As dancers, we thrive on that ability to transcend the normal and become someone (or something) else on stage.  It places us among the lucky few people who have the opportunity to experience that intangible freedom of another world.

When I was at an ABT summer intensive years ago, one of my teachers told our class that the most thrilling pirouettes aren't the tazmanian devilishly fast spins, but they are the slow, smooth turns that look like they're effortlessly in control. This made a huge impact on me because up until that moment, I had always been trying to speed up my pirouettes to make them look more impressive—and also because immediately after listening to this bit of wisdom I performed my first quadruple pirouette on pointe.

As you might have noticed, a new cover girl has taken over our website: New York City Ballet's Kathryn Morgan. Read her story from our February/March 2010 issue here.