At age 16, she became a member of ABT II and joined ABT's corps de ballet at age 18. Mikhail Baryshnikov, ABT's artistic director at the time, pulled Jaffe out of the corps de ballet to replace Gelsey Kirkland in a gala performance. With two days of rehearsal, Jaffe danced Pas d'Esclave at the Kennedy Center in Washington with the late Alexander Godunov , a Bolshoi Ballet star whose former dance partner had been Maya Plisetskaya. Jaffe remained a principal dancer with ABT for the following 22 years.
Jaffe was Advisor to the Chairman of ABT's Board of Governing Trustees from 2002–2007, and was on the faculty of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School from 2002 to 2010. Jaffe co-founded Long Island University's educational initiative for the dancers of the American Ballet Theatre. Jaffe lectures for Duke Corporate Education on "Excellence". In 2003, Jaffe co-founded and co-directed Princeton Dance & Theater Studio in Princeton, NJ. She has taught master classes throughout the United States and Japan.
Susan Jaffe is a Dance Magazine awardee, and was invited to join Dance Magazine to co-produce and host the weekly television show Dance New York. She has been featured multiple times on the PBS series Dance in America; in the movie, Angie, starring Geena Davis; and in the Frederick Wiseman documentary Ballet.
In 2002, Jaffe was a guest on the Charlie Rose Show, where she discussed her retirement from the stage. In 2003, her book for children 7 to 13, Becoming a Ballerina,[6] was published by Universe.
Jaffe has choreographed for dance companies and universities internationally. In 2007, she joined Configuration Dance Theatre Artistic Director, Joseph Cipolla, and Resident Choreographer, Michael Shannon, as Principal Guest Choreographer and Member of the National Advisory Board. Configuration Dance Theatre has premiered three Jaffe works in New York, Velez Pas de Deux in Fall 2007, Novem Pas de Deux in Spring 2008, and Royenne Pas de Deux in Spring 2009.
In the Fall of 2008, Jaffe's work, Uncaged, was premiered in concert at the School for Classical & Contemporary Dance[7] at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. She created Pulse as Guest Choreographer at Princeton University in 2010. In 2011, she created two new works for the Studio Company of American Ballet Theatre, called "We Insist" and "A Tango".
In 2012, Jaffe choreographed a new pas de deux called "Blue" for American Ballet Theatre's gala for the opening night of their Metropolitan Opera House Season. The year 2013 brought a new contemporary work created for the students at University of North Carolina's School of the Arts by Jaffe, Polovtsian Dances, which premiered in Chapel Hill's celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Rite of Spring.
In January 2014, Jaffe premiered a new work for Company C Contemporary Ballet called "Weather One", which premiered in the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, California followed by a weekend of performances in February 2014 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco.
Related Research Articles
Erik Belton Evers Bruhn was a Danish danseur, choreographer, artistic director, actor, and author.
American Ballet Theatre (ABT) is a classical ballet company based in New York City. Founded in 1939 by Lucia Chase and Richard Pleasant, it is recognized as one of the world's leading classical ballet companies. Through 2019, it had an annual eight-week season at the Metropolitan Opera House in the spring and a shorter season at the David H. Koch Theater in the fall; the company tours around the world the rest of the year. The company was scheduled to have a 5-week spring season at the MET preceded by a 2-week season at the Koch Theater beginning in 2020. ABT is the parent company of the American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, and was recognized as "America's National Ballet Company" in 2006 by the United States Congress.
Ángel Corella López is a Spanish former principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre and guest artist with The Royal Ballet, Kirov Ballet, New York City Ballet, La Scala and the Australian Ballet among many others.
La Fille mal gardée is a comic ballet presented in two acts, inspired by Pierre-Antoine Baudouin's 1765 painting, La réprimande/Une jeune fille querellée par sa mère. The ballet was originally choreographed by the Ballet Master Jean Dauberval to a pastiche of music based on fifty-five popular French airs. The ballet was premiered on 1 July 1789 at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux in Bordeaux, France under the title Le ballet de la paille, ou Il n'est qu'un pas du mal au bien.
Violette Verdy was a French ballerina, choreographer, teacher, and writer who worked as a dance company director with the Paris Opera Ballet in France and the Boston Ballet in the United States. From 1958 to 1977 she was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet where she performed in the world premieres of several works created specifically for her by choreographers George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. She was Distinguished Professor of Music (Ballet) at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, in Bloomington, and the recipient of two medals from the French government.
Julie Kent is an American ballet dancer; she was a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre from 1993 to June 2015. In 2016, she was named the artistic director of The Washington Ballet. She is scheduled to become a co-artistic director at the Houston Ballet, starting in July 2023.
Natalia Romanovna Makarova is a Russian prima ballerina and choreographer. The History of Dance, published in 1981, notes that "her performances set standards of artistry and aristocracy of dance which mark her as the finest ballerina of her generation in the West."
François Perron is a French ballet dancer, choreographer and teacher, who now works and resides in the United States. Perron is a graduate of the Paris Opera Ballet School where he studied under the direction of Claude Bessy. In 2011, Perron founded the French Academie of Ballet, based in New York City.
Gillian Murphy is an American ballet dancer who is a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre.
Kevin McKenzie is an American ballet dancer, choreographer, and director. A former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, he then served as the company's artistic director from 1992 to 2022.
Misty Danielle Copeland is an American ballet dancer for American Ballet Theatre (ABT), one of the three leading classical ballet companies in the United States. On June 30, 2015, Copeland became the first African American woman to be promoted to principal dancer in ABT's 75-year history.
Ann Marie DeAngelo is an American choreographer, director, producer, teacher, consultant and former dancer - an expert in all areas of dance. She was leading ballerina with the Joffrey Ballet, where early on she was pegged by Time magazine as "one of America's most outstanding ballerinas" and where she later served as associate director at the time of the company's move to Chicago in 1995.
Cynthia Harvey is an American former ballet dancer, ballet mistress and educator. She joined the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in 1974 and was promoted to principal dancer in 1982. In 1986, she joined The Royal Ballet, becoming the company's first American principal dancer. She returned to ABT two years later, and retired in 1996. She then started teaching and staging ballets across the world. Between 2016 and 2022, she was the artistic director of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, the affiliated school of ABT.
Bengt Erik Johan Renvall was a Swedish dancer and choreographer active in the United States from 1978. He was known for "soaring leaps of astounding power and soft landing", of a mixture of extraordinary bravura and lyric nuances through his performances. His career, as "one of only a small group of elite dancers the world has known", began in 1972 when he was admitted to the Royal Swedish Ballet School. He then became a member of the Royal Swedish Ballet in 1977 and of American Ballet Theatre in 1978 where he later became principal dancer.
The New York International Ballet Competition (NYIBC), was a program providing dance education and employment opportunities for young dancers ages 17 to 24. In 1983 Ilona Copen founded NYIBC, with Igor Youskevitch as first artistic director, in order to fill a void and satisfy a need in the global dance ecosystem. Other international ballet competitions existed, but New York City, considered a dance capital of the world, did not have its own.
Martine van Hamel is a Dutch choreographer, director, teacher, retired ballerina and former Principal dancer at the National Ballet of Canada and American Ballet Theatre (ABT). She was a gold medalist at the biennial Varna International Ballet Competition, the most prestigious ballet competition in the world, held in Varna, Bulgaria. She is also a recipient of the Prix de Varna, a recognition rarely awarded, for best artistic interpretation in all categories. She was one of the leading classical ballerinas in America.
Stella Abrera is a Filipina-American ballet dancer. She danced as a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre until her retirement in 2020, and is the company's first Filipina principal ballerina. She is now the artistic director of the dance cultural park Kaatsbaan.
Anna-Marie Holmes is a Canadian-born ballet dancer, educator and choreographer. Holmes received an Emmy Award in 2000 for her staging of Le Corsaire for PBS. She was the founder and co-artistic director for the International Academy of Dance Costa do Sol in Portugal.
Skylar Paley Brandt is an American ballet dancer who is currently a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre.
Guadalupe Martínez Desfassiaux Serrano, known professionally as Lupe Serrano, was a Chilean-born, Mexican-trained American ballet dancer and teacher. She spent most of her dance career at the American Ballet Theatre (ABT), where she was the troupe's first Hispanic American principal dancer.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
