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dance

Ballet C&V Ladies Interviews

Interview – Keenan Kampa

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…

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Ballet C&V Homefries Interviews

Interview – Alex Wong

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…

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Ballet

Bare-chested Ballerino: Roberto Bolle

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…

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Ballet Photo Sessions

C&V Photo Sessions: Cloud & Victory x the Dancers of Vaganova Ballet Academy

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…

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Ballet C&V Ladies

Interview: Demelza Parish

We’d put money on Demelza Parish being made from bottled sunshine. Delightfully ebullient, she’s a package of charm backed by substance – and she dances too. From childhood Swan Queen dreams, she worked her way into the famous halls of White Lodge, the Royal Ballet’s Lower School and at 17, was awarded a contract to dance at the Royal Ballet. Since then, she’s become a stalwart of the Royal’s corps de ballet, dancing countless Swan Lakes, Manons and Giselles, a Flower…

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Ballet Interviews

Interview: Allison DeBona

After the premiere episode of Breaking Pointe on America’s CW channel, everyone had an opinion on Allison DeBona. Most of these opinions weren’t flattering. Breaking Pointe was a show that followed the dancers of Ballet West, under the banner of their leader/artistic director/big daddy Adam Sklute. And Allison DeBona, a Ballet West dancer and one of the show’s main characters, was seen by many as, to put it mildly, not a particularly nice person. (The word ‘bitch’ was bandied about.) …

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Ballet Interviews

Interview: Joy Womack

If you had asked Joy Womack this time last year where she thought her ballet career would take her in 365 (and a quarter) days from then, it’s highly unlikely the answer would be, ‘principal dancer at the Kremlin Ballet’.  And yet that’s exactly where she is now. It was where she spent the past few months dancing a season of Nutcrackers and Swan Lakes and Giselles, instead of on the stage of the Roman-columned theatre down the road –…

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Ballet C&V Ladies Interviews

Interview: Isabella Boylston

isabella boylston - swan lake - odette

Google ‘Isabella Boylston’, and chances are that you’ll be presented with a list of Black Swan references. But really, it’s her white swan that’s had everyone talking. The dual role in Swan Lake was one Isabella had long dreamed of performing, and when the time came, her Odette was firmly in the limelight.…

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