by Chava Pearl Lansky | Apr 10, 2019 | Profiles, TBT
The Youth America Grand Prix New York Finals are starting up again this week, running April 12-19. This year, YAGP is celebrating its 20th anniversary. April 18-19 marks the competition’s annual Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow gala, featuring 13 pros...
by Julia Guiheen | Apr 3, 2019 | Profiles, TBT
The Diana and Actaeon pas de deux, from the ballet La Esmeralda, is a bravura tableaux ideal for festivals and galas. In this clip, we see Viengsay Valdés and her frequent partner Romel Frometa perform the piece at Japan’s 2006 World Ballet Festival. Valdés,...
by Julia Guiheen | Mar 20, 2019 | Profiles, TBT
Tamara Rojo joined the elite, though thankfully growing, roster of female ballet company directors seven years ago when she took the helm at English National Ballet. Since then she’s managed the even more uncommon feat of continuing to perform as a leading...
by Julia Guiheen | Mar 6, 2019 | Profiles, TBT
Alessandra Ferri and Mikhail Baryshnikov are two dancers whose physicality and artistic prowess truly pushed ballet to a new level. Their careers have spanned decades and continents, making them icons of the ballet world. In the late 1980s both dancers were working at...
by Julia Guiheen | Feb 20, 2019 | Profiles, TBT
This week’s TBT is a three-for-one throwback special: A power trio of versatile American Ballet Theatre performers, Xiomara Reyes and siblings Erica and Herman Cornejo, dance the Act I pas de trois from Swan Lake in this 2005 video. Reyes, who now heads The...
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 Julia Guiheen | Oct 17, 2018 | Profiles, TBT
Elegant, enigmatic and versatile, Diana Adams was a muse to the choreographic visionaries of her day. She originated roles in works by Agnes de Mille, Antony Tudor, George Balanchine and Gene Kelly, most famously the edgy pas de deux in Balanchine’s Agon...
by Julia Guiheen | Sep 18, 2018 | Profiles, TBT
When Jules Perrot’s Pas de Quatre premiered in London in 1845, it was an unprecedented event in the ballet world. Created for four of the greatest ballerinas of the day—Marie Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, Lucile Grahn and Fanny Cerrito—the ballet was essentially the...