Chun Wai Chan is a principal ballet dancer with

New York City Ballet New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company's fir ...

. Chan is a former principal dancer with

Houston Ballet Houston Ballet, operated by Houston Ballet Foundation, is a professional ballet company based in Houston, Texas. The company consists of 59 dancers and produces over 85 performances per year. It is the 5th largest ballet company in the United ...

Early life and education

Chun Wai Chan was born in

Huizhou Huizhou ( zh, c= ) is a city in east-central Guangdong Province, China, forty-three miles north of Hong Kong. Huizhou borders the provincial capital of Guangzhou to the west, Shenzhen and Dongguan to the southwest, Shaoguan to the north, Hey ...

Guangdong Province ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...

, China. He began taking ballet classes at age six and continued his ballet education at Guangzhou Art School from 2004 to 2010. Chan was a finalist at the

Prix de Lausanne The Prix de Lausanne () is an international dance competition held annually in Lausanne, Switzerland. The competition is for young dancers seeking to pursue a professional career in classical ballet, and many former prize winners of the competition ...

2010. As a finalist, he earned a full scholarship to study at Houston Ballet Academy from 2010 to 2012.

Career

Chan joined

as a member of the corps de ballet in 2012. He was promoted to

principal dancer A principal dancer (often shortened to principal) is a dancer at the highest rank within a professional dance company, particularly a ballet company. A principal may be either gender. The position is similar to that of ''Soloist (ballet), solois ...

with

in 2017. In 2020, he was a competitor on the television program ; he was eliminated after making it to the final four dancers in the competition. Chan joined

as a soloist in August 2021. Chan got promoted to principal dancer with New York City Ballet on May 20, 2022, becoming the first Chinese principal at the company.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chan, Chun Wai People from Huizhou 21st-century Chinese ballet dancers Chinese male ballet dancers Houston Ballet principal dancers New York City Ballet soloists Living people 1992 births