1863 Italy 1923 Italy Pierina Legnani, (born 1863, Italy died 1923, Italy) Italian ballerina whose virtuoso technique inspired Russian dancers to develop their now-characteristic technical brilliance.
The plum role of Sylvia — at first brash and strong, then tender — is best danced by Gillian Murphy, an English-born ballerina with crystalline technique; she performs on June 24 and the matinée of June 29.
Wendy Laraghy, an Australian, was that ballerina: her confidence and technique in Mr. Forsythe's tricky acrobatic choreography as well as the partnering skill of Markus Schaffer, Stephen Dori and Jerry Opdenaker suggested a range that was not obvious in the two other pieces.
In 1933 she was appointed prima ballerina and Ashton celebrated her technique, her "gaiety and warmth and wit", by making for her the ballerina role in his Les Rendezvous, his first commissioned work for the company, which premiered that December.
In it, she illustrates a ballerina artist who uses impeccable technique to provide a deep connection to her character, the 16-year-old Princess Aurora.
At the Nov. 27 matinee Sara Mearns was dramatic and compelling in a way that puts her in a league apart from other ballerinas today, but neither her technique nor her physique was remotely near its best, and there was no apparent rapport with her cavalier, Jonathan Stafford (who was at his most blank).
Mia Slavenska, a ballerina celebrated both for her authoritative technique and for her red-haired beauty, died on Saturday at a retirement center in Los Angeles where she had lived in recent years.
"You've got to break through this idea of being light as a ballerina," she told students adamantly in a technique class.
The title role is a rare opportunity for a prima ballerina at the apex of both her technique and her expressive beauty.
Each company has a shortage of first-rate ballerinas (though no shortage of virtuoso female technique): it's easy with either troupe to see performances of great 19th-century or 20th-century ballets in which the main letdown is the stylistically or artistically unfulfilled performance of this or that ballerina.
