Blond Ballerinas

[Marga]

I was watching my Mayerling video and saw a beautiful Marilyn Monroe-yellow haired dancer in it. It brought back a longtime musing of mine, namely, why do we not see any ballerinas or female dancers, in general, who are blond? In my 50 years of ballet-watching, I can't think of a single one.

Yellow-blond has always been the desired colour of movie stars and young women, and aren't men supposed to prefer it?

So, can anyone name any prominent dancers with Jean Harlowe/ Jayne Mansfield/Doris Day hair? I gave examples of really-really blond celebrities, because I'm not talking about light brown or sandy-haired dancers. I'm referring to Charlize Theron/Paris Hilton hair. Why do you think there is such a dearth of blond ballerinas? :shrug:

[Alexandra]

Blonde hair and coloring don't show up as well on stage, perhaps, especially when it's pinned back in a bun.

I interviewed a young ABT soloist many years ago who sweetly said that she thought the reason she was getting more parts than others of her age was that she had dark hair, and the blonde girls got left out!

[Hans]

Try looking up Danish ballerinas .

One dancer I can think of who is blond is Anastasia Volochkova. Also, Larissa Lezhnina. I'm not sure if Sizova was blond or not...her hair appears very blond on the 1964 Sleeping Beauty tape, but on a later video of her dancing the La Vivandière pas de six, it looks dark brown. Perhaps a wig in one of the cases? Elena Pankova is blond, too.

[sandik]

In my part of the world, Patricia Barker of Pacific Northwest Ballet is a blond. Thinking more generally, and historically, Makarova was blond, Ulanova was blond, and I think Riabouchinska was blond.

[aspirant]

Kirsten Simone: Royal Danish Ballet

Teresa Reichlen: NYCB up and comer

(and there are scores of blonde male dancers)

[Alexandra]

Do they have to be natural blond(e)s?

Re Danes: lots of blonds, not too many blondes

[Old Fashioned]

Houston Ballet:

Ingrid Zweifel is veeerrrrry blonde. She's the only blondie I can pick out on stage without second guessing myself. Other blonde ladies with the company: Sara Webb, Barbara Bears, Sharon Teague, Britain Werkheiser, Laura Richards, Jaquel Charlesworth, Anne Harshbarger, and quite a few others.

[Marga]

Thanks to all for your thoughts and contributions on this subject.

The first thing that I thought of is what you wrote, Alexandra, about the colouring not showing up. That still makes me wonder where all the naturally blond ballerinas are. Have they all gone and dyed their hair?

Hans, I thought of the Danish angle, too, before I posted, so I looked up some pics of Danish ballerinas. I did not do an exhaustive search, but the ones I looked at had dark or light brown hair. I imagine we'd have similar results looking up dancers from Sweden and Finland, for example. And how could I forget Volochkova!!? I'm glad you mentioned her. For me, Lezhnina is in the ballpark, but not quite what I was thinking of. In Marc Haegeman's photos of her, her hair is brown, although it is a lot blonder in the videos I have of her. Sizova was never completely yellow-blond, either. Thanks, too, for naming Elena Pankova. Although I know her name, I don't know what she looks like. In trying to find a pic of her I found one of Tatiana Amosova of the Kirov (photo by Marc Haegeman), who, although quite blond with her hair down, is sandy-blond with it up. I guess she left the underside brown when she dyed it so as not to disappear into the shadows on stage??

Sandi, I guess that Patricia Barker comes closest of the present-day ballerinas. Thanks for bringing up Riabouchinska. From looking at some of her pictures I would hazard to guess that she is the blondest ballerina to date. Makarova and Ulanova do not fit the yellow-blond category, in my opinion. Their hair is not the pure yellow I had in mind.

There ARE lots of male ballet blondies, Aspirant. That's why I am perplexed by the scarcity of female blondies in ballet. Thanks for adding to the list.

Alexandra, I would not even try to guess who is a natural blond and who is not! With some you can tell, but even so, if one were to make the choice to dance blond, I would consider it a bold and very self-confident step made by a dancer completely assured of her technique and charisma that she would risk breaking the mold, so to speak. I would tend to agree with the young dancer you interviewed years back. Maybe now, with colouring one's hair as common as colouring nails, serious ballet professionals darken their hair just to be sure that being blond isn't holding them back....unless they're Amanda Schull with the crossover opportunity of gaining a certain fame in the movies as a blond and keeping the hair the same for a dance career.

Thanks, Old Fashioned, for your Houston Ballet list. Leave it to Texas!

[Ari]

In Striking a Balance, Antoinette Sibley talks about the effect of seeing Ulanova for the first time. In addition to Ulanova's artistry, Sibley was struck by the fact that she was blonde, the first blonde ballerina she'd seen. It was the first time she'd seen a model of a ballerina type that she could possibly aspire to herself. Sibley, though, was a dark blonde, like Ulanova.

Didn't Ludmilla Semenyaka and Tatiana Terekova become blondes at some point? Among present-day dancers, Anna Polikarpova of Hamburg (ex-Kirov) is definitely yellow blonde.

[perky]

Alla Osipenko? I've just seen black and white pictures of her, but her hair appears very light.

[Marga]

Among present-day dancers, Anna Polikarpova of Hamburg (ex-Kirov) is definitely yellow blonde.

Ari, you are so right. I watched a video with Polikarpova (Stone Flower) just yesterday! At my age, information forks into separate streams as it travels through my grey matter. Instead of recalling the experience of having just seen a blond dancer (in other words, putting 2 and 2 together), that piece of info just floated down its own waterway! Acchhh!

perky, Osipenko was blondish, but like Makarova, not exactly yellow-blond. She was my daughter's teacher's teacher and there are many pictures of her in our studio, where she comes across as a dark blond. She keeps her hair a sandy blond these days.

[Mel Johnson]

Especially in the days before strong lighting, blond hair tended to blend out into the head, and look a bit weird. Ballerinas in particular did not want to look stranger than they already were with their already unfamiliar cavortings about. They therefore employed hair dressings which not only secured the hair firmly in place, but darkened it appreciably. I can think of a painting of Fanny Elssler in her dressing room with her hair perfectly dressed and dark, even though she was a startling strawberry blonde. Macassar oil, no doubt!

[Paquita]

Blonds at the NBoC:

Heather Ogden

Jennifer Fournier

Lisa Robinson

[oberon]

Favorite blondes:

Janie Taylor among the ladies, David Hallberg among the men...

[rkoretzky]

Carla Korbes

[Ari]

Ahem. Darci Kistler?

[Victoria Leigh]

Blond hair, when pulled back in a bun, or even in a "classical", like for Les Sylphides and lots of other ballets a while back, tends to look darker than when it is loose. Also, blonds often have to darken their hairline in order to make their faces look right on stage. The lights drain the hairline out with blonds, and makes them look bald, especially if they have a high forhead. I always had to do this when using a bun, but not with a "classical", where the hair comes forward over the ears and is not pulled straight back off of the face.

[Herman Stevens]

For me, Lezhnina is in the ballpark, but not quite what I was thinking of. In Marc Haegeman's photos of her, her hair is brown, although it is a lot blonder in the videos I have of her.

Oh, Lezhnina is definitely quite blonde, but there are a number of things that prevent her head just becoming a pale blob above the shoulders, as happens to some blondes (as explained by Mel and Victoria above). In the Kirov company she was not considered good for some roles because her head is unclassically big and a tad squarish (proportionally of course). With those delicate yet wide cheek bones it really presents a good "front" to the lights. And she's got those big blue doll's eyes and that radiant smile that really animate the face down to the last seat in the house.

So I think the crucial issue is not really blonde or brunette, but whether you have big facial features to project expression across the lights. The NYCB's Tracy girls for instance are definitely brunette, but they do look rather unexpressive because their features are so small.

This topic reminds me of another lights vs fysique thing. Some dancers seem to gain weight under the lights, some don't. When you meet them backstage they are just as skinny as the rest of them, but the lights make them look kind of rounder. I suspect it's caused by having a round rib cage (as opposed to a flat one), which reflects the light differently.

[Estelle]

At the Paris Opera, there is at least Eleonora Abbagnato (premiere danseuse), and in the corps de ballet Juliette Gernez, Emilie Cozette, Sandrine Marache, Véronique Doisneau...

But I don't know how "yellow" blonde they are, and if it's natural or not. Also, among the former principals, Claude Bessy was a blonde (and I think also Lycette Darsonval).

[Mashinka]

Galina Panova is a natural blonde, but there is a great deal of hair dying in Russia: rather more among male dancers than female (think of Maris and Andris Liepa).

Anna Antonicheva of the Bolshoi is blonde but has recently dyed her hair black. I think Tatiana Terekhova was blonde but either dyed her hair black or wore a black wig for certain roles. The Bolshoi's Inna Petrova and Kirov's Irina Golub are blonde too.

By the way I always thought Volochkova was blonde as well, but in a couple of recent pictures I've seen she appears to have dark roots.

[Marga]

Anna Antonicheva of the Bolshoi is blonde but has recently dyed her hair black. 

Well, yes, Antonicheva is (was) blonde, but, you see, I have a large photo of her that my hubby took several years ago (she's in costume taking her bows) and her hair is light brown. I've seen her dance many times and have spoken to her, so I know she's not the yellow-blond I was talking about. Her hair definitely stands apart from the rest of her colouring.

This has been an interesting, elucidating topic. Michele Wiles, another "blond", deserves a mention, too, although she is more of a what we used to call "dirty blond" in my day.

What I've learned since posing my question, is what lighting does to hair, as well as what dancers do to hair to make it more visibly demarcated from the face. Thank you Victoria and Mel!

Thanks to you, Herman, I've discovered why some dancers look "bigger" than others, despite being as bony as their fellow dancers. I remember the first time I saw some NYCB dancers up close. They appeared almost freakishly thin to me -- just skin stretched over long bones. Yet, on stage the same dancers looked just normally thin. At the time it was oft repeated that the stage "added" 10 pounds of weight to your frame. The concept of light reflection which you introduce, Herman, is absolutely fascinating, and unfortunately, yet another thing for a dancer to worry about!

I've also learned that despite giving examples (from the past and the present) of the kind of "blond" I was referring to, individual ideas of what "blond" means are quite varied! For me, if the yellow is tinged with brown of any kind, it is no longer blond, but a degree of brown, starting from "very light sandy brown" and going on from there. That's just always been my personal interpretation. My original query stemmed from seeing Jane Burn, who had the palest (and fluffiest!) true blond hair, in the role of Princess Stephanie in the Royal Ballet's Mayerling (with Viviana Durante and Irek Mukhamedov). Because her hair was not pulled tightly back in a bun for the role, but framed her face softly, her "look" was stunning. She certainly stood out from the rest by dint of her hair colour.

Thank you to everyone who pondered my question. I've enjoyed reading the responses very much and have again become more clued-in about another aspect of ballet. :yes:

[Alexandra]

This has been a very interesting topic! Thank you, Victoria -- I didn't know that about the darkened hairline. There are also blondes whose features do project (Kirsten Simone) and those who always looked pale to me (Amanda McKerrow).

Herman's comments about light and costume are fascinating, too. How often have you seen a dancer look "heavy" (meaning, probably, their weight is in the triple digits, in pounds!) in Ballet 1 on a mixed bill, and suddenly slim in the second? Sometimes it's obvious -- the ABT Raymonda costumes, for example, made everyone's torso and waist look, well, ample -- but I've seen a dancer look heavy in a lovely, dark-colored "nighty" shift and look 10 pounds lighter in the next ballet wearing a light-colored unitard. THAT one I've never figured out -- cut, I suppose, but perhaps lighting too.

One more thing on blondes. A Danish dancer told me that when she was young, she had very blonde hair -- white-blonde, as many do -- and when she matured, her hair began to darken, to what Marga would call "dirty blonde." An older dancer came to her and said, "It's time. You have to decide. Are you dark or fair?" Some blondes lighten their hair, and some blondes darken it, and that might have to do with their personality, or their features.

[Herman Stevens]

At the time it was oft repeated that the stage "added" 10 pounds of weight to your frame. The concept of light reflection which you introduce, Herman, is absolutely fascinating, and unfortunately, yet another thing for a dancer to worry about!

Not as far as I'm concerned. Just looks-wise I prefer the rounder body type. Since it's (probably) more a visual thing than a weight matter, it doesn't affect one's mobility and litheness anyway.

But perhaps I'm just a ballet buff from nineteenth C, since I rather like dancers with small feet, too. :rolleyes:

[Treefrog]

What is the proportion of true blondes in the general population? Is the proportion of blonde dancers different from that?

[Estelle]

Marga wrote:

I've also learned that despite giving examples (from the past and the present) of the kind of "blond" I was referring to, individual ideas of what "blond" means are quite varied!

Perhaps it depends also on what place lives in, and on the average hair color (perhaps some people who are considered to have "light brown" hair in Iceland would be considered as blond in Marocco, for example). I don't know about how common "yellow blond" hair is in the US, but in France I'd say it's quite uncommon, in fact (and so it doesn't seem less common in the POB than in the general population, I think).