by Lauren Warnecke | Jan 28, 2019 | Career, Profiles
You left Mexico at 16 to attend the English National Ballet School. How did your family react? My roots are very poor. I have family who live in the countryside; they never saw this as a career. When I left, they thought my parents were crazy. Later I came back to...
by Laura Cappelle | Nov 6, 2018 | Profiles, Reverence
What do you enjoy more: performing or being in the studio? Performing. My coaches understand that I’m not a studio dancer—sometimes, in the studio, it can go quite horrendously. They’ll say: It’s okay, we know onstage you can do it. In reaching the...
by Nancy Wozny | Aug 14, 2018 | Profiles, Reverence
Your director Stanton Welch claims that you can hover in midair. Really? I am not sure that I can do that. I do know that I repeat things over and over because I need to find my own way with each step, and maybe the floating quality happens in there somewhere. I just...
by Natalia Boesch | Jul 10, 2018 | Career, Profiles, Reverence
How was training at the Cuban National Ballet School different from what you see in the U.S.? It was free education, so it was very hard to get in, and there was a cut every year. We had academics alongside art, and we had to take a lot of different things: modern,...
by Marina Harss | Jan 16, 2018 | Career, Profiles, Reverence
You made a deal with your mom to take ballet classes in exchange for a ride to tryouts for the football team. How did that work? I thought that I would take ballet for a couple months, become a master and then leave that alone and concentrate on football. Ballet had...
by Laura Cappelle | Jul 25, 2017 | Career, Profiles, Reverence
What do you enjoy more: performing or being in the studio? Performing, of course. It’s like waiting and getting ready for your birthday party. The rehearsals are a hard process: It’s a long wait for enjoyment. What qualities do you admire most in other...
by Laura Cappelle | Jun 19, 2017 | Career, Inside PT, Profiles, Reverence
Last weekend, the Mariinsky Ballet announced on its website that one of its most revered prima ballerinas, Uliana Lopatkina, has retired from the stage. A principal dancer since 1995, Lopatkina’s interpretation of Odette/Odile and “The Dying Swan”,...
by Natalia Boesch | Apr 3, 2017 | Career, Profiles
You trained partly at the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington, DC. What’s the most important thing you got out of that experience? The opportunity to go to Russia at age 16. Oleg Vinogradov, the director at the time, chose me to be an apprentice with the Kirov...