Ansanelli (article in NYTimes today)

[Alexandra]

Interview with Alexandra Ansanelli in the NYTimes:

The Paradox of the Self-Effacing Diva

Ms. Ansanelli has struck a human-interest chord with the public because of the daunting obstacles she has faced. There is her scoliosis, which she hid from her fellow dancers during her final growing years and which even now makes her height vary as much as an inch from day to day (she stands 5-feet-5 1/2 at her tallest). And then there was the nearly career-wrecking foot injury that sidelined her for two years, in 1999 and 2000 (she had to stay off her feet for a solid year). "When you experience pain at that level, I don't think it's helpful," she said. "It's not a growing experience."

In 2001, she was back at the barre. Last year, after being made a principal, she performed Swanilda, in "Coppélia," and by the end of the winter season she had performed an astonishing number of plum roles, working up to what might seem the acme of arrival: Aurora in Peter Martins's version of Petipa's "The Sleeping Beauty." And yet, on the night of her premiere, on the last Wednesday in February, the applause was gracious, but not declarative. Ms. Ansanelli had moved with precision and delicacy, she had bloomed with youth, and she had smiled throughout her grand pas de deux with the Prince Désiré (Nilas Martins) with the radiant detachment of an actual bride on her wedding day. But the rigid structure of the story ballet, so atypical of the City Ballet repertory, was not an ideal setting for Ms. Ansanelli's expressive dynamism. The performance made a crooked crown to the end of Ms. Ansanelli's first full season as a principal, and it also raised a question: is she en route to becoming a prima or not?