H I L LTO P H A P P ENINGS
Taking the Right Steps by Jana F. Brown
WITH BEGINNINGS AT BERWICK, PROFESSIONAL DANCER HARPER WATTERS ’10 IS PURSUING HIS DREAMS.
L
ike just about everything in life, the arts have been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 12, 2020, Harper Watters ’10, a soloist for the Houston Ballet, was preparing to perform in a program that featured three one-act ballets. The performance was canceled and, since then, Watters and the other dancers
42 | WINTER 2021
have had to find ways to continue their creative expression. “The approach I’m taking is just trying to continue to learn and educate myself on everything so that I can take the next step,” says Watters. Dancing during the pandemic has meant learning how to coordinate with colleagues and choreographers via Zoom and how to manipulate separate performances into a cohesive piece via iMovie. In lockdown, Watters learned to dance in his living room, with remote direction from a choreographer – new experiences he would not have had if not for the circumstances of the last year. “We’ve all been challenged,” he says. “But I think that’s the beauty of art. The silver lining is innovation, and what comes of it.” Watters came to Berwick as a first grader in 1998, attracted to the School in part because it was the only one he toured that offered dance. “Having a thriving art scene at Berwick was really important,” he recalls, “and immediately the dance studio became a safe haven. It was not just because I had the natural skills that could be formed into something, but because that space with the
teachers and the students was where I felt like I could turn the volume up on who I was.” In 2007, Watters transferred to the Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Massachusetts. He made a connection with a WHS alum who helped facilitate enrollment in a program with the Houston Ballet in the summer of 2009. As a result of that, Watters was offered a contract in Houston’s second company, “which I tell people is like the minor leagues of ballet.” He was 16 when he moved to Houston to train. Two years later, in 2011, Watters was offered a contract to join the main company as an apprentice. He has since been promoted to Demi-soloist (2016) and Soloist (2017). With 65 dancers, Houston Ballet is the fourth largest ballet company in the United States, behind only New York, San Francisco, and Boston. In joining the company, Watters has found not only a career path but also a community. “Pursuing a career in dance was all very new and unknown to me,” he says. “Coming from New England, we don’t have a ballet company that is the size of San Francisco and New York. And so I just didn’t know that you could have a career in that.”
