Search results for: misty copeland

On Instagram this week, Misty Copeland reposted a picture of two Russian ballerinas covered head to toe in black, exposing the Bolshoi’s practice of using blackface in the classical ballet La Bayadère. The post has already received over 60,000 likes and 2,000 comments, starting a long overdue conversation. Comments have been pouring in from every […]

Kyle Abraham’s powerhouse A.I.M has recently been expanding its model. Last spring, the company invited Andrea Miller to create a work, A.I.M’s first commission by a guest choreographer. The program also included pieces by Bebe Miller and Doug Varone—marking a shift from all-Abraham repertory shows. This fall, for its Joyce season, A.I.M is again trying […]

There’s a type of dance you’ve never heard of: It’s called “classical ballet.” The progenitors included Mathilde Kschessinska, Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova. The art form passed through generations from Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev to Mikhail Baryshnikov. It continues in our own time—Misty Copeland! It would be far-fetched, even absurd, to hear that in a […]

I have to admit, I’ve had a wonderful career. I’ve danced with The Royal Ballet and The Joffrey Ballet, done a stint on the West End in An American in Paris, played the Snow Cavalier in Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms with Misty Copeland, and will soon be performing as Older Billy in […]

Story ballets that debut during American Ballet Theatre’s spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House are always the subject of much curiosity—and, sometimes, much debate. Cathy Marston’s Jane Eyre was no different. The ballet follows the eponymous heroine of Charlotte Brönte’s novel as she grows from a willful orphan to a self-possessed governess, charting her […]

Here’s some Monday news to rock your soul: An upcoming Fox Searchlight film about the life of Alvin Ailey just got even more enticing—Barry Jenkins, the filmmaker who won an Oscar for Moonlight, has signed on as director. It feels like quite a fitting hire. Back in 2017, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater artistic director […]

If you’re like me and have sobbed through every episode of “This Is Us” since the show premiered back in 2016, you might have been taken aback when a ballet plot was introduced absolutely out of nowhere earlier this season. We’d gotten to know the fictional Pearson family pretty well by that point, though we […]

My January is always busy. Weekdays are filled with rehearsals in Seattle and weekends are spent traversing the country auditioning students for our summer intensive. I direct Pacific Northwest Ballet School and I see these auditions as essential investments in future talent for both our school and company. I do them myself to let students […]