My dance training has had many phases. My mother danced into her 20s and knew how difficult a professional career could be. So to save me from heartbreak, she steered me towards gymnastics when I was 6. But that summer I attended a camp that included ballet—and loved it. My mother relented and enrolled me […]
If anyone had questioned Nikolaj Hübbe’s capacity to give the venerable Royal Danish Ballet a jolt of fresh energy, those doubts should have been laid to rest last March. Hübbe, who became RDB artistic director in July 2008, thrilled audiences in Copenhagen—his birthplace—with an exhilarating all-Balanchine triple bill. The Danes know their Balanchine. New York […]
American Dance Competition As a young dancer with Orlando Ballet, Audrianna Broad watched her former classmates from Harid Conservatory struggle—and fail—to find work dancing professionally. “It takes a lot for dancers, girls especially, to make it in ballet,” she says. “But it helps if important people are watching them.” So, after earning a degree […]
On December 1, 1957, ballet turned a corner at New York’s City Center. That night, George Balanchine’s Agon made its official debut. “It was a major point in the [New York City Ballet’s] history,” says Arthur Mitchell, who was in the original cast. “It was the most difficult thing to dance—or to play—but it established […]
When Sarah Van Patten first danced the lead in a Royal Danish Ballet production of Romeo and Juliet, it felt like a cinch. Just 16 years old, she was an apprentice in the company and it seemed very real. “I didn’t even think about acting,” she says. Now 24 and a principal with San […]
Elite ballet competitions have become a fact of life. Considering the highly competitive job market these days, the Prix de Lausanne, Youth America Grand Prix and others like them provide access to apprenticeships, scholarships, exposure and, if nothing else, the opportunity to perform. Competitions have become a goal for which many students prepare—sometimes the whole […]
For a performing artist, every moment onstage is a test, but once a year the Paris Opera Ballet takes the idea of assessment to the extreme. Originally designed as an obligatory annual exam, the Concours (literally “contest” in English) has since evolved into a voluntary, if highly encouraged, event. Since 1860, the dancers of the […]
“We’re starting from scratch,” says Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet Artistic Director Benoit-Swan Pouffer, “so we have no legacies. It’s just the future.” For New York City–based Cedar Lake, founded in 2003 with abundant funding from Wal-Mart heiress Nancy Walton Laurie, the future lies in daring, experimental works danced by rigorously trained, artistically curious performers. “It’s […]