Will perform in 2011 Cirque du Soleil show
Hannah Weber, a Destrehan native, grew up loving to dance and had dreams of becoming a professional dancer.
Now her dreams have come true.
Weber, 22, has signed a contract with Cirque du Soleil to perform in a series of shows in Los Angelos in 2011.
She will travel to Montreal in January to begin training for the show, which will open in April 2011 at the Kodak Theater, the 3,400-seat facility that is home to the Academy Awards.
The show will focus on Hollywood’s place in the history of cinema and will include 368 performances throughout a year.
Weber was excited at the number of performances, noting that it meant she would get to “dance a lot.”
“Dancing has always come pretty naturally to me and I just love it,” she said. “When I dance, nothing else matters.”
Weber, a 2009 graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, first became involved with Cirque du Soleil last year when the company held auditions at her college.
“When you audition for Cirque du Soleil, you’re not auditioning for a specific part in a specific show…you audition and then if a part comes up that fits your profile and criteria, they’ll call you up and offer you a job,” she said.
She said that the audition went very well and she knew that she would like to work with the company immediately.
“It just felt right – I felt really comfortable with the people giving the auditions,” she said.
After making all of the cuts during the audition, Weber finally received a call for a job and finalized her contract with the company this month.
Before auditioning, Weber said she had never really considered working for the company.
“Before I auditioned, I had heard of Cirque du Soleil but I wasn’t really clear on the status they held in the dance world,” she said. “I feel really excited – it’s kind of overwhelming at times. Sometimes I can’t really believe it.”
Weber is the daughter of Becky Weber and Stephen Weber, the principal of Destrehan High School.
Before earning her Bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance, Weber grew up taking dance lessons locally.
During her years at Destrehan High School she went for half-days at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, or NOCCA, and was very involved with Kelli’s Kreative Dance in Destrehan.
Kelli Manville, an owner and director of Kelli’s Kreative Dance, said that Weber has been dancing competitively since the age of 7 and that she is not surprised at all with Weber’s early success.
“She is a very passionate dancer,” Manville said. “She was not very involved in high school dance teams or things like that…she spent numerous weekends at the studio here with me. She was very dedicated.”
When Katrina hit, NOCCA was closed and the North Carolina School of the Arts offered to take in the center’s students.
During her senior year of high school, Weber relocated to Winston Salem, N.C. to attend the school and ended up finishing college there.
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