William Bracewell was born on 13 May 1991 and is a Welsh ballet dancer.
17 Facts About William Bracewell
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William Bracewell joined the Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2010, and was named soloist in 2014.
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William Bracewell is the first Welsh person to hold the position.
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William Bracewell has two older sisters, and no one in the family danced prior to him.
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William Bracewell began ballet at age eight, when a friend asked him to join her because there were no boys.
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William Bracewell told his friends he was training in martial arts to avoid bullying.
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William Bracewell trained at a local dance school for three years, during which he took the Cecchetti exams and participated in the Royal Ballet School Junior Associate programme, before attending the school in London full-time.
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In 2010, William Bracewell won the Grand Prix, the top prize, at the Youth America Grand Prix New York final.
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William Bracewell had wanted Bracewell to start dancing there in the middle of the school year, though Gailene Stock, the director of the Royal Ballet School, arranged to have him join the company after he graduated instead.
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The first ballet William Bracewell appeared in was MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet.
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William Bracewell was promoted to first artist in 2012, and soloist in 2014.
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William Bracewell performed as Benno in Swan Lake, as Oberon in Ashton's The Dream, in Symphonic Variations, as Romeo in MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, as the Salamander Prince in Bintley's The Prince of the Pagodas, and in Tombeaux, William Bracewell originated a role in Whitley's Kin in 2014, and the role of le Roi Soleil, or Louis XIV, Bintley's The King Dances in 2015.
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In 2017, William Bracewell joined the Royal Ballet in London as a soloist.
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William Bracewell was promoted to first soloist later that year.
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In March 2022, William Bracewell appeared in a gala benefitting the Disasters Emergency Committee Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal at the London Coliseum, performing the white swan pas de deux from Swan Lake with Fumi Kaneko.
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William Bracewell danced as Prince Siegfried in the second act.
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William Bracewell is the first Welsh person to hold the position.