Arts & Entertainment
Richard Munro Remembered With Brandon Ballet Scholarship
The scholarship allows a dancer to further his or her classical ballet education. A ballet master, Richard Munro worked the last six years of his life with the Brandon Ballet. He performed, too, including as Drosselmeyer in "The Nutcracker."
Alice Holden Bock remembers fondly the work of Richard Munro with the Brandon Ballet, the company she founded to give young dancers a chance to work with professional dancers in a showcase of regional talent.
Linda Richards, a guidance counselor at Lithia Springs Elementary School, who supported the Brandon Ballet, knew of Munro, who at one time was the director of the Louisville Ballet.
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In his later years, he moved to Brandon.
"He was looking to get back involved with ballet and we were lucky to have him," Bock said. "With both the student and professional dancers, he always approached everything with great kindness and lots of artistic quality. He was a really great person."
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Munro died in 2008.
In honor of his contributions to the Brandon Ballet, The Richard Munro Memorial Scholarship Fund has been established.
Each year, one scholarship winner, between ages 13 and 18, is selected based on his or her audition to the Brandon Ballet's summer intensive program. This selection is made without consideration of the dancer’s training and performing affiliations.
The recipient can use the scholarship, up to $500, to offset the cost of a summer program intended to further the recipient's classical ballet education. Brandon Ballet will send the scholarship proceeds directly to the program of the winner’s choice on behalf of the winner.
According to a news report issued by the Brandon Ballet, Munro "spent his life nurturing the art of ballet as a ballet master, an artistic director and a ballet academy founder in Kentucky and Texas before moving to Brandon, where he spent the last six years of his life teaching, coaching, choreographing and performing for Brandon Ballet.
"He could draw as well as he could choreograph," Bock said. "Ballet was his life. He was very artistic, very creative and very nice to work with."
Auditions are set for March 3, at the Dance Center, 161 E. Bloomingdale Ave., Brandon, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. The audition cost is $25.
For more information, call: 813-684-4282.
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