Beadie Finzi, Director
Beadie Finzi is an experienced filmmaker and producer. Her previous dance feature film, Only When I Dance (2009) had it’s world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival and it’s UK premiere at Edinburgh Film Festival.
Only When I Dance charts the remarkable story of a two young kids trying to dance their way out of the favelas of Rio. The film was theatrically released in the UK by Revolver and Film Movement in the US and shown on international TV including Arte France and Channel 4.
New York Times called it “a real-life Billy Elliot” and the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw reviewed it as ”charming… an unforgettable experience”
It was during the making of Only When I Dance that Beadie met Thiago Soares and Marianela Nunez, the subjects of her new film.
Beadie’s other films as director includes three dance films with The Ballet Boyz for Channel 4 TV. Other subjects she has tackled include outsider musicians (The Outsiders), the rise of child prodigy clarinetist Julian Bliss (Gifted) and famine in Swaziland (The Hunger Season). Beadie also produced Unknown White Male in 2005, a feature documentary about a young amnesiac rediscovering his life which played in competition at Sundance Film Festival and was Oscar shortlisted.
Beadie is a founding director of BRITDOC, an innovative foundation which enables documentary filmmaking around the world. For BRITDOC she continues to Executive Produce feature films such as Hell and Back Again, Calvet, Ping Pong and Erasing David.
NIKKI PARROTT, Producer
Nikki Parrott is co managing director of Tigerlily Films established in 2000 with Natasha Dack. Together they quickly established themselves as producers of innovative feature documentaries and fiction films with international subject matter and appeal.
Nikki has produced many short films, commercials and her seven feature documentary films include the multi award winning 37 USES FOR A DEAD SHEEP (Caligari Film Prize (Berlin), Best International Documentary (HotDocs) and Best British Feature Documentary (BritDoc), and the hugely successful ONLY WHEN I DANCE. Her three fiction features include the One World Media Awards winning drama feature TRANSIT, THE MARKET and recently JADOO to be theatrically released next year.
She has just finished producing the successful web series, Come Dance with Me for the Arts channel The Space, and the four-part series Officers and Gentlemen which will be shown on the Military Channel later this year. Nikki studied at the Royal College of Art for her Masters in Film Production and has lived in Spain and France. She has taught at the RCA , LCP and is a regularly contributor on Media panels .
Liam Scarlett, Choreographer
At 25 years old, Liam Scarlett already has a reputation as one of the most precociously gifted choreographers of his generation.
After joining the Royal Ballet aged 19 in 2005, Scarlett was promoted to First Artist while the company nurtured his choreography. After honing his skills on duets and workshop pieces at the Linbury Studio, he created “Asphodel Meadows”, a one-act ballet, for the main stage in 2010. “A work of astonishing maturity,” Luke Jennings wrote in The Observer. “The Royal may have found the real deal,” Judith Mackrell wrote in The Guardian.
Soon after Edward Villella, the director of Miami City Ballet invited Scarlett to choreograph a new piece for his company. The result was “Viscera”, set to a driving, contemporary piano concerto by Lowell Liebermann, and staged in January 2012 to an effusive reception. Villella had already decided to ask Scarlett back. “He’s not a one-ballet wonder. He has a maturity beyond his years, and my dancers love working with him.”
In the summer of 2012 the Royal Opera House premiered "Sweet Violets" - a new work by Scarlett based on the story of the painter Walter Sickert, a man obsessed with murder, and accused by some of being Jack the Ripper himself. The 2012 season closed with another new Scarlett work in Metamorphosis: Titian 2012, while "Viscera" has been programmed for a London premiere in the 2012/13 season.
Thiago Soares, Principal Dancer
Thiago was born in Brazil and trained at the Centre for dance, Rio de Janeiro and then joined the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Theatre ballet in 1998. His awards include the Silver Medal at the Paris International Dance Competition in (1998), the Gold Medal at the Moscow International Ballet Competition in (2001) and the Outstanding Classical Dancer at the Critics Circle National Dance Awards (2004).
'A powerful, classically refined technique, as well as a magnetic stage presence.' National Dance Awards
He joined the Royal Ballet in September 2002 as a First Artist, was promoted to Soloist in September 2003, First Soloist September 2004 and Principal in September 2006.
Soares is married to fellow Royal Ballet dancer Marianela Núñez. The couple became engaged in December 2006 when Soares proposed to Núñez on stage after a curtain call for a performance of The Sleeping Beauty in front of the whole company.
Marianela Nunez, Principal Dancer
Marianela was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She started dance lessons at the age of three, and at eight was admitted to the Instituto Superior de Arte of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires where she studied until she was invited to join the corps de ballet of the Company at the age of 14.
She joined The Royal Ballet at the start of the 1998/99 Season, aged 16 and was promoted to First Soloist in 2001 and made a Principal in September 2002.
In 2006 Marianela won Best Female Dancer at the Critics Circle Dance awards and she was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award in 2007. In 2010 she was awarded with the coveted Argentinean Konex prize for best dancer..
Marianela is married to fellow Royal Ballet dancer Thiago Soares. The couple are frequent partners on stage, including in the 2012 performance of Swan Lake.
“you find yourself holding your breath watching the exquisite extension of Nuñez’s leg or the flicker of her swan’s wing” The Evening Standard reviewing Swan Lake.