Gillian Murphy, a Ballerina With Joy and Aplomb, Steps Down

New York Times

17-07-2025

Gillian Murphy, one of American Ballet Theater's most enduring stars, was living in rural Pennsylvania with her husband, Ethan Stiefel, and their infant son, getting curbside delivery from a market 20 miles away. Murphy and Stiefel had joked that the two-bedroom cabin in the woods was their apocalypse house, and in a way, it was. When the Covid pandemic hit, they moved there.
'Full isolation,' Murphy said in a recent interview at Lincoln Center. 'But in terms of the timing of it, for me as a mom it was kind of amazing. That being said, I also thought my career was over.'
Early in the pandemic, Murphy told Kevin McKenzie, then Ballet Theater's artistic director, that if and when the company made it back onstage it would be time for her to wrap things up. He told her that she had years left in her.
'That conversation was really incredible because I would have come back and maybe done 'The Dream' and retired years ago,' Murphy said, referring to the Frederick Ashton ballet.
But 'when I got back in the studio,' she continued, 'I ended up feeling so much better than I could have ever expected. I absolutely love to dance. It's actually a little unclear to me why I was just going to walk away from that.'
She knew, though, that she wanted to stop while she was still feeling good and to leave on her own terms.
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