THE STORY OF BRAZIL IN MOTION WITH FELIPE PULETINI

“We the People” Immigrant Stories in Music – Part Eight:

Violinist Brunilda Myftaraj leads the Virtuosi in a concert featuring Brazilian-American choreographer Felipe Puletini and Ballet RI dancers Alexa Kearnan & Garret McNally. The love of movement and its artistic expression in dance are essential elements of Brazilian culture and music. These traditions are reflected in the work of the Brazilian American dancer Felipe Puletini and his AMA Dance Theatre. The event’s repertoire will feature Sonata for strings “O Burrico de Pau” (The Wooden Donkey) by Antônio Carlos Gomes, an ever-beautiful Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K201 by W. A. Mozart, and Bachianas Brasileiras No.9, by Heitor Villa-Lobos.

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Felipe Puletini is a member of the International Dance Council – CID/ UNESCO. Puletini is currently the head of the children’s division and company manager for Ballet RI. His responsibilities include coordinating the school and being the children’s cast director for The Nutcracker, as well as assisting the dance company’s directors in organizing productions, scheduling, communications, cultivation of donors, and tour management. Throughout his professional career in Brazil and the USA, he has performed in repertory classical ballet, musical theater, and Brazilian television. Career highlights include Cinderella, Swan Lake, Paquita, Don Quixote, The Nutcracker, Don Quixote (Cuban version), and La Fille Mal Guardée (Cuban version), I Gotcha! (Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb), The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and the ensemble in 1st Bibi Ferreira Awards (The Brazilian Tony Awards). His repertory includes contemporary works by Rodney Rivera, Sergei Vanaev, Alejandro Ulloa, Lauren Edson, Gabrielle Lamb, Catherine Fellows, Pascal Rekoert, and Nan Giordano. Puletini is a guest teaching artist for Central Connecticut State University (Dance Education), and coaches/choreographs for many schools in New England. As a choreographer and dancer, he has collaborated with the New Britain Symphony Orchestra, the Mystic River Chorale, Mystic Outdoor Festival Performing Arts Stage, the University of South Carolina – Beaufort, and New England Ballet Theatre of CT.

Garret McNally began his classical training in 2008 at the Robert Ivey Ballet in Charleston, SC. In 2014, he attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts High School Program training under Susan Jaffe, Jared Redick, Misha Tchoupakov, Frank Smith, and others. There his passion for dancing grew, performing many works including August Bournonville’s Napoli Pas de Six, Frederick Ashton’s Birthday Offering, George Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante, Donizetti Variations, and Serenade, Helen Pickett’s Petal, Natalia Makarova’s La Bayadere, and Michel Folkine’s Les Sylphides. Afterwards, he joined the New Orleans Ballet Theatre amid studying History at the University of New Orleans. After graduating in 2021, he joined the Richmond Ballet as a Second Company dancer being promoted into the main company the following season. There he worked and performed in Malcolm Burn’s Romeo & Juliet, Stoner Winslett’s Echoing Past, and The Nutcracker, MaCong’s Thrive, Firebird, and Ershter Vals, Jerome Robbins’ In the Night, George Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante, and Serenade, as well as works by Jennifer Archibald, Val Caniparoli, Yury Yanowsky, Nicolo Fonte, and Katarzyna Skarpetowska. This is his second season with Ballet RI.

Alexa Kearnan is from Uxbridge, Massachusetts where she trained at Deane Dance Studio in Mendon, Massachusetts. Alexa started dancing with Ballet RI as a trainee during the 2021/2022 season. She is returning to her fourth season with Ballet RI now promoted as an Apprentice.

Albanian-American violinist Brunilda Myftaraj has drawn enthusiastic accolades from audiences as well as critical acclaim for her masterful musicianship in Albania, Italy, Greece, France, Morocco, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Israel, and in the United States. She has been praised by the New London Day critic as an “especially fine and beautiful player”. Although Myftaraj’s teachers are some of the world’s finest, her true inspiration comes from audiences and her students. Her recordings of“Naked Violin” and “The American Pie” received impeccable reviews from Fanfare magazine. Brunilda was part of the Love’s Tango recording project with Alex Nakimovsky and June Bizantz, which has been awarded a 2019 Silver Global Music Award for Outstanding Achievement in the album & lyrics/songwriting categories. Ms. Myftaraj currently holds the position of Concertmaster for the Connecticut Virtuosi, Connecticut Lyric Opera and Greve opera festival in Italy. She is the director of the Virtuosi Music Academy and the Summer Music Institute in Farmington Connecticut, where she also teaches violin and chamber music.

About the Series

Connecticut Virtuosi’s “We The People” concert series was partly funded by an Arts grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. From 2021 to 2024 the Virtuosi will introduce audiences to the rich and diverse cultural threads woven by America’s immigrants into 20th and 21st-century music. Each concert features an immigrant composer and/or musician whose music reflects inspiration from a distinct culture or group of cultures. Each concert includes written and/or spoken word pieces by writers who are themselves immigrants from the culture(s) being highlighted. When words fail, music speaks. The series explores connections between cultures, languages, and people.