ABT

Lindsay Karchin checks in with Pointe from the end of ABT's summer intensive. See her other blog entries here.

Lindsay Karchin checks in with Pointe from ABT's summer intensive. See her other blog entries here.

This summer, students attending summer intensives around the country are sharing their experiences with Pointe. Here, Lindsay Karchin checks in from the 2011 ABT New York Summer Intensive.

This summer, a handful of students attending summer intensives around the country will be sharing their experiences with Pointe. Here, year-round ABT/JKO student Lindsay Karchin recounts her summer at the 2011 ABT New York Summer Intensive.

Well, this is going to make for one awesome "first dance:" At American Ballet Theatre's gala on Monday night, Ethan Stiefel proposed to Gillian Murphy backstage right after she finished performing Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. And...she said yes! The couple has been dating for over a decade after a close friendship blossomed into something more. 

Congrats you two!

No matter how beautiful they are, every dancer eventually takes a final bow. But what happens once they've given up performing?

When I saw Paloma Herrera of American Ballet Theatre step onto the stage of So You Think You Can Dance last fall, I was speechless. One of my favorite ballerinas posed confidently to begin Kitri’s variation, on what seemed to be an awful floor for pointe work. Nevertheless, Herrera delivered under bright spotlights, in front of TV crews, and for millions of SYTYCD fans watching at home. If she was out of her element, it was impossible to for anyone to tell. Herrera could probably perform with spunk, strength and spot-on turns under any given situation.