It was only four months ago that 12-year-old Oakville resident Jack Gibbins was admitted to Canada's National Ballet School in Toronto. Now, he's performing in The Nutcracker at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts with the National Ballet company.
Jack has already had a long road to get to this point, and after making his debut last Friday on the Four Seasons Centre stage, he sat down with Oakville News to talk about his journey from the classroom to the joining the cast of the premiere dance company in Canada.
"When I first learned I was gonna be in the show, I was so excited," says Jack. "From when I first saw it, it was my dream to be in the production."
That dream has now come true: Jack is performing as one of the 81 students at Canada's National Ballet School (NBS) in the show this year, now running until December 31, 2021. The school says, "The Nutcracker represents a special part of the NBS student experience and is an important learning opportunity for young dancers."
But it's more than just part of the education for Jack: "It's really fun." Here's his story going from online classes in Oakville to Canada's biggest stage for dance:
Starting with the ballet
Jack was part of other athletic extracurriculars before the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was before closures started that he found something new. "I was a gymnast and swimmer before I discovered the art of ballet," he explains. "I went to my younger sister Anna’s dance studio a couple times, and that inspired me to do it."
Jennifer Campitelli, Jack's mother, gives a lot of credit to multiple of Jack's teachers here in Oakville that played a significant part of his early success.
"Jack's gymnastics coach Greg created a foundation of discipline and working hard that helped in his transition to dance," she explains, "which helped because he started [ballet] later. Jack owes a lot to Greg for his body awareness."
Once he decided to pursue dance, Jack began classes at the Oakville School of Classical Ballet, with his teacher Amanda Paterson. Campitelli says she "gave Jack a great start with ballet," but the classes changed once COVID began in early 2020.
Thankfully, Paterson continued her ballet classes going over Zoom. According to his mom, "she let Jack do a level up and do more classes," which accelerated his learning. Jack adds, "when COVID started and the classes went online, it was better for me on Zoom because I could take more classes and do more ballet, really interacting with my teacher."
After doing this for more than a year, Jack went to the next level when he earned an audition spot for the NBS.
Going to the National Ballet School
The audition process for young students hoping to begin at NBS (starting as young as grade six) is just as demanding for the kids as it is for the professional adults. And like Jack's classes from the year before, it started on a Zoom call in summer 2021.
"The audition process starts with a lot of kids on Zoom, and few teachers and two judges, determining who goes on," Jack explains. "They ran us through some exercises and tested our flexibility, also looking at how much we already knew."
Once you pass the group Zoom audition, you get invited to the summer program at the school's Toronto facility on Jarvis Street. That's where Jack met his next audition teacher, with a misnomer name - Mr. Payne. "But he’s actually really nice," Jack says with a smile.
"The summer program was similar, but in-person at the facility," he says. "We did more bar exercises and technique, and we learned how tp improved our posture, our feet positioning - all the main exercises."
During some sessions of the ten day audition, the NBS artistic director Mavis Stains and her assistant would come watch, determining who of the students would be a good fit for the year-round Professional Ballet Academic Program. In the end, Jack's new friends from the summer didn't get in. But Jack got a coveted spot.
Jack says he and his Mom "were in the car getting Booster Juice when we got the email." They cried as soon as they found out the news Jack was admitted to the National Ballet School, but as he explains, "they could still change their minds, so I was still giving it 100%. You have to work hard every single day."
From class to The Nutcracker
"I remember watching The Nutcracker live and once at a cinema recording," says Jack. He also watched documentaries about the New York City ballet, and that's when he says he first thought, "I want to do this." But that's not why he applied to the school: "It wasn’t about a chance being in the show."
"I heard some of us (in the grade 7-9s) would get to play the main brother Misha, but I didn't get it this year. I got the boy 1 role and that’s exciting because I get to share a lot of my expressions with the audience," says Jack. "I also get to be a guard which is fun, and a chef, and it’s fun to be in the big suit."
Being in the show is part of studying at the NBS' Toronto school. Yet Jack admits, "Before opening I had tons of butterflies and I was worried about messing up. I’ve never been on a stage that big before."
That worry didn't last long. "Once you look out into the auditorium, all my anxiety turns to excitement. There wasn't so much stress - it was just fun. It’s really fun. It felt really good on our first night - I was disappointed when it was over."
What's next for Jack
After The Nutcracker ends this year, Jack will continue in his grade 7 studies with the Professional Ballet Academic Program, run by the National Ballet School of Canada. He hopes to continue in the program right until the end of grade 12, but he knows how rigourous that commitment will be.
Going through his daily schedule, "I have a ballet class in the morning, then lunch, then academics in the afternoon, then dinner at the school residence, then a subway ride to the Four Seasons, and then the costumes and makeup before the show." He also adds in a normal day, "I have three ballet classes, then my academics."
There's some stress for him because you have to re-auditon each year of study, but Jack says he wants to stay in the school because he "really enjoys it." He jokes the stress is worse for his family, "because they have to drive me to Downtown Toronto. We leave early because of traffic!"
In addition to ballet, Jack likes spending free time with his family and building Legos; he's most proud of building a Hogwarts Castle set and a replica Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.
But through it all, he's still got dance on his mind. If you want to be a dancer, "try your best," he says. "That’s all that matters. Work hard. Your best is all you can do."
Jack is performing as part of the National Ballet of Canada's production of The Nutcracker from now until December 31, 2021 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto. Limited tickets for the remainder of the run are available online here.
Correction, Dec. 17 at 5:40 p.m.: A previous version of this story had a headline misspelling Jack's last name as Gittings, as well as some headlines of this story on social media. The correct name is Jack Gibbins.