot of recital dances and I did ballroom routines for my student in San Antonio and just random things would pop up where people needed a dance. I started doing that a lot more and I think it helped me just figure out how I can be creative and what type of style and movements that I like to see and choreograph for people.
00:07:51
Speaker
And as we begin to talk about your piece for Innovation 2, think we'll get more into this, but you do seem to be able to draw upon a much wider movement vocabulary, perhaps because of the different kinds of dance that you've been exposed to and trained in But before then, how did you make your way to Madison
Ben's Career Path to Madison Ballet
00:08:11
Speaker
Ballet?
00:08:11
Speaker
My senior year of high school, I was at the Houston Ballet Academy. I sort of ran down the director of Ballet West in a hallway and asked him if I could join Ballet West in Salt Lake. And he luckily said, absolutely, I could be a trainee there. So I moved to i moved to Salt Lake and i worked there for two years and it was a lot of fun. That's where I had met.
00:08:34
Speaker
Lauren Thompson. And so after then, i did two years in the studio company in and Denver at Colorado Ballet. When I was at Colorado Ballet, we were fired on the day of the pandemic when it started. We had a huge meeting in the studio, I remember, and they just basically told us the last show's canceled.
00:08:53
Speaker
Sorry, there's really nothing we can do like with everything. And we were let go for the rest of the season. So was on my birthday, March 13th. That's awful. It's crazy. But with everything that happened, I was scrambling that year to find a job and I joined Ballet Des Moines.
00:09:09
Speaker
And so I danced there for a year. And then from there, I joined Ballet San Antonio and I danced there three years. And then Lauren basically had let me know that at Madison Ballet, they were looking for guys and that I should audition. And so I auditioned and here I ended up.
00:09:26
Speaker
Wow. I'm continuously struck by, again, how small the dance world seems since I assume you were at Ballet Des Moines before Tom Mattingly, right?
00:09:37
Speaker
When I was there, my director, his name was Sir Khan Usta. But since then, I guess Tom has spent some time at Ballet Des Moines and now he's choreographed for us. And yeah, Lauren connecting with her at various points is fascinating.
00:09:50
Speaker
Tom also taught me when I was at Ballet West because when he was in the tour of American in Paris, he came through. i remember him teaching master classes for us and it was just so much fun, but it really is a small world. Yeah. Yeah.
Creating 'T for Two for Eight': A Choreographic Journey
00:10:05
Speaker
So can you um tell us a little bit about the piece that you've made on Madison Ballet? First off, what's the title of the piece and then what music are you using?
00:10:15
Speaker
The title of the piece is t for Two for Eight. And I use one of the songs, it's the third section, as the inspiration for the title. But I just wanted to do something fun and maybe that showed the versatility of the dancers. I think something that I remembered from Ballroom is that, you know, we're doing five dances together.
00:10:36
Speaker
Back to back to back. But they all have to be very different. And you always wanted to have them be unique and independent of one another. So I wanted to show that, I guess, with each of my sections and have something very different for the audience. So what are the individual music pieces that you're using and what sequence?
00:10:53
Speaker
So I have a tango to start. ah who And then i have just sort of a instrumental piece by the Beach Boys for my second section.
00:11:04
Speaker
And then for the third section, I have the T for Two by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, which I really like. That's just one of the songs I've heard my whole life, basically. It's one of the songs they play for ballroom dancing all the time. And so I wanted to interpret it in my own way, I guess.
00:11:23
Speaker
Then I have another song by Della Reese. And then I have the fifth section, which is a Dean Martin track as just sort of a nice finisher for the piece.
00:11:34
Speaker
How did you decide the personnel for each individual piece as you're making the arc of the whole? I actually played with the order of things a little bit because originally I didn't start with the tango. That was going to be the end.
00:11:51
Speaker
But I thought about what I wanted the arc of the storyline of the piece to be. And I ended up putting it at the beginning just so that I want there to be a sense of time passing almost. And so I thought one way to do that would be almost to have the piece get brighter.
00:12:09
Speaker
And I thought that by having the tango at the beginning with like spotlights and things and then making it gradually lighter, like a sunrise almost would kind of help give it like a flow.
00:12:22
Speaker
If you have ever watched a ballerina float effortlessly across the stage, you've seen the magic of pointe work. But what you might not see is everything that happens behind the scenes.
00:12:33
Speaker
For our dancers, pointe shoes are not just costumes or accessories. They are essential tools of our art form. Professional dancers can go through a pair of pointe shoes in a matter of weeks, and sometimes even in a single performance.
00:12:47
Speaker
With each pair of pointe shoes costing about $100, the annual pointe shoe budget at Madison Ballet exceeds $25,000.
00:12:56
Speaker
But did you know that you can help keep our dancers on their toes? When you donate $100 to the Pointe Shoe Fund, you're directly supporting the dancers, helping them stay safe, perform at their highest level, and bring incredible artistry to the stage.
00:13:10
Speaker
And as a thank you, you'll receive something really special, a signed pair of pointe shoes from a Madison Ballet company member. Every pair of pointe shoes tells a story and with your support, that story can continue. Visit our table at the upcoming performance of Innovation 2, May 8th through 10th the Overture Center to take home your one-of-a-kind keepsake and keep our dancers on their toes.
00:13:31
Speaker
That's really fascinating. And thank you for already, I guess, anticipating my next question, which is what kind of arc is the audience experience expected to be or do you imagine it will be over the course of your piece?
00:13:46
Speaker
I almost want it to feel like a ballroom competition where it's going feel a little bit like section one, section two, section three, but I want it to be like, wow, because I've given the dancers definitely a lot of freedom with the movement. Like we have counts and we have, we're all doing the same movement, but I i want them to interpret it in their own way and have their own personalities sort of like you would see at a dance competition because everybody at a ballroom competition, for example, is dancing together, but you're also still trying to stand out at the same time, if that makes sense. And so I wanted that to show through the piece.
Collaborative Choreography with Madison Ballet
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, I expect that your dancers will enjoy your approach of wanting to show them off, you know, as dancers in the composition of it. What has it been like as a fellow dancer who happens to, for this show, be a choreographer working with your colleagues in the room? Has that been different or interesting or is that just something think that you find very comfortable?
00:14:48
Speaker
I actually had a ah really fun time because I was able to choreograph very quickly just because the dancers were able to pick up my choreography very fast. They're like, you know, professionals and they're all really talented. So it was nice. It it really allowed me to be as creative as I wanted to be because I didn't have to worry about things that sometimes I'll have to worry about with like teaching my students choreography, for example.
00:15:11
Speaker
Do you come into the room with a sense of these are the steps that I want them to execute? The dancers teased me a little bit because I think I was one of the few people I didn't have any notes or anything. I tried and then I just would be like, okay. And I showed up and I had the music in a sense, but I think part of just the collaboration there too, like with me being in the room with everybody and saying, what's going to work and maybe we can do this. And then seeing it with the music for the first time and going, that's it.
00:15:38
Speaker
you know It was really fun for me. I enjoyed the process a lot. As a ballroom dancer, you have a lot of exposure to many more varied genres of dance than than ballet.
00:15:50
Speaker
And one of those is tap. I'm very curious how you've managed to bring that into a contemporary ballet company like Madison Ballet in this piece.
00:16:02
Speaker
So I started tap at my school in Houston at HSPVA. We did all the styles of dance there, but we had one semester where you have to tap. So we were able to sign up for tap three or tap four.
00:16:15
Speaker
So me never tapping before, I signed up for tap three, but there weren't enough students that signed up for tap four. So my teacher, Ms. Carter, she calls me into the office and tells me,
00:16:27
Speaker
I'm going to put you in tap four. I believe in you. So I spent that whole semester like in the back, desperately trying to keep up with the teacher who was really amazing. that It was a really fun year. And I'm glad i I was in the tap four class after all.
00:16:42
Speaker
For a couple of years now, I've been seeing tap creep its way into ballet. So it started with Alice in Wonderland, the Christopher Wielden version, and then More recently, I saw Tyler Peck and Friends in Chicago, and she was also tapping. And I was like, you know what? I want to put some tap in my piece too. So I was trying to figure out how I'd make it work, you know, with the ballet floors and, you know, not having them tear up the Marley and stuff. It just all became part of the piece, how I was going to have the dancers come out and tap.
00:17:15
Speaker
How did your ballet dancing colleagues deal with that if they had or had not had tap before? I asked Michaela and Ben if they had tapped before and they told me, yeah, they had sort of the similar, they tapped when they were in school. And then once they got to a professional company, they hadn't done it in a while, but they could figure it out, they said. And so once we got the tap shoes, it was really easy. We were able to just set some steps right away and they did an amazing job, like just picking it up super fast, made it very simple.
00:17:47
Speaker
and easy. So Charlotte also was able to just jump in and do the tapping as well. Will there be shoe changes during the piece like very quickly? I ask as a stage manager needing to manage quick changes.
00:18:03
Speaker
That ended up becoming my third and a half section on accident. I'm glad now because that's actually one of my favorite parts that I just ended up putting in the piece because Michaela needed time to change back from her tap shoes into pointe shoes.
00:18:17
Speaker
When I ordered the tap shoes for the piece, I made sure I got slip-on shoes so that they it wasn't two sets of laces. They could just throw the tap shoes on and get on stage and then get off and change back. so It's always fascinating to me how much of what ends up going on stage is a function of logistics, like what people can get into and not and who needs a break and a breather everything.
00:18:43
Speaker
I think that's part of the fun almost. It's like each piece is so unique, even the ones that this year, for example, like if we reset a ballet versus learning a new one, I think the dancers and just the energy is different every time you perform.
00:19:00
Speaker
It's always the contingency of creation that I think comes up more dance than other places. Yeah. I think that's part of the dance is just, it has its such a spontaneity to it.
00:19:11
Speaker
Live performance, what you see is what's happening. I think that's part of the fun, you know? Yeah. That's also part of why I would encourage folks to come out because each show is different, even if it's the same cast on a different day. You know, there's a different energy in the room based on time of day and... I have two casts as well. So each actually, I would say, has a really like, it's very fun because I like seeing the dancers take it and make it their own.
00:19:38
Speaker
So it's really fun to see the different emotions and feelings of one cast versus another. i am curious also about how do you relate to pieces that you, i guess, like we'll say the nutcracker where it's like the thing that you have to do each year.
00:19:55
Speaker
do you find a new way into those kinds of roles? Is there something of the ballroom dancer showman that's always looking forward to shine in whatever variation, you know, you're given?
00:20:08
Speaker
When I was younger, i remember I was very much always like, oh, I'm this type of dancer. I'm going to do this. And I'm only going to do ballet now. I'm only going to do ball ribbon. I think now that I'm older, I'm just so happy to be dancing at all, usually.
Post-Pandemic Reflections and Future Aspirations
00:20:23
Speaker
And especially after the pandemic and like not knowing if I was coming back to dance at all, if there was going to be dance.
00:20:30
Speaker
I'm grateful to have almost the point of view I have of doing both ballet and ballroom because I can apply that to a lot of different things in a lot of situations or auditions and it helps me to dance more.
00:20:43
Speaker
That makes sense. And always dancing and dancing more is always better. Yeah. Like for example, when I danced for ballet, San Antonio, I was getting my costume fitting done for the Nutcracker.
00:20:55
Speaker
And my friend Rachel, she was the wardrobe supervisor. She did all the costumes for Ballet San Antonio. She was telling me, yeah, my lifelong dream, I always wanted to be an international Latin ballroom dancer. She's like, now I want to take classes and i want to do competitions. I was like, you can help with that audit I can help you. Yeah, that's so funny. like And so it's just things like that. The dance world really is small. And so I feel like sometimes there's just so much overlap with everything.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah. You have a lot of your career dancing still in front of you, but have you given any thought to like, what is on the other side of that or what kind of thing you would want to do? Or is it teaching dance? I mostly teach ballroom now, but I really enjoy teaching. I hope I can do that for a long time. I've taught now ever since I was 17. So I had a competition dance class and then I've also taught at ballet schools and I've taught ballroom classes and, you know, for...
00:21:50
Speaker
a lot of different places. So it's been fun. What is it like to teach children of various levels? How do you approach creating that classroom setting while also still just encouraging their creativity at the same time?
00:22:07
Speaker
My biggest inspirations in the way that I teach and how I interact with all my classes were my teachers. They were always very strict but fair, if that makes sense. Because a lot of the schools I went to, like the Houston Ballet Academy, for example, they were very strict.
00:22:24
Speaker
That's what I'm used to a little bit. And we're here to do ballet, you know? Yeah. yeah We're not here to talk. Yeah. That's what I'll say. so you know Yeah. And what was the Houston Ballet Academy or was your training, I guess, in general growing up, Ganova or RAD or Chiquetti or what what was your tradition?
Diverse Ballet Training and Career Advice for Young Dancers
00:22:44
Speaker
I did it all. So I started my first teacher, Mr. Broomhead. He was from the Royal Ballet. So his training was very British. And then when I was at Ballet West, my main teacher, Jeff Rogers, he did Bournonville Ballet with us.
00:23:00
Speaker
And so that was really interesting doing like an old Danish style of technique. A lot of jumps. Yeah. Very athletic. Right. Yeah. And then Colorado, i did ABT style sort of.
00:23:14
Speaker
And then Ballet San Antonio really had a big influence on me, I think, because there it was the first time I did a lot of very, very classical French ballet technique. And that was very fun.
00:23:27
Speaker
It was the basics to the extreme kind of. And I really enjoyed that. It really helped me gain an understanding of how ballet works almost within the human body.
00:23:38
Speaker
It was really good. yeah Well, I was just about to ask what French meant. And you said basics to the extreme, which I think makes sense for the folks who you know invented the air farm 100 years ago. When you were at Colorado, did you um ever go to the Veil Dance Festival?
00:23:55
Speaker
did. I've seen the Colorado Ballet Theater as the core in several pieces there. It's been lovely. I didn't perform. I just went to watch. But yeah my friends to perform in Serenade. So it was a lot of fun. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's lovely.
00:24:09
Speaker
Well, this has been so wonderful, Ben. And I like to close with just, it's always good to ask if there's advice that you would give someone either in your situation or if you imagine yourself younger, what you would as a young dancer or young creative want to know now that you didn't say 10 years ago.
00:24:33
Speaker
Just to to keep going. Because With dance, your career is going to be shorter than you think. And I think while you're dancing, you have to make the most of it, no matter what you're doing. I'm always struck with working with you guys.
00:24:49
Speaker
Production staff can be here for decades and you guys don't quite have the same lifespan. So there's something... beautiful and a little bit tragic about that. But I think that's really good to be kind of aware of that sort of presence, especially because each year that's the company of that year, you know, not all be together again. Well, thank you again for joining me. I really appreciate it.
00:25:14
Speaker
And I look forward to us seeing your piece T4248 at Innovation 2, May 8th through 10th at Promenade Hall at Overture Center.
00:25:26
Speaker
I guess I would always encourage people to come to any mixed rep show because that's where ballet actually happens, you know, where people experiment in many different forms and you'll see things that you don't normally see. yeah. Thanks again, Ben, and I really appreciate it. I look forward to seeing you in the studio. Thank you.
00:25:49
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in to At The Bar with Madison Ballet Special Projects. If you enjoyed this episode, we invite you to experience Madison Ballet in person by joining us at one of our upcoming performances or community events.
00:26:03
Speaker
From accessible, innovative productions to in-depth conversations with artists, our goal is to create welcoming spaces where everyone can experience ballet in a meaningful way.
00:26:14
Speaker
You can find performance dates, event details, and ticket information on our website and social media platforms. Whether it's your first time attending or you're a long-time supporter, we'd love to see you in the audience and share the experience with you live.
00:26:29
Speaker
Thanks again for listening. We hope to see you at the ballet soon.