After 25 Years of Triumphs and Troubles, a Ballerina Bids Farewell
They have fueled one another. There was the time she tore her plantar fascia onstage during a performance of 'Western Symphony.' She made a full recovery, but it took a while. There was weight that wouldn't come off, which resulted in infrequent casting and just a smattering of shows.
With few scheduled shows, there weren't many chances to rehearse. Then came another injury, this time in 'Vienna Waltzes': She tore her posterior tibial tendon.
'My dancing feet weren't there,' she said in an interview at Lincoln Center. 'That's kind of been the up and down. It's like trying to come back, but not getting enough to do and then hurting myself again.'
But she wasn't ready to give up. 'I just kept waiting to dance again,' she said. 'I'm like, all I want to do is dance. Like, get me out there, let me dance, let me dance.'
This season, Bouder, 41, got to do that, before closing out her 25-year City Ballet career. On Thursday, her farewell performance, she'll dance in George Balanchine's 'Firebird.' She first danced the role at 17, when she was thrown into at the last minute.
'Everybody always asks you when you get to the end, 'What do you think you're going to retire with?'' she said. 'I was always like, 'I don't know.' But I think I've know my whole life that would be the ballet.'
In the years since that 'Firebird' when, she said, 'I didn't know anything,' Bouder became one of the company's most visible ballerinas — she also earned a double degree in political science and organizational leadership from Fordham University; married and had a child (her daughter, Violet, 8, is a student at School of American Ballet); and embraced being a feminist, speaking out about injustices in the ballet world.
Onstage, Bouder was vivid from the start, dating back to her first major role at City Ballet as the demi-soloist in 'La Source.' Kathleen Tracey, a repertory director whom Bouder works closely with, said, 'She came bounding out onstage with so much excitement and thrill and a huge jump and a beautiful, exhilarating kind of presentation. I was blown away.'
She was fearless. Soon after joining the company in 2000, Bouder, who trained at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet before attending the School of American Ballet, quickly became a dazzling interpreter of Balanchine ballets. Her virtuosic dancing matched her theatrical effervescence. Her sparkle was never put on — she was never the type to hide how happy dancing makes her feel.
But over the last couple of years, she said, she had been questioning her every move. 'Finally I'm feeling like I can do it again,' Bouder said. 'Like not be nervous that they're going to judge me because my leg's not high enough. Or if I didn't hit that fifth. Or if I'm going to get tired because I don't know what kind of shape I'm in.'
In other words, all of those anxiety-producing feelings that, she said, make your shoulders rise and your dancing smaller. 'So I'm finally, like, just' — she exhaled deeply — 'let it go.'
There were moments during our interview when Bouder's voice shook and her eyes welled with tears. But she was just as prone to laughter as spoke about the ups and downs of her career. 'Firebird' was a high. Tracey is proud of her for choosing that ballet as her send-off.
'It means a lot to her and it means a lot to the ballet to have her leave her imprint on it,' Tracey said. 'She will be remembered in that role.'
When Bouder danced it at 17, she had only two hours of rehearsal. 'I remember that Kay Mazzo was there,' she said, referring to a former principal and chairman of faculty at the school. 'I didn't know when to enter because the music is very murky in the beginning, and it's Stravinsky, and I hadn't even seen that part of the ballet.'
She had danced in the ballet before, playing a monster. But 'I had never watched the beginning of it,' she said. 'So Kay stood behind me and she goes, 'OK, bend over'' — the Firebird enters leaning forward like a soaring bird — 'and she pushed me so I could run out.'
Bouder triumphed in many more roles after that storied debut, including Balanchine's 'Ballo Della Regina,' 'Stars and Stripes' and 'Tarantella.' But she faced challenges in those early years too. While the onstage and studio part of dancing was great, 'the social aspect was terrible,' she said, and described one show 'that was absolutely horrifying.'
She danced in three ballets on that program. For the final one, she needed to switch from pink tights and pointe shoes to white. When she returned to her spot to put on her white shoes, they were gone.
'The ribbons were all cut off,' she said, 'and the shoes were destroyed in different trash cans around the dressing room.'
She ended up performing in a colleague's shoes that were a half a size too big. (She packed them with extra toe pads.) 'We were all kids at that point,' Bouder said. 'I got bullied a lot. There were certain colleagues that if I was walking down the hallway, they would say things like, 'I hope you fall tonight.''
Now City Ballet has a Human Resources department, something Bouder wishes had been around when she was coming up. 'I grew a really thick skin to the point where people were like, 'Well, she's prickly.' And I'm like, yes, but if you had been treated the way I have, you pull the wall up. You are not getting in here. And it took me a long time to reverse that.'
Recent experiences have been wounding, too. In 2022, she posted on Instagram that a board member had told her that 'they don't mind the extra weight on me.'
Before that Bouder said she had been taken out of a performance, 'because the costume showcased my 'problem area.''
She fell into a deep depression. 'It's like I didn't want to work,' she said. 'I couldn't lose the weight because I didn't want to work. It wasn't eating too much or doing something like that, but it's just like I couldn't get the energy.'
She added, 'one of the things that I'm excited to let go of is the constant scrutiny of every part of my body.'
Tracey, a former soloist with City Ballet, has watched Bouder evolve as a person and a dancer. 'She was able to always navigate through the pressure,' Tracey said. 'I think that is a testament to her mental toughness and that ability to take hard situations and make them her own — to be able to work through the difficulties of any particular ballet or situation in the workplace.'
For her next act, Bouder is now in the middle of applying for nonprofit status with a new organization, Ashley Bouder Arts, which will include educational elements like workshops in different dance forms; continue her performance group, Ashley Bouder Project, with a choreographic lab; and start a summer dance festival that would tour the Northeast.
'I would love to keep dancing,' she said. 'It's funny because a lot of people say, I'm ready to hang up my pointe shoes, get rid of the pointe shoes. I love my pointe shoes.'
As for 'squishing into a leotard,' as she put it? Not so much.
'I think that just the past couple of years have really destroyed me forever really wanting to do that again,' she said. 'I want to still dance, but I don't want to be in a leotard and tights in front of 2,000 people anymore.'
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New York Times
6 days ago
- New York Times
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Tiler Peck is the kind of ballerina who makes dancing look easy. Known for her musicality, her virtuosity, her incisive technique and her spirit — guileless and wise, opinionated and sharp — she has been a sparkling principal at New York City Ballet since 2009. But early on she encountered a bump in the road. She was young — 17 or 18 — and cast as the woman in Pink in Jerome Robbins's ballet 'Dances at a Gathering,' set to Chopin. Her debut seemed to go well. She performed the right steps. And yet she wasn't ready for it. 'I didn't understand the simplicity of the ballet,' she said. 'So much of the Robbins work is understated. You really have to dig deeper into who you are as a person and bring that to the role.' That was one of the reasons she said yes to overseeing a Robbins festival, a presentation this month by the Joyce Theater Foundation initiated by the Robbins Rights Trust. His ballets, she said, taught her much about what it means to be a ballerina. Just because a dancer can fly, it doesn't mean that's all she can do. Peck can just walk. Simply and to great effect. For 'Ballet Festival: Jerome Robbins,' Aug. 12-17, Peck is giving a group of top-tier dancers the chance to find out more about themselves, too. Handpicked by Peck from City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, the Paris Opera Ballet and the Royal Ballet, these dancers won't be meeting in yet another star showcase or gala setting, but sharing the stage in a serious way. 'I wanted it to not only be something exciting for the audience, but I wanted it to be exciting for the dancers involved, selfishly,' Peck said, in a video interview from London, where she was performing in the musical 'Little Dancer.' She added, 'I wanted it to be growing experiences for all of us.' As far as the repertory is concerned, Peck worked with the trust — mainly with Jean-Pierre Frohlich, who is also a repertory director at City Ballet who assisted Robbins and stages his works. 'She knows what she wants and she knows what she likes,' Frohlich said. 'And that's really important. Plus, she has taste.' A festival highlight is Peck's debut in 'A Suite of Dances,' a solo created for Mikhail Baryshnikov. She's the first woman to dance the role. Two years ago, Peck asked Frohlich if she could learn the part. (She wasn't the first woman to ask.) The answer, then, was clear: no. It was reserved for male dancers. But now the trust has shifted its thinking. Casting at companies has become more open. At Pacific Northwest Ballet, Ashton Edwards, a nonbinary dancer, performs male and female roles. And in contemporary ballets, men and women have been known to switch parts, like the lead couple in 'The Times Are Racing' by Justin Peck. 'If we're going to do it, it should be now,' Frohlich said of 'A Suite of Dances.' And it's important to do it while the people who worked with Robbins are still here to coach and to supervise. Frohlich was in the studio when it was created. 'If it works, it works,' he said. 'If it doesn't work, it might not happen again. So we decided to go for it.' After spending time in the studio with Peck, he's feeling optimistic. Her femininity, he said, adds a different dynamic. Robbins choreographed 'Suite,' in which a solo dancer and cellist perform as partners, like an impromptu conversation, in 1994. While the ballet is difficult and an endurance test, it isn't necessarily gendered. 'It's funny because J.P., the first day he's teaching me, he's like, 'OK, so we're going to have to change some things,' and I said, 'Well, can I try?'' Peck said. 'And I'm doing all the same steps. I didn't want to get offered this and fix it! Literally, I want to do the part. That's what's important to me.' Peck's early jazz training has made it possible for her to execute the steps. She can perform as effortlessly in a flat slipper as a pointe shoe. 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In selecting repertory for the Joyce, a more intimate setting than Lincoln Center, Peck was constricted by music choices. 'It really was, 'Here are the ballets that we can do with a quartet, a piano' — that kind of thing — and I was given a list,' she said. 'They were pushing certain ballets, and I was like, 'There's a reason they don't go. I'm not going to put them on just because they haven't gone in a while.'' Peck may have been only 10 when Jerome Robbins died in 1998, but she knows her way around his dances. And she has an eye for who should interpret them and how that will advance their dancing in the future. As a choreographer, too — she will create her second work for City Ballet next year — she sees the bigger picture. She thinks like an artistic director. The Robbins festival is an extension of that. One ballet she is presenting, 'Rondo,' an elegant, subdued duet, was on the list and is 'one of the more interesting ballets,' she said. 'If you have two very interesting people, then the work is just going to be lifted even more.' Making her debut in 'Rondo' opposite Mira Nadon of City Ballet, is the American Ballet Theater principal Chloe Misseldine, who is new to Robbins. 'It's a crash course,' she said. 'I've never danced anything like it.' And as Peck said, 'Who doesn't want to see Mira and Chloe dance side by side?' A lesser-seen ballet that Peck wanted to bring back was 'Four Bagatelles,' which she danced years ago and thought would be a wonderful challenge for Emma Von Enck and David Gabriel, two gifted dancers at City Ballet. 'I found the choreography very different for Robbins, with some really interesting timing things, and it's very hard,' Peck said. 'It is the perfect time in their careers to tackle something like this. And the partnering is quite hard even though it doesn't look it. So it'll be good for David because it will help get him there.' For the trio 'Concertino,' she selected Dominika Afanasenkov, a rising corps de ballet member at City Ballet, as the female lead. 'They've pushed her a little bit at City Ballet, but I'm like, you need to keep it going to nurture that,' Peck said. 'You can't just give her one thing and then not give her something for so long. You have to keep building. I really wanted her to lead a ballet and keep going in that direction.' When the trust suggested another dancer, Peck recalled that she said: ''No, I really want Dominika. Is that OK?' And they were like, 'OK.' I said, 'Great.'' Peck is also a longtime fan of Cassandra Trenary, until last month a Ballet Theater principal, who will make her debut in 'Other Dances' with Roman Mejia just days before she joins Vienna State Opera. Trenary is thrilled. She's been wanting to learn 'Other Dances' for as long as she can remember. 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That's not interesting to me.' And it was never her vision. 'The point of this was to bring people together, to experience these ballets together,' she said. 'And so I didn't want it to look like a gala. I wanted it to look like a festival.'
Forbes
29-07-2025
- Forbes
Chanel Celebrates Five Years Of The BAAND Together Dance Festival At Lincoln Center
The New York City Ballet for BAAND Together Dance Festival Courtesy of CHANEL The Rite of Spring is one of Igor Stravinsky's greatest legacies, yet that nearly almost wasn't the case. Composed for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, when the show debuted in 1913, it was instantly met with controversy. But when Coco Chanel met Diaghilev, she became his friend and costumer designer, and eventually his patron when he was unable to fund the revival of The Rite of Spring , allowing the show to be revived at the end of 1920. Coco Chanel immersed herself in the world of dance beyond providing financial support, taking dance lessons with Isadora Duncan. Her passion for dance lives on through her maison. Today marks the opening night of the BAAND Together Dance Festival, in which five iconic dance companies come together for the fifth year, a famously auspicious number for Chanel. 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The Dance Theatre of Harlem will perform 'Nyman String Quartet No. 2' by Robert Garland, New York City Ballet will perform 'After the Rain (Pas de Deux)' by Christopher Wheeldon, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will perform 'Many Angels' by Lar Lubovitch, American Ballet Theatre will perform 'Midnight Pas de Deux' by Susan Jaffe and Ballet Hispánico will perform 'House of Mad'moiselle' by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. BAAND Together Dance Festival has grown and evolved since its inaugural performance, which was held outdoors to accommodate restrictions during the pandemic. 'We're very fortunate to be in the space of our friends at New York City Ballet, at the David H. Koch Theater,' Thake says. 'We moved it indoors because we want to make sure we never have any weather cancelations when we have these companies together. 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You also get to see them as people who are so invested in this city, and because dance happens at such a young age, and so many of them grew up here, learning here at these various schools and forums, this idea of what it means to be in New York and dance is going to come through in this panel.' To reach audiences and dance lovers in new ways, free dance workshops will be offered for all ages and abilities. 'Every day of the festival, a different company brings their expertise in education and programming to the David Geffen Hall lobby, where anyone can participate in these dance workshops,' Thake says. 'Another through line of these companies that they all have beautiful, big education programs. It's a large part of what they do. It's not an aside. To be able to make sure that we have room to showcase both of them, and for audience members to be able to come and watch the performance at night, but also be able to dance yourself and join us on the dance floor after the performance, [illustrates] this idea that dance really does belong to all of us. Freedom of movement and the power of being able to use your body in space is one that that we feel is necessary to activate differently in this time.' The performers of the BAAND Together Dance Festival Courtesy of CHANEL A cornerstone of the BAAND Together Dance Festival is making dance more accessible to all, so to honor that effort tickets are available on a choose-what-you-pay basis (the suggested ticket price is $35). 'It's amazing to have audiences walk into that theater and have this experience in one of the best theaters in the world, and choose what you pay ticketing and free tickets, and see these great companies together,' Thake says. 'A lot of people don't think culture belongs to them. It's part of our role as a civic cultural institution to make sure that everyone in the city and beyond knows that art is a public good. We have this opportunity in the summers to open up all of these different culturally rich bridges to anyone that comes through, and to be able to see this height of human expression. We want to make sure everyone has that ability. We also do that through the addition of ASL to performances and performances where we have audio description, making sure that the Lincoln Center is a place for everyone.' Ballet Hispánico for BAAND Together Dance Festival Courtesy of CHANEL As the official partner of the festival, Chanel makes all of this possible. 'Chanel is such an incredibly generous partner for this festival over five years,' Thake says. 'They continue to deepen their relationship to dance and the performing arts, and you see it also in the history of this house, and Gabrielle Chanel's commitment to dance and freedom of movement, and this storytelling around it. When you think of Chanel, you think of this femininity, but also strength. There's a strength associated with the house and you cannot look at the athleticism of the dancers and not think the same thing with these beautiful movements, but also the unbelievable strength of these athletes onstage. Lincoln Center is a long-standing idea and ballet and Chanel is as well, so when you come together around the shared idea of something that's as old as time itself, of people coming together, expressing themselves through movement, it's always a beautiful process.' The Dance Theatre of Harlem for BAAND Together Dance Festival Courtesy of CHANEL Thanks to the BAAND Together Dance Festival, both Chanel and Lincoln Center achieve their shared goal of making dance accessible to all. 'The most rewarding for me is watching this audience come in and maybe they have seen Alvin Ailey before, but they didn't even know that Ballet Hispanico existed, or they are part of the school of Ballet Hispanico, but have never seen ballet with the American Ballet Theater,' Thake says. 'Watching people understand what's available to them in this city, in this world, that there are all of these different forms of expression that are here in this incredible city, I just love that. I love watching somebody come in with a tutu and then stopping by the Alvin Ailey desk on the way out to find out more. The hope is exactly that, that the more people learn about these different forums and companies, the more they continue to expand their own curiosity about humanity at large.'
Washington Post
26-06-2025
- Washington Post
Carnegie honors 20 'Great Immigrants,' including composer Tania León, for 20th anniversary
Tania León , the noted composer and conductor who also co-founded Dance Theatre of Harlem, never planned on emigrating to the United States. She wanted to move to Paris. When León received the opportunity to leave Cuba on a resettlement flight to Miami in 1967, she took it, thinking she would eventually end up settling in France where she would join the Conservatoire de Paris and become a concert pianist. Instead, she moved to New York and within months met Arthur Mitchell , the New York City Ballet dancer who achieved international acclaim and integrated the art form as its first Black star.
