With her elongated limbs and polished port de bras, Clark is a remarkably self-possessed dancer who uses her 5′ 10 1/2″ frame to fully inhabit every choreographic moment and musical note. She debuted in a slew of roles in 2023, including the Tall Girl in George Balanchine’s “Rubies” and the lead woman in Haieff Divertimento, which hadn’t been performed by NYCB since 1994.

In 2018, after Gianna Theodore saw A.I.M by Kyle Abraham perform at The Joyce Theater, everything snapped into perspective. “I called my mom and said, ‘I have to dance for this company,’ ” she remembers.

Naturally drawn to dance from a young age, Harper Watters also sought out a sense of community throughout his training. The only boy enrolled at his local studio in New Hampshire, Watters eventually enrolled at Walnut Hill School for the Arts, which brought him to a life-changing audition for Houston Ballet’s summer intensive at the age of 15.

New York City native SarahAnne Perel spent 10 years at the School of American Ballet before securing a corps contract with Los Angeles Ballet and moving cross-country to pursue her longtime dream of dancing professionally. But Perel had other dreams, too. After her second season with LAB, she enrolled at Duke University

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.

During the pandemic she became a certified personal trainer and established Balanced With Rosi, to encourage a balanced approach to fitness and food. “I’ve been very adamant about not doing things like ‘What I eat in a day’ videos,” Leney says. “Everyone is different and everyone’s body is different, so I just try to be the kind of person that I’d want the younger version of me to see on social media.”

Keerati Jinakunwiphat balanced dance training with figure skating and gymnastics during her childhood in Chicago. As a BFA student at SUNY Purchase, she met two influential mentors.

While studying dance at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, Jazlyn Martin fell in love with acting—and began to rethink her career path. “After high school, I was auditioning to join a dance company, but I also decided to take acting seriously,” says Martin, who grew up training in everything from jazz and hip hop to modern and African dance.