Ballet Talk > Globe article: Gelfand Retires

Full Version: Globe article: Gelfand Retires

Ballet Talk > Companies and Performances > American Ballet Companies > Boston Ballet

fendrock

Oct 15 2003, 08:01 AM

Here's the link:

http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/arti...where_it_began/

I find the article a little unusual in that it makes it sound as if the pull of her real estate career is forcing her to give up dance.

pmeja

Oct 15 2003, 08:08 AM

Well the article says that she'll be keeping in shape to do guest appearances, etc. by doing open classes, so she's not retiring, just leaving Boston Ballet because Mr. Nissinen doesn't prefer her dancing (as she very discreetly said in the article). Problem is, unless you want to leave the city you live in, if that's the only real game in town for you, then you're stuck. She's only 32 years old (yesterday was her birthday!) But she's been doing the part-time real estate thing for quite a few years already. She's a smart woman, and of course when she has to really stop then she'll have a way to keep making a living.

lampwick

Oct 15 2003, 11:57 AM

I used to dance in a small civic group in New Hampshire and Jennifer Gelfand was a HERO to all of us kids. We always talked about her first appearance in Don Q. It's funny now that I'm an adult, I realize that we're about the same age!

Boston Ballet has had such major upheavals lately. Now Jennifer Gelfand is leaving? All I can say is wow.

nlkflint

Oct 15 2003, 03:55 PM

somehow a duplicate. I deleted the same post.

nlkflint

Oct 15 2003, 03:56 PM

QUOTE

`I'll be in dance only as long as it's fun." Her two careers have overlapped since 1999, when she got her realtor's license. She's sold homes to more than a dozen fellow company members -- and to artistic director Mikko Nissinen.

Nissinen, who took over the company last year, is part of the reason Gelfand is retiring. "Mikko has a vision of what he wants," she says in the company's South End studios. When she announced she was leaving last spring, she said he'd passed her over when casting big parts. "I wasn't going to stay around and be miserable trying to find out what he wants," she says now.

"Jennifer Gelfand has been an important part of Boston Ballet for many years, and her repertoire includes roles in a wide range of major ballets," a noncommittal Nissinen says. "We wish her all the best."

This does not sound to me like real estate is pulling her away from ballet. This sounds like she is being "nudged"...

fendrock

Oct 15 2003, 04:00 PM

I've had season tickets to the Boston Ballet for the past three years, and have only seen her appear twice (the first year in Bayadere, and then in a repertory piece).

So it seems to me she was dancing less, even prior to the arrival of Nissinen.

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