Texas Ballet Theater Promotes Two Professional Division Members To Trainee Status

Texas Ballet Theater (TBT) has promoted two of its professional division students, Nineh Irving and Hannah Menchu, to the role of trainee with the company. Recognizing their talents and dedication, the TBT artistic staff promoted them to trainee status within the company.

Nineh Irving was born in South Africa and moved to the USA at the age of three in 2001. She started her ballet training at the Ballet Palm Beach Academy in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida in 2007. In 2015 she joined the main company of Ballet Palm Beach as a trainee and continued in this position until the summer of 2017. During this period she attended the 2016 ABT Summer Intensive. In 2017, she attended the Texas Ballet Theater Summer Intensive, after which she was offered a Professional Division position with Texas Ballet Theater School. In this position she performed in numerous Professional Division productions as well as in Texas Ballet Theater Company productions, Beauty and the Beast and Ben Stevenson's, The Nutcracker. In the winter of 2017, Irving started her first season with Texas Ballet Theater.

Menchu, born and raised in Dallas, began her ballet training at age four at Dallas Ballet Center, continued at Ballet Academy of Texas and most recently, with Texas Ballet Theater School's Professional Division. She has been a finalist at Youth America Grand Prix and has attended summer intensives at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, The School of American Ballet and American Ballet Theatre in New York. She is a recipient of multiple North Texas Dance Council scholarships. Menchu is excited and honored to be a part of Ben Stevenson's Texas Ballet Theater and represent her hometown.