Hong Kong Ballet’s artistic director Septime Webre followed his sister to ballet school and never looked back
- Septime Webre speaks to Kate Whitehead about growing up in the Bahamas and turning his back on law for dance
- The new father, artistic director of the Hong Kong Ballet since 2017, is thankful for being able to spend time with his family during the pandemic
The seventh son: I’m the seventh son in a family of eight brothers and one sister. My six older brothers were all born and brought up in Cuba. My mother was Cuban and my father American. They left Cuba during the revolution and I was born in the United States soon after they arrived in the early 1960s.
As a small child, we moved to the Bahamas and my first memories are of a beautiful island with a gorgeous white beach and blue water. There were only four kids in my class at school. My dad had a sugar plantation in Cuba and was an engineer who designed sugar mills.
After the revolution, we lived wherever there was a sugar mill to design, which meant tropical climates. From the Bahamas, we moved to south Texas, on the Texas-Mexico border, when I was 12. During the Texas years, my family spent a lot of time in Africa – three years in Cote d’Ivoire and five years in Sudan.
Born performer: As a small child, on Saturday nights we’d push back the sofas and my father would play his old Cuban records and we’d have a salsa party. I was naturally drawn to performance. At school I’d organise a talent show, at church I’d organise the midnight mass pageant, I played in the marching band in south Texas at the American football game on Friday night.
I never thought you could have a career in dance. I came from a family that expected us to go to law school or medical school or be an engineer. As a good Catholic boy, the seventh child is the one selected to be a Jesuit priest. When I was 15, I realised that was not on the cards and told everyone that I’d be a lawyer, that was politically correct in my family. I followed my sister to ballet school and had my first class when I was about 12. I didn’t get serious about it until my later teens.
Laying down the law: My plan was to go to law school. In the American system you go to undergraduate school for four years and law school for three. I did my undergraduate years, studying history and pre-law, and also trained 25 to 30 hours a week in classical ballet. Three weeks before I was due to start law school, I got a job offer from Ballet Austin, so I deferred law school and didn’t tell my parents.
The ballet job started on a Monday and on the Friday night, driving home on my 1980s moped, I knew this was what I wanted to do, it felt right. I decided I’d finish the contract I’d just signed and then move to New York to pursue ballet. And that’s what I did. After the Ballet Austin contract was up, I moved to New York, stayed at my brother’s place on a mattress on the floor, and got a job dancing at the American Repertory Ballet.