On our very first C&V Podcast, Boston Ballet Misa Kuranaga talks about her journey from ballet competition wunderkind to struggling freelancer to becoming the first Asian principal dancer at Boston Ballet, and shares how she learnt to accept herself, and find enjoyment in dance and life.…
There’s a lot that separates Boston Ballet’s Ashley Ellis and I. A couple of oceans, for one thing. And there’s the small fact that she’s a principal dancer in a top ballet company, talented and graceful and whipping out complex choreography with elegance and ease, while I can barely remember the adage combinations as I fumble through my weekly ballet classes. When I spoke to Ashley, we talked first about the rigorous life of a ballet dancer. I am aware…
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…