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Before joining RIOULT Dance NY in 2015, Corinna Lee Nicholson learned what a privilege it is to be a dancer from her professor, Myra Woodruff. “She would talk about how special it was to spend our time dancing. Most people don’t have the opportunity to leap and turn during the day. It’s something that is […]
Irish dancer Cara Butler remembers the helpful advice that her teacher Donny Golden gave her as a child to ease her mind before competitions. “I remember that he was really good at calming my nerves as a kid. He would always say, ‘Your nerves are a form of energy. Use it as fuel.’ That was […]
Ae-Soon Kim, a dancer with Carolyn Dorfman Dance for eight years, learned the power of open-ended questions by working closely with Dorfman. “Sometimes, in rehearsal, I feel like I’m in acting class. To help us bring emotion into our bodies, Carolyn poses questions like, ‘What if you didn’t have anything to eat but had to […]
Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Lindsey Croop learned the power of positivity in ballet class with Charla Genn. “One of the things that sets her apart is she’s so positive and funny. She comes up with rhymes for everything, like ‘Lift your chest in arabesque to be the best!’ She also makes them individualized. When I […]
As a dancer with Compagnie CNDC-Angers/Robert Swinston for the past four years, Anna Chirescu changed the way she approached taking on new challenges. “Robert is an American who works in France, where the culture is very different. He says that French people talk and think much, but in America it’s much more about the doing. […]
For 10 years, Paul Taylor Dance Company’s Heather McGinley trained intensively in Cecchetti technique with Lisbeth Brown in St. Louis. Brown encouraged her to showcase her strengths. “She emphasized that the technique was important, but to always keep in mind that it was a vehicle for expression. She always encouraged me to be myself, rather […]
In the 1970s, Janaki Patrik, artistic director of The Kathak Ensemble & Friends, studied with Merce Cunningham in New York City. She remembers the subtle way he would give a correction. “I loved the technique. It was pure and spare, but when he taught the class, it was electric. To make a correction, he might […]
To better understand the intricacies of dancing in pointe shoes, choreographer Fadi J. Khoury, artistic director of FJK Dance, took private lessons from his collaborative partner Sevin Ceviker. “As a choreographer, I felt like I needed to learn more about dancing on pointe so that I could really know what I was asking from my […]
Before Anna Bass entered into her 14-year collaborative partnership with choreographer Monica Bill Barnes, she was inspired by another partnership—her James Madison University professors Cynthia Thompson and Kate Trammell. “They’ve had a duet company for over 30 years, now, and are still performing and making work. It’s still a huge priority in their lives, and […]
While studying at ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School as a teenager, Complexions Contemporary Ballet dancer Andrew Brader shared a special moment with Susan Jaffe, who soon became his mentor. “It was the 10th-anniversary performance of the ABT Studio Company. Susan was coming out of retirement to do Le Spectre de la Rose, and I remember […]