by Nancy Wozny | Mar 18, 2013 | Company Life
By Nancy Wozny and Laura Cappelle It takes more than training to make a great dancer. What powers those grand jetés? What helps a dancer unwind? Professionals constantly fine-tune their wellness regimens to discover the snack, the roller or hobby that will help...
by Margaret Fuhrer | Jan 23, 2013 | Features, Inside PT, Profiles
For many dancers, it’s a familiar story: A young girl dreams of becoming a ballerina. She’s talented—very talented, in fact—but her body doesn’t fit the ballet type. She’s never quite thin enough; her legs are too bulky, her torso...
by Jennifer Heimlich | Jan 23, 2013 | Company Life
Photography by Matthew Murphy Boston Ballet auditions are notorious for drawing scores of hopefuls. Every year, artistic director Mikko Nissinen holds one open call in Boston and one in New York, and invites anyone interested to try their luck. Pointe peeked in on...
by Elizabeth Kendall | Nov 28, 2012 | Features, Inside PT, Profiles
Press room, Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, before show time (loud bells interrupt us between 7:40 and 8 pm). Natalia Osipova, American Ballet Theatre’s 26-year-old star ballerina, has come from rehearsal wearing a purple T-shirt over crocheted tights...
by Nancy Wozny | Nov 28, 2012 | Company Life
Photography by Jim Lafferty Aszure Barton is a thoroughly postmodern choreographer: She doesn’t mind if a step is ugly, as long as it’s interesting. Over the past six years, she’s choreographed for American Ballet Theatre, National Ballet of...
by Margaret Fuhrer | Nov 28, 2012 | Company Life
This past summer, Amy Seiwert was looking for statistics on ballet’s women choreographers. She wanted hard numbers to put SKETCH 2: The Women Choreographers—an upcoming program by her company, Imagery—in context. Seiwert knew the ballet world...
by Ashley Rivers | Nov 28, 2012 | Everything Nutcracker
Dancers have a love-hate relationship with Nutcracker. For many, it was the first ballet they saw; for even more, it was the first they ever performed. But, despite the nostalgia, December’s relentless marathon of shows takes a toll. If Nutcracker music is...
by Joseph Carman | Nov 28, 2012 | Company Life
Training with other students in the pressure-cooker environment of a summer intensive can be daunting. But sometimes the right teacher comes along to provide a hopeful ballerina-to-be with the necessary tools, guidance and inspiration, and a career begins to take...