ARISA HIRONO

Arisa was born in Tokyo and she wanted to learn ballet from as long as she can remember. She started dancing at age 7 at a local school and became more and more obsessed with the artform.

When she was 12, she transferred to the Kishibe Ballet Studio whose level of training was more professional. Spotted by a visiting British teacher, she had help in gaining a place at the English National Ballet school and there her Cuban teacher Tania Morales was her great inspiration. 

Arisa then followed this up with a year at the European School of Ballet in Amsterdam. In 2022 she was accepted into the Croation National Ballet Theater in Split where she spent 2 years.

During her time as a student of Christiane Marchant in Amsterdam, she became interested in Junior Ballet Antwerp whose reputation as an inspiring and nurturing company run by passionate and committed teachers, was growing and spreading. She came to realise that this inspirational environment was what she needed in order to develop as a dancer and as an artist;

Arisa: “Through the various works and experiences I will have at JBA, I hope to grow into an expressive and joyful artist. I also hope to gain a deeper understanding of myself, with the help from artists at JBA who will objectively point out my strengths and weaknesses”.

Arisa’s dream company, due to her admiration for director Christian Spuck, is the Berlin State Ballet. Also on her list of favourites are the National Ballet Companies of Holland, Norway and Sweden.

Ballets she adores are Romeo and Juliet, Onegin and Giselle because they provide a ballerina with the dream roles of Juliet, of Tatiana and of Giselle.

But Arisa looks also to the future, to present-day choreographers of the likes of David Dawson and Leo Mujic, whose ballets she has the chance to experience. Arisa realises that their style of choreography provides dancers with new ways of using the body and of a new approach to ballet.

She hopes in the future to work in-depth with dancemakers of this kind.