This Week in Dance

This past year saw a bounty of ballet beauty. There were jaw-dropping premieres, some exciting new collaborations and a number of promising dancers who began to make their mark. As senior editor of Pointe, I got to witness much of it, and I have to say I had a blast. Here are my personal top 12 highlights of 2012.

This interview appeared in the December 19 Pointe e-newsletter. To sign up for the newsletter, click here.

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It's almost audition season. Are you ready? Being a successful auditioner is a specific talent that's about more than great dancing. You have to find a way to feel comfortable in that room, not let yourself get freaked out by the people with the clipboards, and figure out how to harness that adrenaline to fuel your energy and sharpen your focus.

Last night I got to see American Ballet Theatre in Alexei Ratmansky's Nutcracker. I absolutely love this production. The choreography is thrilling, with psychological twists and an epic grand pas de deux. I'll admit it: I even cried at the end.

In Pointe's December/January issue, three dancers looked back at the summer intensive teachers who helped inspire and inform their careers. Here, Tiler Peck remembers her own seminal summer teacher, as told to writer Joseph Carman.

Jirí Kylián’s classically rooted Petite Mort has become a repertory staple for many ballet companies. But tonight, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s contemporary dancers will perform the ballet for the first time. “So many dancers dream of doing Petite Mort,” says Patrick Delcroix, who’s setting the work on the company. “The Ailey dancers—I think it was a dream for them, too, but they never really thought they'd get a chance.”

Misty Copeland has been one of my favorite dancers to watch this past year. The American Ballet Theatre soloist has always turned heads with her charismatic presence, but lately, she's polished up her technique and added a beautiful sense of nuance to her natural power—and it's made her simply magnetic on stage.

Last week, the Pointe staff got to spend a day with New York City Ballet's ever-lovable Lauren Lovette and Daniel Ulbricht for an upcoming story we're working on. It turns out "60 Minutes" reporter Lesley Stahl got the same treat.

You’re going to want to catch "60 Minutes" this Sunday. Reporter Lesley Stahl will go backstage at New York City Ballet, following Robbie Fairchild as he learns the title role in Apollo. See the performance with Tiler Peck, Sterling Hyltin and Ana Sophia Scheller from the wings. That last iconic moment of a starburst? The back two girls aren’t in arabesque—they’re in a turned in second so that they can hide their torsos behind the other two dancers! You can see how they get into it from a whole new vantage point.