It’s strange to hear someone describe themselves as old when they’re just a smidge over 30, but Marijn Rademaker does so, matter-of-factly and without a hint of irony in his voice. It’s true, in a manner of speaking. While no one would seriously consider a person to be old at 33 years of age, ballet, like every other highly athletic occupation, is progressively unkinder on one’s body as the years go by. Not that anyone would think Marijn’s age is any limit on…
Keenan Kampa is the coolest. Watch a video of her dancing onstage, and she radiates the loveliness of a classically-trained dancer. All effort and hard work is hidden beneath a veneer of calmness and grace honed from years of ballet training, and refined in the notoriously exacting Vaganova Academy in Russia. Offstage, she exudes another sort of coolness – an effortless, off-the-moment chicness of someone who marches to the beat of her own drum. One only need to look at her breadth of…
Partway through my interview with English National Ballet’s Jeanette Kakareka, we got sidetracked with a conversation about the latest season Survivor (verdict: not so great, but addictive nonetheless) and the difficulties of foam rollers (#foamrollerproblems). If anything, that should tell you something about her personality: friendly, down-to-earth and easy to talk to. She also has a great sense of humour, occasionally documenting the lighter side of life with the ENB with series of instagram snaps entitled Dead Jem, which feature her friend and fellow…
Part 2 of my interview with Carling Talcott, in which a professional ballet dancer and an adult ballet beginner discuss eating disorders and recovery.…
Carling Talcott and I come from very different worlds. She’s an American living in Denmark, and I’m a Singaporean living in, well, Singapore. She’s a professional ballet dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet, while I’m an adult ballet beginner who totters off to class once a week. But there are a couple of things we have in common, like a love of pizza and burgers, and being able to find humour in the mundane and the things we love, such…
The American Ballet Theatre had a shirtless party and they forgot to invite Roberto Bolle. This could have been a oversight of epic proportions. But do not worry, mia cara. We have fixed it for you, for Roberto, for the ABT… for humanity.…
Alex Wong seems be able to do absolutely anything he sets his mind to. The former principal soloist of the Miami City Ballet left the company while his star was on the rise in the classical dance world in favour of a spot on hit T.V show So You Think You Can Dance. It was a risky proposition, by any account – leaving a steady job and a potential promotion for the sink-or-swim nature of reality TV. But Alex proved…
Roberto Bolle is the king of dance. The king of shirtless dancing, to be exact. For all of us unlucky souls who do not have the pleasure of watching him dance in person, preferably sans top, Roberto has been gifting the world with many a shirtless selfie on social media. After doing the same with David Hallberg, we couldn’t resist trying to figure out what’s going on in the mind (and abs) of the American Ballet Theatre principal dancer during these…
After months upon months of work, Cloud & Victory’s Spring/Summer 2015 collection was recently launched. It was so thrilling to once again have the wonderful Joy Womack model the collection of ballet-inspired tops, skirts and leggings, and we hope everyone will enjoy it. …
A gaggle of girls cluster around me in the dimly-lit photo studio, waiting for my instructions. Nastya and Sasha have to leave early. “So how about you sit and I shoot you wearing your pointe shoes,” I say. The two long-limbed young women in question pull out a fresh pair of satin pink pointe shoes apiece and sit against the white studio backdrop, shifting slightly as I reposition them. Their friends disappear down the corridor to a dressing room. One…
Juliet Doherty talks pointe shoes, pilates and dispenses pirouette tips in our quickfire questions.…