From her first audition with The Joffrey Ballet, Amanda Assucena knew she was where she was meant to be. “Before the auditio­n class, I had never connected with ballet technique and free movement so much,” Assucena recalls. The Brazilian-born dancer officially joined the trainee program in 2012, was promoted to company artist the following year, and continued her meteoric rise with lead roles like the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet by the age of 19.

Gerald Arpino would have turned 100 in January. To mark the occasion, The Gerald Arpino Foundation tapped Joffrey Ballet alumni to revive Arpino works at The Joffrey, Ballet West, San Francisco Ballet, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Oklahoma City Ballet, and Eugene Ballet, as well as at university dance programs throughout the country. Artists from those companies will convene at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre September 23 and 24 for a centennial celebration, performing an all-Arpino program.

Last fall, The Joffrey Ballet’s Yumi Kanazawa had a breakout moment as Young Jane in Cathy Marston’s Jane Eyre. “She suddenly had a dramatic role that required a lot more of her as a human being, rather than just as a dancer,” says artistic director Ashley Wheater. Kanazawa played a child dealing with the death […]

Joffrey Ballet dancer Fabrice Calmels announced Monday that he’ll take his final bow with the company after a performance of Nutcracker on December 29. Born in France, Calmels trained at the Paris Opéra Ballet School before moving to the United States to study at the Rock School, Boston Ballet School and School of American Ballet. […]

The lack of female leaders in ballet is an old conversation. But a just-launched website, called the Dance Data Project, has brought something new to the discussion: actual numbers, not just anecdotal evidence. The site has published a report on leadership pay among the 50 biggest ballet companies in the U.S, broken down by gender. […]

Have you seen any shows in 2018 that you can’t stop thinking about? Watched any dance videos that blew your mind? Discovered any performers who everyone should know about? We want to hear about them! Yes, we realize that it’s only August. But we’re gearing up for our annual Readers’ Choice Awards, and it’s time […]

New York City Center just announced programming for the 2018-19 season, and we’re frantically marking our calendars for all the must-see dance. This year is the venue’s 75th anniversary, and they’re pulling out all the stops—from the reliable fan favorite Fall for Dance to the most epic Balanchine celebration and more: A Balanchine Festival Will […]

Bales of hay, black umbrellas, bicycles—this Midsummer Night’s Dream would be unrecognizable to the Bard. Alexander Ekman’s full-length, inspired by Scandinavian solstice traditions and set to music by Mikael Karlsson, is a madcap celebration of the longest day of the year, when the veil between our world and that of the supernatural is said to […]