From flocks of swans to festive court peasants, the corps de ballet simultaneously acts as the backdrop and backbone of the Company. Each year, American Ballet Theatre awards one member of the corps de ballet with the title of Jennifer Alexander Dancer, identifying a dancer who stands out for their professionalism, dedication, and perseverance. In 2007 when Jennifer Alexander was a member of the corps, she tragically passed away in an automobile incident. The Jennifer Alexander Memorial Fund was established in 2008 to honor her memory. 

This year ABT honors Nathan Vendt as the 2026 Jennifer Alexander Dancer, making him the first male recipient of the award.

In the corps de ballet, the level of talent and amount of hard work that Nathan’s fellow dancers dedicate to ABT motivates him every day. “It’s a real treasure just to work with these people, and they are the greatest dancers in the country all in one company,” said Nathan. 

Nathan didn’t begin dancing until the age of 14, a bit later than most ballet dancers perusing a professional career. Both of Nathan’s sisters were ballet dancers, so he frequently attended their competitions to support them. One year at dinner after watching his sisters perform in YAGP, “I had made light of how easy it looked to do. So, they both dared me and my brother to take a class,” Nathan said. 

Only taking one class a week for roughly two years, Nathan began with a relaxed approach to ballet. “I wasn’t really pushing for it as a profession, more as a fun hobby to pursue, or potentially for scholarships in college,” he said. Then, when Nathan was 16 years old his family moved to Dallas, Texas, so his sister could attend a more professional school, Ballet Academy of Texas, where Nathan also trained.  

At 19 years old, after finishing high school, Nathan and his sister both auditioned for and received trainee positions with Cincinnati Ballet for their 2012-2013 season. After gaining exposure to the professional ballet environment and the level of dedication that dancers commit to the artform, he felt encouraged to pursue a professional career. So, Nathan attended ABT’s 2013 Summer Intensive and was invited to join ABT Studio Company the following September. He became an apprentice with the Company in December 2013, before being promoted to a corps de ballet member in June 2014.  

“Because I started so late, I never considered it even as a possibility,” Nathan shares when reflecting on his journey to ABT. “I still to this day can’t believe how lucky I was to receive that.” 

Developing a robust repertoire from having danced in the corps for over a decade, Nathan’s previous roles range from the Russian Dance in Alexei Ratmansky’s The Nutcracker to a Fairy Cavalier in Ratmansky’s The Sleeping Beauty and many more. He especially enjoyed dancing Pirates in Le Corsaire, because he grew up watching the ABT performance on YouTube. “Finally getting to go on stage and do that with the Company, that was amazing,” Nathan said.  

Nathan feels incredibly grateful to be recognized as this year’s Jennifer Alexander Dancer but also acknowledges the other corps de ballet members who he feels are equally deserving. “This year in particular, for the women in the corps, they’ve performed shades in Giselle, and they’re going to be doing two weeks of Swan Lake. They, in my opinion, put a lot more work in than the male corps does,” he said. 

Reflecting on his career, Nathan shares that corps de ballet dancers can easily experience burnout if opportunities are never given, so it is essential to find balance and motivation to continue each day. Nathan said, “you enter with sort of an optimistic hope of rising through the ranks and achieving your dreams. And I think it’s important to keep that dream alive as long as possible.”  

In 2019, after nine years as a student at the American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, three ABT Summer Intensives, and a starring role as young Clara in Alexei Ratmansky’s The Nutcracker, Emilie Trauchessec decided to swap her pointe shoes for a textbook and enrolled at McGill University.  

Today, Emilie is a psychotherapist, specializing in providing mental health services for dancers and athletes, building on her professional ballet background to pave a career that supports other dancers. As we approach the 10th anniversary of The Nutcracker at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in California, SideBarre checked in with Emilie about this career transition, her relationship to dance today, and her time starring in The Nutcracker as a teenager. 

At age nine, Emilie joined the ABT JKO School Children’s Division, working her way through the School until her high school graduation. Emilie performed in The Nutcracker three times, as a Party Girl, Soldier, and, eventually, Clara. She looks back on those days fondly, particularly how much she loved getting to connect with the main Company members. Emilie shares that she remembers attending her first company rehearsal and being “so anxious,” but was immediately comforted as the dancers were “so nice and welcoming and all just wanted to help out.”  

Through her time at the ABT JKO School, Emilie found a family among her fellow dancers, relying on each other for support as they navigated the challenges that come with being a young dancer. This experience of communal support inspired Emilie’s decision to study psychology and sociology and go on to earn a Master of Social Work at Columbia University. “I saw a lot of people I was growing up with and dancing with struggling with their mental health,” Emilie shares, motivating her to pursue a career “making mental health care more accessible for the dance community.” 

Through her career as a therapist, Emilie has found new ways to integrate ballet into her life. This transition was not an easy one; she says, “I thought ‘who am I without dance?’ And so, when I took that step, at first, it was super scary. But then being able to continue to integrate dance into my life in different ways has been so eye opening and such a positive experience.” While dance is no longer her primary focus, she continues to take classes, see performances, and work with dancers as a therapist.  

As a Licensed Master Social Worker, Emilie works in a private practice, providing psychotherapy to a range of clients, with an emphasis on dancers and athletes. She sees the benefit of shared experience, having a personal understanding of high-pressure environments, performance anxiety, and injuries. Emilie is passionate about prioritizing mental health for professional dancers, telling us that mental health has traditionally been seen as taboo, but “now there’s a lot more discussion around it, a lot more resources at dance schools.” Emilie says that she thinks it’s important that these conversations are happening with young dancers, teaching kids from a young age to “be able to cope with the tough, competitive world they’re growing up in.” 

As her career progresses, Emilie’s dream is to open her own private practice focusing on dancers and athletes. She says, “because they have such unique experiences, I think a lot of dancers struggle to find therapists that they can connect with, because they feel like they need to explain a lot.”  

While her relationship with ballet has shifted over the years, Emilie has found the change to be positive. Working with dancers in a new way has helped her rediscover her love of ballet and help other dancers navigate the stresses of the industry. She says, “a lot of people think that once you’re no longer a dancer, that part of you is gone. But the way I see it, it’s still part of me. I think of it not as letting something go but finding a new way to integrate it into your life.” 

The writer, Lauren Trossman, is an ABT Press Intern for Fall 2025.

“Education is freedom, and the more you know, the more free you can be.”

As a middle-schooler in Missouri, Karilyn Ashley Surratt found a flyer at her local dance studio advertising a summer ballet intensive in New York City. Though her family decided that she was too young at the time for a summer in the city, years later Karilyn rediscovered that same flyer for American Ballet Theatre, still in a box at her mother’s house. Recalling this childhood dream, Karilyn decided to pursue a career in dance education, with the help of ABT. Since then, Karilyn has completed ABT’s National Teaching Curriculum, the ABT/NYU Master’s Degree, and is now a faculty member at the American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School.

SideBarre spoke with Karilyn about her journey to ABT, her philosophy around teaching and arts education, and her experiences as a Black and Native American woman in the performing arts. Dance has played a crucial role in Karilyn’s life, saying that dance gave her “a sense of embodiment, that helped me put myself together and understand my whole self, so that I was not afraid to speak.”

Currently, Karilyn is on faculty at the ABT JKO School Children’s Division, in addition to teaching college classes at Pace University in tap and dance history, and tap dance at the Academy at Steps on Broadway. She is also in the inaugural cohort of the Ailey Horton Teacher Training program. After a long career performing in renowned dance and musical theatre institutions such as the Rockettes and The Muny, Karilyn is now focusing her career on education. To Karilyn, dance education is “the ultimate practice of freedom,” believing that “it re-embodies your physical self, your spiritual, mental, and emotional selves.”

Karilyn feels that as an educator it is her role to create possibilities for her students. She thinks it is “really important as teachers that we never limit our students, because we limit ourselves when we limit our students.” Karilyn emphasizes the reciprocal nature of teaching; she says, “you have to recognize that your students are experts in their experience and so, at whatever age they are at, you can always be learning from them.”

As both a performer and teacher, Karilyn sees her cultural background as an inherently important component of her practice: “I’m a dancer who happens to be Native American and Black and that is a part of the artistry.” Her background informs her teaching style, as she comes from “a family of teachers,” and was raised in her family’s tradition of passing on ancestral knowledge.

Karilyn holds the honor of being the first Native American Rockette. When asked how she feels about this title, she says that it means more to her now than it did at the time, and, in fact, she did not even know that she was the first until her final year with the company. While she always included her Indigenous background in her press materials, it was often overlooked, and she feels that this was a missed opportunity, especially in her time on tour; Karilyn is passionate about community outreach and advocacy and laments the lost chance to connect with Native American groups throughout the country.

As a performer with mixed ancestry, she has felt tokenized by productions as “ethnically ambiguous,” and felt her offstage skills as a dance captain and assistant choreographer were underutilized for the sake of onstage diversity. While performing as a Rockette, Karilyn was at times provided with nude tights and costumes that did not match her skin tone. However, she feels that there have been some improvements over the years, especially with inclusive costuming, and continues to have hope that productions will fully appreciate the wide skill sets of their talent, regardless of skin color.

Ultimately, Karilyn feels that her role as an educator and a role model to younger performers, especially young women of color is both a great honor and a great responsibility. In teaching dance history to her college students, she is sure to always emphasize her own history of teachers, instilling a sense of legacy in her students. She says, “I want to be true to the legacy that has been instilled in me from my teachers, from their teachers, and from their teachers.”

Whether her classes are filled with young children in their first dance class or college students on the cusp of a professional career, Karilyn wants her students to know that the legacy they carry through dance is very valuable—“it’s valuable to them as an individual, it’s valuable to their families, and it’s valuable to society and culture at large.”

The writer, Lauren Trossman, is an ABT Press Intern for Fall 2025.

Taking audiences back to ancient Greece, Sylvia tells the story of a nymph of huntress goddess Diana. Along with their fellow huntresses, Sylvia and Diana find kinship through their shared values of maidenhood, independence, and the hunt. Sylvia takes on a vow of chastity like Diana and the huntresses, which she staunchly lives by, until she is struck by the bow of the god of love, Eros. Like any Greek tragedy, fate upends plans. In a tumultuous swirl of mutual and unrequited love, Sylvia must save herself from a tragic hero ending.  

The 2025 Summer season is not the first time the mythological goddess of the hunt has taken to the ABT stage. Sylvia was last performed by ABT in 2016 and made its Company Premiere in 2005. There exists a resonance within ancient and classical themes that leads ABT to revisit them time and time again.  

After all, the foundations of Western theater as we know it today were made in ancient Greece. Ballet originated during the Renaissance, a time when a return to classical motifs was encouraged. In fact, Sylvia itself was based on a play written in the 1500s Italian Renaissance, with its roots deriviving from Greek mythology. In the 1950s, choreographer Frederick Ashton was inspired by the premise and created the ballet. It is particularly resonant for America’s National Ballet Company® to bring a tale that has transcended centuries and lineages to the Metropolitan Opera House stage. It is the drama of forbidden love, power, and divinity that continues to grapple audiences and reverberates in ABT’s Sylvia.  

One of the core elements of this production is its demonstration of feminine strength. Ballerinas can be misinterpreted as weak or airy due to their undeniable gracefulness. In this production, ballerinas carry bows and arrows while floating in mid-air in pointe shoes. It is a visual juxtaposition seldom seen. While battling stereotypes and rigid ideas for what a ballet should look like, this production does not sacrifice beauty for brawns. Rather, it poses them as one. The athleticism of ballet is pushed to the forefront of the audience’s view.  

Of course, with antique themes come new beginnings. Skylar Brandt, Catherine Hurlin, Chloe Misseldine, and Christine Shevchenko will be performing the titular role for the first time. Though the Company brought this production to the Metropolitan Opera House during the 2016 Summer season, the only Principal Dancer returning to the role of Sylvia will be Isabella Boylston. This leaves unique precedents set every night of performances.  

Sylvia is a show that is as mythical as it is tangibly transformative. It defies the idea of a heroine saved by a hero. Rather, Sylvia’s wits, demonstrated in her dexterity, are what truly enable her freedom, and ultimately, her pathway to love. Modernity and tradition blend in this ballet to form a tale that will continue to reverberate in our audiences’ mind long after the curtains close.  

The writer, Suha Khan, is an ABT Press Intern for Summer 2025.

Drawing on ancient Greek mythology, Sylvia’s folkloric and classical fusion is set to return to the Metropolitan Opera House stage for the first time since 2016. In this installment of Behind the Ballet, Elizabeth Kaye invites us to immerse ourselves in the mythical world of Sylvia. From its movement language to its musical score, we are guided through the making of the enchanting classical ballet by Frederick Ashton with music by Léo Delibes. Kaye narrates, “Sylvia enchants through its music, through Ashton’s painterly choreography and the musicality and transcendent grace of ABT’s dancers whose expressive movements make Delibes sparkling score not only music you hear but music you can literally see.”

If someone told you they were going to ship a giant tree across the ocean and then tow it across the United States, you may not only think it was crazy – you might think it was impossible. But that’s exactly what American Ballet Theatre has done for the set of The Winter’s Tale, coming to The Metropolitan Opera House July 1 – 5 for ABT’s Summer season.

Based on the Shakespeare play of the same name, and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon, The Winter’s Tale follows both the tragic and hopeful events that unfold when King Polixenes of Bohemia and his wife, Hermione, visit his jealousy-stricken friend, King Leontes of Sicilia. Alternating between the rulers’ two kingdoms, the ballet’s joyful second act in Bohemia takes place beneath a giant tree. With the roots exposed and its branches covered in ornaments, the tree is made to look like it also dances in its own way. It is a spectacular set piece that not only serves as King Polixenes’s hiding place in the story, but has become a symbol of the entire ballet.

Before ABT’s production of The Winter’s Tale opened at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California in April, the show was built in Vienna, Austria. Created by award-winning designer Bob Crowley, the set was shipped to the U.S. in seven sea containers for ABT’s production at Segerstrom. Now, the ballet is traveling to the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City for ABT’s Summer season, with the massive tree taking up the entirety of a 53-foot trailer.

Made of a steel skeleton covered in sculpted foam, the tree has to be broken into five large pieces and several smaller branches in order to make the trip. It then takes two hours to reassemble and about 14 people to push on stage.

The feat did not go unnoticed during ABT’s run of The Winter’s Tale in Costa Mesa.

“Bob Crowley’s set feels alive,” performing arts critic Michael M. Landman-Karny said in his review of the show. “…The tree doesn’t just decorate the space. It changes it, speaking to time, to growth, to the things we carry and let go. This isn’t merely storytelling through dance. It burrows deep, settling somewhere between your ribs.”

If seeing the incredible set piece isn’t enough of a reason to see The Winter’s Tale, then there’s plenty more for everyone. The choreography by two-time Tony Award®-winner Christopher Wheeldon, score by Joby Talbot, silk effects by Basil Twist, and costumes also designed by Crowley have all received astounding praise. All, of course, with ABT’s world-class dancers at center stage.

See ABT’s The Winter’s Tale for yourself at The Metropolitan Opera House July 1 – 5. Tickets are on sale now.

Coming to the Metropolitan Opera House stage for the first time, this Shakespearian tragedy has arrived for its ABT New York Premiere. Drama and romance twinkle at the edges of this mesmerizing piece, performed first at the Royal Opera House in London. In this episode of Behind the Ballet, Elizabeth Kaye explores the creation of The Winter’s Tale by Christopher Wheeldon. Kaye then explains how Shakespeare’s classic play is translated into movement through of Wheeldon’s bold dance vocabulary, a daring ballet spectacle that transforms dance into art.

American Ballet Theatre was proud to celebrate our fifth annual Pride Night on Friday, June 20, 2025! The evening was dedicated to the LGBTQIA+ members of the ABT community, and beyond, and recognized the immense contributions of queer artists to the world of the performing arts.

Prior to a performance of Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works, a ballet based on the life and works of queer literary icon Virginia Woolf, ABT alumni Sean Stewart, Flavio Salazar, and Director of Repertoire Carlos Lopez, and corps de ballet members Remy Young and Melvin Lawovi gave a pre-show speech paying tribute to the legacy of queer artists and ABT, and expressing wishes for the future of queer youth and adults in ballet and beyond.

Following the performance, Dancers Responding to AIDS made a fundraising appeal to support The Entertainment Community Fund, which offers financial assistance and social services to folks onstage, backstage and behind-the-scenes. To end the night, guests made their way to the Grand Tier for a celebratory Pride toast, including speeches by Artistic Director Susan Jaffe, Antoine Vereecken, Principal Restager at Studio Wayne McGregor, and corps de ballet member Jose Sebastian.

To learn more about Pride Night 2025, please see a short piece about Virginia Woolf’s queer legacy in Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works below. Take a look at our special Pride Night program insert as well, including reflections from the ABT community on what Woolf Works means to us! We look forward to seeing you at next year’s Pride Night at the Metropolitan Opera House.

About Virginia Woolf and Woolf Works

By Suha Khan

Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works depicts the life and works of Virginia Woolf, whose legacy as a queer literary icon radiates even over a century after she lived. This year, as American Ballet Theatre presents the ballet for the second time at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, Woolf’s classic novel Mrs. Dalloway celebrates its 100th anniversary. Along with The Waves and Orlando, Woolf Works is primarily based on these three of Woolf’s novels, as well as her letters, essays, and other collected writing.

Virginia Woolf understood firsthand what it was like to live against social norms, and her feminist and queer voice never wavered. Many of Woolf’s writings criticize the suffocating role of the patriarchy towards women, particularly in the Modernist era in which Woolf grew up. Her letters reveal a passionate romance, most notably, with writer Vita Sackville-West, and other women, and her writing often features revolutionary explorations of gender and sexuality.

Woolf’s personal odds against societal expectations deeply informed her fictional writing, especially in Orlando, said to be inspired by Woolf’s former beloved Sackville-West. This narrative, the basis of “Becomings”, follows its titular character’s exploration of gender over the course of three centuries, as we witness the protagonist’s formidable counter against gender conformity and sexual norms.

Mrs. Dalloway, the inspiration for “I now, I then” of Woolf Works, explores queer longing through Claudia Dalloway’s stream of consciousness revelations. Dalloway recalls her life’s “most happy” moment: a kiss with Sally, a childhood friend. Exactly one hundred years later, this singular moment continues to powerfully resonates across LGBTQIA+ communities, and through literature, and art—Woolf Works is no exception.

In The Waves, which serves as the foundation for the ballet’s final section, Woolf presents a deeply moving exploration of human relationships—queer and straight alike—without explanation or apology. Her queerness was simply part of her truth, a reflection of life as she knew and felt it.

McGregor’s Woolf Works serves as a visual and embodied pulse of the viscerally honest, and importantly, queer, heart that Woolf put into her writing. Through grace and spectacle, the ballet simultaneously uplifts and provokes, raising questions about sexuality and gender identity and expression for us to consider now and always.

The writer, Suha Khan, is an ABT Press Intern for Summer 2025.

Taking on the legacy of the Modernist literary talent Virginia Woolf through inspiration of her novels and collected writings, Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works returns to ABT’s Summer season. Through its contemporary grace, Woolf Works has engaged audiences in a whirlwind of emotion and fluidity. This installment Behind the Ballet provides a rich understanding of choreographer Wayne McGregor’s history and an abstract overview of the ballet’s content. This talk will leave you with much to think about and even more to see on stage.