by Julia Guiheen | Jul 22, 2020 | Viral Videos
Twenty years ago, Nina Ananiashvili, the current artistic director of the State Ballet of Georgia, graced the cover of Pointe’s second issue. At the time, she was a principal dancer with both the Bolshoi Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. Her expressiveness and...
by Laura Cappelle | May 18, 2020 | Career, Instagram, Profiles, Technique
Marianela Nuñez, as told to Laura Cappelle Nureyev’s Don Quixote was my first full-length at The Royal Ballet, in 2001. I’d danced the Act III pas de deux a lot as a teenager in Argentina and I was an understudy for Kitri, but I’d hardly rehearsed...
by Julia Guiheen | Jan 9, 2019 | Profiles, TBT
Updated 5/10/23. The ballet Don Quixote offers its principal ballerina the unique chance to play two different characters in one role: there’s Kitri herself, a vivacious village girl, and then Dulcinea, Don Quixote’s idealized love, who takes on the form...
by Candice Thompson | Nov 12, 2017 | Career, Profiles, Technique
When Jurgita Dronina first danced Kitri for a guest performance of Don Quixote with Teatro Filarmonico-Fondazione Arena Di Verona, she was in essence cast against type. “Before Kitri, I was dancing only lyrical or dramatic roles, so I had to start from scratch...
by Hannah Chang Foster | Oct 26, 2016 | Company Life
Kitri’s Act I variation in Don Quixote is short—but not exactly sweet. Though this clip from a 90s documentary lacks the ballet’s usual setting of matadors milling around a Spanish plaza, former American Ballet Theatre principal Susan Jaffe doesn’t...
by Caroline Seymour | Jul 13, 2016 | Company Life
Ballet is nothing without technique, but when a performance is accompanied by nothing more than that, it loses its allure. Not so in this 1983 clip of American Ballet Theatre’s Cynthia Harvey in Don Quixote. Here, she’s a breath of fresh air, striking the...
by Amy Brandt | Nov 23, 2014 | Career, Profiles
This story originally appeared in the December 2014/January 2015 issue of Pointe. Don Quixote’s Kitri is one of the feistiest characters in classical ballet. Nowhere is that more clear than in Don Q’s gregarious first act. After an exhausting series of...
by Pointe Team | Nov 28, 2001 | Company Life
Walking may seem like the simplest moment you have on stage. But the way in which you take a step can reveal volumes about your character. In Pointe’s April/May issue, four dancers spoke with writer Joseph Carman about how they approach the walking and running...