Cassandra Trenary

Photo: Jade Young.

Cassandra Trenary, a native of Georgia, began her dance training at Lawrenceville School of Ballet. She joined the school’s company, Southern Ballet Theatre, in 2006 under the direction of Phyllis Allen and went on to receive additional training at Southeast Regional Ballet Association conventions and Brookwood High School’s Dance department.

Trenary trained at American Ballet Theatre’s Summer Intensive programs as a National Training Scholar and went on to join the ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School in 2009. In 2011, she was invited to join ABT II (now ABT Studio Company) on their European tour as an apprentice. Trenary became an apprentice with the main Company in April 2011 and joined the corps de ballet in November 2011. She was promoted to Soloist in August 2015 and to Principal Dancer in September 2020.

Her repertoire with ABT includes His Loss in AfterEffect, Calliope in Apollo, Gamzatti, and a Shade in La Bayadère, the Fairy Spring in Cinderella, Gulnare and an Odalisque in Le Corsaire, Lycenion in Daphnis and Chloe, Mercedes, Queen of the Dryads, a Flower Girl, and Amour in Don Quixote, Titania in The Dream, The Maiden in Firebird, Giselle and the peasant pas de deux in Giselle, the title role in The Golden Cockerel, Columbine in Alexei Ratmansky’s Harlequinade, Mrs. Fairfax and Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre, Tita in Like Water for Chocolate, Lescaut’s Mistress in Manon, Clara, the Princess, Columbine, the Chinese Dance, and one of the Nutcracker’s Sisters in Ratmansky’s The Nutcracker, Natalia in On the Dnipro, Olga in Onegin, a Carnival Dancer in Othello, the Youngest Sister in Pillar of Fire, Juliet and a Harlot in Romeo and Juliet, The Rose in The Seasons, Princess Aurora, the Diamond Fairy, and the Fairy Canari qui chante (Canary) in The Sleeping Beauty, the Young Girl in Le Spectre de la Rose, the pas de trois, a little swan, and the Polish Princess in Swan Lake, Ceres in Sylvia, Princess Praline in Whipped Cream, leading roles in Chamber Symphony, I Feel The Earth Move, Souvenir d’un lieu cher, and Symphonic Variations, and featured roles in After You, Bach Partita, Deuce Coupe, Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes, In the Upper Room, Petite Mort, Private Light, Raymonda Divertissements, and Sinfonietta. She created a Consort in A Gathering of Ghosts, Bacchante in The Seasons, Princess Florine in Ratmansky’s The Sleeping Beauty, leading roles in AFTERITE, Her Notes, A Time There Was, and ZigZag, and featured roles in Bernstein in a Bubble and Dream within a Dream (deferred).  For ABT’s Innovation Initiative, she was featured in Zhong-Jing Fang’s The Final Frame (2011) and Gemma Bond’s Me and Mine (2014).

Trenary was named a 2011 National YoungArts Foundation Winner and became a 2011 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts nominee. She is also the recipient of a 2015 Princess Grace Dance Honorarium. In 2017, Trenary received the Annenberg Fellowship for Dance.

ABT is grateful to Amy and Gary Churgin for supporting the Dancer Fund in honor of Cassandra Trenary.