5 Reasons We'll Miss NYCB Principal Rebecca Krohn
This Saturday night, New York City Ballet principal Rebecca Krohn is performing for the last time, in Balanchine’s Stravinsky Violin Concerto. After 19 years at the company, she’s transitioning into a ballet master role. As she told Playbill, she’s incredibly grateful for the coaching she’s received during her career, and now she wants to give back to the next generation.
In a company filled with buzzed-about stars, Krohn can sometimes fly under the radar. But then you’ll see her in certain roles—particularly in Balanchine’s “leotard ballets” —and she’ll completely win you over with her bright, charming presence. Here are a few of the reasons we’re going to miss her.
The way she can confidently command a stage in nothing more than a leotard and tights:
The way she uses her limbs as though they have no end. Sure, she’s tall and leggy, but her incredible reach makes her look even longer:
(Rebecca Krohn and Robert Fairchild in Justin Peck’s Everywhere We Go.)
The way she seems like a real person, not just a bunhead:
Hendrickson and their dog, Franny
Krohn told The New York Times that she knew she was in love with her husband, former NYCB dancer Adam Hendrickson, when he offered her a piece of bacon—when she was still a vegetarian.
Every night after the production that holiday season in 1999, she and Mr. Hendrickson would go to a diner to eat. A vegetarian of five years at the time, she sat across from him feeling an extreme level of exhaustion. He handed her a piece of bacon off his plate.
“You need the protein,” he said. “You’re going to feel so much better.”
She hesitated, but she could see how concerned he was. He knew her body was depleted, and he understood firsthand the mental and physical demands of being a dancer. She took the bacon.
“It seems silly now,” she said. “But it meant so much to me. As an athlete, you need so much protein, and I just wasn’t taking care of myself.” They married in 2011.
The way she can be delicately soft, even while cleanly punctuating every shape in the choreography:
(Rebecca Krohn and Adrian Danchig-Waring in George Balanchine’s Stravinsky Violin Concerto.)
