Once a bunhead…

How my ballet background informs my work

To Be a Dancer

By Etgar Keret and Maira Kalman

I began my formal ballet training with Dance Theatre of Pennsylvania, a pre-professional ballet company outside of Philadelphia. I performed in The Nutcracker annually and danced leading roles in full-length story ballets like Sleeping Beauty, Coppelia, Cinderella, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Paquita, and many more. My summers were spent at intensives with American Ballet Theatre in New York City and Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet.

For college, I took my training downtown and earned a BFA in Dance from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where I studied under Gus Solomons Jr., Jolinda Menendez, Rashaun Mitchell, Séan Curran, and James Sutton, and performed work by Mark Morris, Andrea Miller, and Deborah Jowitt.

These days, my dance practice takes place offstage as a writer, documentary producer, and audience member. I’ve written about ballet and pop culture for Refinery29, and I regularly contribute to Dance Magazine, Pointe Magazine, and Dance Teacher. My interviews with dancers including Ashley Bouder, Isabella Boylston, Misty Copeland, and Daniil Simkin appear in the 2016 photography book The Art of Movement.

The stage is familiar territory for me: I've moderated live panels for American Ballet Theatre, Works & Process, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. I’m a producer and speaker for The Ballet Salon, a semi-professional contemporary ballet company designed for dancers returning to ballet in search of artistic expression and joyful community.

In 2020, I got involved with Final Bow for Yellowface. As an Asian American dancer who loves ballet, I was inspired by Phil Chan and Georgina Pazcoguin’s movement to push the ballet world to jettison offensive racial tropes from the stage. That work led me to co-produce two documentaries with director Jennifer Lin (who also happens to be my mom): About Face, and Ten Times Better, a short about unsung dance pioneer George Lee. Learn more about these documentaries.