elizzy

I'm so thrilled by this news - I was a super with ABT's R&J this spring in Chicago, and all of these dancers were definitely stand-outs!

Extra congratulations to Misty Copeland, who is a HUGE inspiration to young African-American dancers out there (like me) who would like to someday be where she is! She's given us a lot of hope!

The one older member of the company (I forget her name...but she was 43 or something) seemed very...foreward to the director. I am not a professional so I wouldn't really know, but it seems like that wouldn't really happen in a company. I always got the impression that the director got more respect than that. I understand that there is seniority involved and she has lots of pull, but it just seemed a little extreme.

The dancer in question is Deborah Dawn. I live in Chicago and was in the Joffrey Nutcracker children's cast for three years and so got to know a fair bit of the company's personalities (I think I had spoken to almost all of the dancers in the film at least once or twice). Anyway, Ms. Dawn's character was something of a caricature in the movie (I read an article about her involvement in the movie a few months before it came out), but the personality wasn't a huge stretch. Because of her seniority and the added fact that she's a really superb dancer, she is very highly esteemed by the artistic staff, and while I agree that she seemed a little more foreward than I would have expected, I've seen her be a bit of a diva at times, so you never know . . .