by Julia Guiheen | Mar 18, 2020 | TBT
The Bolshoi Ballet’s Ekaterina Shipulina was promoted to principal rank in late 2011, after over 13 years of dancing with the company. Yet from the earliest days of her career, her performances revealed the makings of a leading ballerina. In this 2003 clip of...
by Julia Guiheen | Mar 4, 2020 | TBT
Of all the tragic onstage deaths in ballet, Manon’s in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s eponymous ballet may the most physically wrenching. The final pas de deux between Manon and Des Grieux is intricate and extreme, both technically and emotionally. Jonathan Cope...
by Julia Guiheen | Jan 22, 2020 | TBT
At the end of Swan Lake’s Act I, Prince Siegfried finds himself alone after guests have departed from his birthday celebration, processing the news that he’ll soon need to choose a wife. The soul-searching prince dances an introspective, almost mournful...
by Julia Guiheen | Dec 18, 2019 | Everything Nutcracker, TBT
On December 18, 1965, The Bell Telephone Hour broadcast a Christmas special featuring New York City Ballet principal dancers Melissa Hayden and Jacques d’Amboise. The pair performed the Snow Pas de Deux from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, choreographed by...
by Julia Guiheen | Nov 6, 2019 | TBT
Noëlla Pontois, the striking, lithe and fiercely technical former étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet, was renown for her interpretation of aristocratic roles in 19th-century ballets. In this 1983 performance from Rudolf Nureyev’s production of Raymonda, Pontois is...
by Julia Guiheen | Oct 16, 2019 | TBT
Sir Anthony Dowell dedicated four decades for his life to The Royal Ballet, first as a principal dancer, and then as the company’s artistic director. His monumental career is a testament to his love for the art form. That love can also be seen in this solo from...
by Julia Guiheen | Sep 18, 2019 | Profiles, TBT
What do Diana Vishneva, Olga Smirnova, Kristina Shapran and Maria Khoreva all have in common? These women, among the most impressive talents to graduate from the Vaganova Ballet Academy in recent years, all studied under legendary professor Lyudmila Kovaleva....
by Julia Guiheen | Aug 21, 2019 | TBT
Updated on 8/5/2020 French ballerina Zizi Jeanmaire first gained fame when she premiered the titular title role in Roland Petit’s Carmen in 1949, opposite Petit as Carmen’s lover Don José. With her famously cropped hair (and cropped tutu!),...