Ava and Grace Sautter: 2 Sisters, 2 Very Different Dance Careers
At first glance, sisters Grace and Ava Sautter don’t exactly look alike. Though they’re similar heights (rather tall), it takes examining a few photos of them together to really see similarities: sparkly eyes (of different colors), symmetrical faces, naturally straight hair. I first spotted 22-year-old Ava Sautter, a member of New York City Ballet’s corps de ballet, onstage. She stands out for her stature, highly arched feet, and seemingly endless extensions, as well as her crisply accented technique. She moves through NYCB’s repertoire with both natural musicality (particularly in the work of George Balanchine) and the grounded assuredness of someone more seasoned.
Twenty-five-year-old Grace is also a professional dancer, but of a very different kind. A newly promoted apprentice of the Martha Graham Dance Company, Grace also has a foot in the jazz and musical theater worlds, with aspirations for film, television, and Broadway. If Ava is classically Balanchine, Grace’s dancing and theatricality, particularly in her facial expressions and articulated, controlled movement, resemble Broadway legend Ann Reinking’s. Despite their different stylistic paths, the Sautter sisters embody a shared ambition, artistic drive, and love for movement that unites them both personally and professionally.
Born and raised on New York City’s Upper West Side, the sisters don’t come from a dancing family. They were each put into dance—Grace first, followed by Ava—as one of countless activities as children. They both began their formal training at The School at Steps, where they studied ballet, jazz, Graham and Horton techniques, and musical theater. The sisters also played soccer quite seriously until each independently decided to focus on dance. However, they both say their time playing sports contributed to their work ethics: “[It] shaped our drive and determination to pursue something competitive,” Ava says.
Grace’s Journey
Grace remembers seeing a ballet performance for the first time. Her parents took her and her sister to see American Ballet Theatre in Swan Lake when she was 5 and Ava was 3. After that, Grace got the bug, but not so much for ballet. “I never dreamed of being a ballet dancer, but I suddenly pictured myself telling a story.” She was drawn towards the drama of the narrative and the music.
The sisters spent many years after that first performance reenacting the ballet, jumping off couches while Tchaikovsky’s score played in their living room. Grace’s commitment deepened during high school when she decided to study dance at LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts. “That time spent amongst so many creatives solidified for me that I wanted to dance professionally,” she says. From there, she went on to the Ailey/Fordham BFA program, and joined Graham 2 after graduating. She was drawn to the troupe not only because of her early training in Graham technique, but because of the repertoire’s emphasis on theatrical, narrative works—not to mention Graham herself. “Martha Graham was just the epitome of female power and telling stories with the body,” Grace says. “There’s so much nuance and intricacy in her work.”
Ava’s Journey
Ava chose to focus on ballet shortly after going on pointe in her early teens. While before she saw ballet as overly disciplinary (“In jazz, you could just have fun,” she says), something clicked once she graduated to pointe shoes. Her teachers seemed to take notice of her potential, which gave Ava the confidence to pursue ballet more seriously.
At 13, she auditioned for the School of American Ballet Summer Intensive. “When I got in for the summer, my love for ballet grew,” Ava says. She not only honed in on ballet technique there; she stretched herself creatively in variations classes and felt herself grow as an artist. She names Suki Schorer and Kay Mazzo as two of her favorite SAB teachers. “The way they explained Balanchine was more through storytelling,” she says. She was accepted for SAB’s year-round program later that summer, studying there for seven years before being offered an apprentice contract with NYCB at age 18.
Sisterly Support
What stands out about the sisters is not only their commitment to their own careers, but their support for each other. When, for instance, the pandemic hit, Ava was still a student at SAB. Her classes moved to Zoom, which she did from her family’s living room. During a series of private lessons, Grace sat patiently at the kitchen table and took notes for Ava, reviewing them with her after. Similarly, Ava supported Grace during her audition for LaGuardia High School, offering encouragement to boost her confidence throughout the process. “Our whole family would sit at our kitchen counter watching her high school audition videos of her choreographed solos, just gasping at her abilities,” says Ava.
Today, the sisters are quite busy, but they make a concerted effort to get together, and to see each other perform whenever possible. They also enjoy getting dressed up and going out for dinners together. They run a shared Instagram account (@thesauttersisters), where they post footage from their fitness classes and offering musings on creating balance in their lives as professional dancers. “It’s so fun to do something together,” Grace says. “We’re lucky to be sisters in the city, both dancing with different experiences, but being there to support one another.”
While the Sautter sisters don’t seek the exact same outcome, they have exceedingly high expectations for themselves. Ava is starting to receive opportunities outside of the corps. In 2024, she danced in Albert Evans’ In a Landscape, as well as the lead pas de deux in Jerome Robbins’ Glass Pieces. She’s also starting to understudy major roles, including Odette/Odile in Balanchine’s Swan Lake. While Ava might not be first on the list to fill in, she’s in the room for rehearsals, getting to observe principal dancers at work. “It makes me feel like [the artistic staff] sees a future for me here.”
Grace has begun her journey towards joining the Martha Graham Dance Company as a full member. She also participates in the Verdon Fosse Legacy—a connection that started at LaGuardia when The Legacy staged Sing Sing Sing for her high school class—while dancing in other companies like American Dance Machine and Buglisi Dance Theatre (founded by a group of former principal dancers of Martha Graham Dance Company). Grace regularly takes class outside of her professional affiliations, frequenting Steps, the studio partially responsible for her dance education. “Training is something that never ends,” she says.
Throughout our conversation, both sisters admitted that no matter what they’re working on, however exciting it is, they’re always aiming to push themselves. And not only as technical practitioners, but as artists. “I want the audience not to remember me for the height of my leg, but for how I made them feel,” says Ava. They want to dance the roles well, but with their own approach, leaving a bit of themselves onstage.
“ ‘Divine dissatisfaction’—that’s what Martha Graham called it,” Grace says. The insatiable hunger to not only keep going, but to outdo oneself. On this point, these two very different sisters are entirely aligned.
