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Peter Martins
Danish ballet dancer and choreographer (born 1946)
Peter Martins (born 27 October 1946) is a Danish former ballet dancer and choreographer. Martins was a principal dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet and with the New York City Ballet, where he joined George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and John Taras as balletmaster in 1981. He retired from dancing in 1983, having achieved the rank of danseur noble, becoming Co-Ballet Master-In-Chief with Robbins. From 1990 until January 2018, he was responsible for artistic leadership of City Ballet.
Early life
Martins was born and raised in Copenhagen, Denmark. His parents were Børge Martins, an engineer, and Tove Christa Ornberg, a pianist. His maternal aunt and uncle, Leif and Elna Ornberg, members of the Royal Danish Ballet, started teaching him ballroom combinations when he was five years of age; when he applied to ballet school, however, he was the subject of discrimination because his aunt and uncle had been Nazi sympathizers. It was his older sisters who originally tried out for the Royal Ballet of Denmark at the age of seven. When they did, he was sitting in the waiting room reading a Donald Duck comic book. They were denied admittance. Then Peter was asked to "point his foot". He did especially well and was admitted.
Career
Martins began his ballet training in 1953 with the Royal Danish Ballet. He joined the corps de ballet in 1965 and was promoted to soloist in 1967.
Martins left Denmark in 1970 and became a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet (NYCB), though he had been performing as a guest artist since 1967. Martins danced a wide variety of roles, but is most known for the titular role in Apollo and the Cavalier in Balanchine's Nutcracker. In 1978, he was made the subject of the documentary, Peter Martins: A Dancer. He danced frequently with Suzanne Farrell. However, he terminated her employment with the American ballerina (born 1952) Gelsey Kirkland Gelsey Kirkland Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, U.S. Gelsey Kirkland (born December 29, 1952) is an American prima ballerina. She received early ballet training at the School of American Ballet. Kirkland joined the New York City Ballet in 1968 at age 15, at the invitation of George Balanchine. She was promoted to soloist in 1969, and principal in 1972. She went on to create leading roles in many of the great twentieth century ballets by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Antony Tudor, including Balanchine's revival of The Firebird, Robbins' Goldberg Variations, and Tudor's The Leaves are Fading. Balanchine re-choreographed his version of Stravinsky's The Firebird specifically for her. She left the New York City Ballet to join the American Ballet Theatre in 1974 as a principal dancer. Kirkland appeared in the dance role of Clara Stahlbaum in Mikhail Baryshnikov's 1977 televised production of The Nutcracker, which Baryshnikov also acted in as the titular Nutcracker/Prince. She left the American Ballet Theatre in 1984. But then returned. Kirkland was born December 29, 1952, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Her father, Jack Kirkland, was a playwright who penned the Broadway adaptations of Tobacco Road and Tortilla Flat. Her mother, Nancy Hoardley, was an actress. Her sister, Johnna Kirkland, also studied at the School of American Ballet and danced with the New York City Ballet. While with the New York City Ballet from 1968 to 1974, Kirkland performed as a soloist and principal dancer in several ballets including Concerto Barocco, The Cage, Irish Fantasy, Symphony in C, La Source, Theme and As the last choreographer of the Ballets Russes, George Balanchine carried the legacy of the revolutionary ballet on his back. He traveled and performed worldwide for nearly two decades, trying to establish a reputable home for his choreography. When he finally and firmly established himself in New York City in 1948, he was able to do just that and more. When Balanchine carried ballet to New York City, he was equipped with a bag of brilliant artistic values. To New York, he brought modernism, musicality, experimental footwork and lifts, and unparalleled creativity. But, he also carried another bag: to America, he held an authoritarianmentality and damaging gender dynamics. These two bags, jumbled together, created a colorful yet tumultuous foundation for the New York City Ballet. As we survey the New York City Ballet’s history, we can see how Balanchine defined the company culture with ingenuity, ruthlessness, creativity, and cruelty. Known as the father of American ballet, Balanchine shaped the course of ballet in the United States. Forever impacting dance theater worldwide, Balanchine’s own multidimensional training changed the genetic structure of the artform. As the son of a Georgian composer, Balanchine was trained in music and dance at the Imperial School in Russia. His early musical training would become intrinsic to his syncopated choreographic style, as well as vital to his collaborations with composers like Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff. Even now, this unique musicality distinguishes the New York City Ballet’s choreographic style from other ballets. As a graduated and mature performer, Balanchine toured with the newly formed Soviet Union; but in 1924, he defec According to Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, “…fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively.” In WR 152: Public Narratives: Storytelling for Social Change, we consider the purpose and effect of these “collective fictions” as public narratives that shape personal life and power structures, and we unearth the rhetorical techniques, stakes, control, and the purpose of storytelling to further agendas. Students choose their own topic for their semester-long research project which culminates in a positioned research paper that locates and deconstructs the public story of their topic as they consider history, authorship, and influence across time and institutions. Lily O’Hara’s “Ballet: A Cursed and Complicated Beauty” uniquely situates the ballet body as a genre in and of itself as she wrestles with the harm dancing bodies suffer, ultimately asking the reader to rethink the body’s relationship to artistic beauty and consider who controls “tradition” and for whom does the ballerina perform. Ballet is a centuries-old practice of beauty and grace filled with dazzling performances, romance, and magic. What most people tend to overlook, however, is the grueling intensity that is required of the dancers themselves to make that magic possible. In this essay I examine the structures and practices deeply rooted in ballet’s tradition that force dancers into unrealistic and dangerous physique ideals and environments riddled with abuse and archaic pedagogy by unpacking the Western history of ballet and applying it to today’s ballet scene. I propose the necessary shifts of these traditions for the health and well-being of dancers everywhere. For audience members, classical ballet is an art of magic, grace, and beauty. Dancers twirl Gelsey Kirkland
Born
(1952-12-29) December 29, 1952 (age 72)Spouses Parents Early life and education
The Tumultuous History of the New York City Ballet
Balanchine: From Wandering Nomad to Founder of the New York City Ballet
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Thank you!Ballet: A Cursed and Complicated Beauty
Lily O’Hara
Instructor’s Introduction
Carroll Beauvais
From the Writer
Ballet: A Cursed and Complicated Beauty