Wendy Whelan is a principal dancer with the
New York City BalletNew York City Ballet is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Leon Barzin was the company's first music director. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company...
and guest artist with
Morphoses/
The Wheeldon CompanyChristopher Wheeldon is an international choreographer of contemporary ballet. Born in Somerset, England, to an engineer and a physical therapist, Wheeldon began training to be a ballet dancer at the age of 8. He attended the Royal Ballet School between the ages of 11 and 18...
.
Early life
A native of
Louisville, KentuckyLouisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
(USA), she began her dance training with local teacher Virginia Wooton at the age of three. After performing as a mouse in
The NutcrackerThe Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St...
with the
Louisville BalletThe Louisville Ballet is a ballet school and company based in Louisville, Kentucky and is the official state ballet of The Commonwealth of Kentucky. More than 100,000 people attend the company's productions annually of which most are accompanied by the Louisville Orchestra...
she joined Louisville Ballet Academy where she started formal training. In 1981, she received a scholarship to the summer course at the
School of American BalletThe School of American Ballet is one of the most famous classical ballet schools in the world and is the associate school of the New York City Ballet, a leading international ballet company based at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. The school trains students from the...
(SAB), the official school of New York City Ballet, joining as a full-time student a year later.
Career
Wendy officially joined NYCB in 1984 as an apprentice and she joined the company's
corps de balletIn ballet, the corps de ballet is the group of dancers who are not soloists. They are a permanent part of the ballet company and often work as a backdrop for the principal dancers. A corps de ballet works as one, with synchronized movements and corresponding positioning on the stage...
January 1986. She was further promoted to
soloistIn ballet, a soloist is a dancer in a ballet company above the corps de ballet but below principal dancer....
in 1989, and to
principal dancerA principal dancer is a dancer at the highest rank within a professional dance company, particularly a ballet company....
in 1991.
She has a repertoire of more than 50 ballets, including pieces by
George BalanchineGeorge Balanchine , born Giorgi Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was one of the 20th century's most famous choreographers, a developer of ballet in the United States, co-founder and balletmaster of New York City Ballet...
,
Jerome RobbinsJerome Robbins was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater...
,
Peter MartinsPeter Martins is a Danish ballet dancer and choreographer. Martins was named man of the year by Danish American Society, 1980...
,
Twyla TharpTwyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.-Early years:Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.she spend hours working on it to help her...
,
William ForsytheWilliam Forsythe is an American dancer and choreographer resident in Frankfurt am Main in Hessen. He is known internationally for his work with the Ballett Frankfurt and The Forsythe Company...
,
Christopher WheeldonChristopher Wheeldon is an international choreographer of contemporary ballet. Born in Somerset, England, to an engineer and a physical therapist, Wheeldon began training to be a ballet dancer at the age of 8. He attended the Royal Ballet School between the ages of 11 and 18...
, and others.
Whelan is particularly known for her angular body and muscularity particularly suited to the Balanchine style. However, with Balanchine's death in 1983, a year after Whelan arrived at SAB, she only met him once.
The ballerina has openly spoken about conquering
scoliosisScoliosis is a medical condition in which a person's spine is curved from side to side. Although it is a complex three-dimensional deformity, on an X-ray, viewed from the rear, the spine of an individual with scoliosis may look more like an "S" or a "C" than a straight line...
after being diagnosed at age 12.
She married photographer David Michalek in September 2005.
External links