Buse Babadag
Soloist
Ballet San Antonio
Instructor
School of Ballet San Antonio
Hometown:
Istanbul, Turkey
Joined BSA:
2021
Buse Babadag was born in Istanbul, Turkey. She started her training at Istanbul University State Conservatory with Christopher Paluch at age 11. After five years of intensive training with him, she got accepted to Ballett – Akademie der Hochschule fur Musik und Theater Munchen in Germany. She was trained with the Vaganova technique by the world-known former ballet stars in Munich. She got to perform at Heinz Bosl Stiftung Matinee with BayerischesStaatsBallet’s Junior Company. She graduated from Ballett – Akademie with a ‘Bachelor diploma of dance’.
She was chosen to perform Kirill Melnikov’s Cinderella pas de deux at Biennalle Dance Education 2014/Dresden Gala at Semperoper Dresden. Same year, she was invited to perform Romeo and Juliet Balcony Pas de Deux at the galas in Rome, Pisa, Toscana and Cairo.
In 2014, she moved to America and started working with Tulsa Ballet II. After performing a season with Tulsa Ballet, she got an offer as a company member with Dance Alive National Ballet in Florida. In her third season with the company, she got promoted to a soloist. In 2018, she was offered to join Indianapolis Ballet that’s where she mostly danced Balanchine Ballets as Serenade, Rubies, Who Cares, Wals-Fantaisie, Four Temperaments, Raymonda Variations, and Allegro Brilliant.
After 3 seasons of performing with Indianapolis Ballet, she was offered a Soloist contract with Ballet San Antonio and moved to San Antonio to perform the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker as her debut with the company. Her repertoire with BSA included principal roles as Cinderella and the Sugar Plum Fairy. She also performed featured roles such as Kitri’s friends in Patrik Armand’s Don Quixote, Snow queen, Arabian Couple in Easton and Haley Smith’s The Nutcracker and Cheshire cat in Brian Enos’s Alice in Wonderland in 2023.
She was featured and had a whole interview at Pointe Magazine in July 2023 about her ballet career as well as her own coffee brand as a professional ballerina.
Her repertoire includes some of William Forsythe works, Balanchine and Bournoville techniques.
Get to know BUSE
When did you start dancing, and why?
I started dancing at the age of 11, which was very late. The reason why I started ballet is because of was my best friend from childhood wanted me to go to ballet classes with her, which I never thought I would. Since then, I have been in love with this art form and so passionate of it.
What inspires you to be a professional dancer?
When I was a kid, I got all my inspirations from ballet DVDs I could find in Turkey at the time. I watched former Principal dancer of the Paris Opera Ballet, Aurélie Dupont, and Paris Opera Ballet’s videos almost everyday and always wanted to dance like them.
As a professional, being around such incredible artist in America through my career, getting to work with them and all the idol ballerinas of mine I got to meet through these years inspires me the most.
Why did you choose Ballet San Antonio?
The biggest reason for choosing BSA for me was our Artistic Director, Sofiane Sylve taking over the company. I wanted to work with her because she was always one of my favorite dancers as well as someone I always looked up to in everything.
Teaching in School of Ballet San Antonio is something unique because the school started when I joined the company. Seeing the students grow so much this fast makes me emotional every time I take a moment to think while they are dancing. Seeing all the hard work paying off in young students is incredible.