Search results for: why i dance

Whether it’s the end of your semester, the beginning of your season or just another long day of rehearsals, we can all agree that Mondays often require a little extra motivation. Thankfully, we’ve got just the cure for your Monday blues. Every month, top dancers and choreographers contribute to our “Why I Dance,” column, musing […]

Principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre Boylston’s first connection to dance happened through music. Photo by Rosalie O’Connor, Courtesy ABT. A ballerina is many things. She’s a musician, athlete, actor, conjurer, muse and scientist—experimenting and discovering how a slight change of timing, placement or emotional inflection can alter the outcome of a step. Because of […]

Dancer with Alonzo King LINES Ballet With Robb Beresford in King’s Writing Ground. Margo Moritz, Courtesy LINES. A mentor of mine once described dance as a rather self-centered profession: We have a small window of time to perform, so we are forced to focus on our craft intensely. And because we begin our careers young, […]

Dancer in Sleep No More Photo by Quinn Wharton Dance did not come naturally to me. Long, lanky and with no strength, I started at 12 with the age group below me at Dance Industry Performing Arts Center in Plano, Texas. I had to work harder than most in my class to keep up, but […]

Principal dancer with Houston Ballet I have always believed that things happen because it is written somewhere. Call it God, or destiny, but I think dance found me. I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and was 7 years old when my mother was asking people in the street for directions to folk-dancing classes for my […]

Principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet Photo by Erik Tomasson, courtesy SFB. The search for friendship was what first brought me to ballet. When I was young, my extracurricular activities were piano and swimming. I loved them both, but they each felt lonely in their own way—piano for its solo performance and swimming for its […]

Principal dancer, National Ballet of Canada Photo by Aleksandar Antonijevic, courtesy NBoC. I don’t remember why I started dancing. I grew up in a “hockey town” in northern Québec, Canada, where, needless to say, ballet wasn’t a usual after-school activity. Even though I’d never seen a professional dance company and had no access to live […]

I was soaring through the air in a double-attitude jump during a rehearsal of Paul Taylor’s 1978 classic Airs—and when I landed, I immediately knew something was wrong. A searing pain tore through my lower right leg, and with nausea and fear rippling through me, I fought to breathe. A pall fell over the dancers […]