Recent posts on Nina Ananiashvili (figure skating background) and Natallia Osipova (gymnastics background) highlight non-traditional routes to ballet stardom. I was wondering whether there is a useful ballet story behind these developments.

What other major ballet dancers have started out in figure skating or gymnastics? It would be fascinating (and possibly quite useful) to compile as complete a list as possible.

Other questions that come to mind:
Is there something unique that they bring to ballet because of their training in other fields? Are the number of former skaters and gymnastics increasing in ballet? Are they affecting ballet technique, the ballet aesthetic, or choreography in new directions? Is this development positive , negative , or insignificant to ballet as a distinct performance art?

Katherine Healy! There is some fantastic footage of her performing sextuple and septuple fouettes out there, which surely must have been aided by her skating training (something to do with 'centre'? I'm flailing here...). She has had a very interesting career, all told - danced for Frederick Ashton and Roland Petit - look her up!

Also, I think Alina Cojocaru at least trained in gymnastics, which is partly why she is so flexible?

Do gymnasts have more attack than lyricism to their movements? Which is fantastic and exciting, up to a point... (TBH I think Osipova is as far as this trend should go.)

Viengsay Valdes, principal at Ballet Nacional de Cuba, started as a gymnast before getting into ballet...No wonder those never ending balances...!

Sylvie Guillem started out as a gymnast. I suppose an argument could be made about this being the beginning of the high extension phase.

Also Sylvie Guillem, a gymnast, of course. (posting concurrently with zerbinetta )

I was able to watch Katherine Healy as a youngster in class, and it was always obvious when she was devoting more vs. less time to skating. The usual forward impetus seemed effortful -- not really the right word, but the best I can do right now. Also, while she was a very strong turner, it took her a while to differentiate the technique of pirouetting from the skaters' spin. There are advantages to cross-training, but also disadvantages.

Katherine was also a NYCB Marie (opp. Peter Boal's Nutcracker Prince), so she had, by age 17, the rare experience of dancing under the direction of the two acknowledged ballet geniuses of the second half of the 20th century -- Ashton and Balanchine!

Igor Youskevitch was a member of the Yugoslavian Olympic Gymnastics team when he got hired by a ballerina as a "pickup partner" for a season, but she fired him when he started getting more applause than SHE did. He learned fast.

But statistically, I don't think gymnasts and skaters form a significant group within all ballet dancers.

I always love your anecdotes!


That's very interesting! I was considering starting a thread a while back about cross-training ballet and skating (after having discovered Ms Healy) - could you or anyone elaborate on the advantages and disadvantages?

I recall seeing Healy spot her spins as a skater.

She did not get very far in skating – turned pro as a pre-teen protegee of John Curry's, a very assured child performer. (Healy was also the subject of one of those ‘A Very Young [Blank]” books for children – ‘A Very Young Skater’ by Jill Krementz.) Years later she returned to skating– I remember one ABC Sports interview where she gave the audience quite an earful about how awful the ballet world was. Her skating was not in the same league with the other professionals she was performing with (under normal circumstances I don’t think she would even have been on the show, but I expect strings were pulled, or perhaps I ought to say a Button was pushed?) -- rather rigid positions and weak jumps with major leg wrap, only to be expected of course, although her outstanding extension was notable. I'm not sure how much a ballet dancer would get out of cross training as a skater, really.

Robin Cousins studied ballet as a youngster and had an opportunity to attend the Royal Ballet school on scholarship, but he plumped for skating. He continued with his ballet lessons for some time, but eventually stopped them although he always worked with a dance teacher, remarking that his skating coach was always telling him to relax and his ballet instructor was always telling him to pull up, and after a certain point his skating would begin to suffer.

I don't think they needed to pull any strings for Healy's return to the pro world after I think it was seven years away from skating at Vienna State Opera Ballet. The pro ranks always had at least one skater whose was there mostly for style points, and if s/he had Curry choreography, that was a shoe-in. The pro producers also liked the "skater coming back from something else" story. For Healy it was ballet. For Janet Lynn, it was having three young boys and skating to the gorgeous Blue Danube program, also by Curry, with Toller Cranston's commentary. I dislike leg wraps intensely, but I'd seen her much less stiff than when she made that comeback, which isn't surprising after the number of years in which she hadn't skated at all.

Healy was also in an awful movie in which she gets her dying dream of dancing Marie in the Nutcracker. I think Mary Tyler Moore was her mother, and maybe Dudley Moore fixed it for her to perform.

Curry had skaters in his company who were professional ballet dancers. Most notable was Cathy Foulkes, who was the woman in Curry's exquisite Afternoon of a Faun, and who danced for Boston Ballet.

Great -- and interesting! -- stuff so far. Please keep the posts coming!

Canadian figure skater Emanuel Sandhu was trained at the National Ballet School. I'm not a big fan of his, however, his dance training does come through in some of his skating performances.

So was Tessa Virtue. (I don't think she's there anymore.)

Katia Gordeeva turned to figure skating after she unsuccessfully tried out for the Bolshoi Ballet academy (where her father was a dancer I believe).

Diana Vishneva started out in figure skating.

Darcey Bussell also started out in gymnastics.

I think it used to be fairly common for energetic little girls to do both ballet and gymnastics or skating. It's probably less common today as more traditionally male sports are open to girls and as you have to invest much more time in each individual activity at a much earlier age.

'six weeks'. i think dudley moore's character was a politician and katherine's character was trying to get the two together before she died. or something.

Altinai Assylmuratova began with figure skating.

Very good points.

just my little "two cents" note.... in the Soviet/Eastern Europe block it was VERY typical to have ballet/choreography lessons as part of the regiment/ training for all "artistic" sports (sports & rythmical gymnastics, acrobatics, skating, synchronized swimming). In my big in gymnastics (but poor in ballet) hometown a ballet-dancer from the local opera theater taught us 3 times a week for 1,5 hrs (I wish I paid more attention then ;-))
So, swings between gymnastics, skating & ballet were not uncommon.

Sylvie Guillem,as others said,and Svetlana Zakharova come from gymnastics and especially from the Rhythmic one.It's just to say a few names.This is visible in the high developpés and very open legs.If you see in the Olympic games this type of gymnastics you can easily see athletes with 200° developpés and doing turns with the leg kept up there.And what beautiful feet and jumps!

Ballet teaching himself is commonly incomplete.These sports really work and change your body with their hard training.Ballet should "steal" some excercises from different fields that can vary from Gymnastics,to Pilates and from Acting to Yoga etc...Of course It's not only pros but there are also the cons:Gymnastics work in parallel and not endehors,with the back in lordosis and the ass turned outside instead of inside as ballet does.Then,a ballet student coming from this type of work has turn his posture upside down.And what about the problem of children not growing tall because of this training.Nowadays too small children are not taken in ballet schools.
Contamination is always good anyway,if you take the right excercises concerned to what your aim is.

Yes, I agree with dancerboy re the placement/stances in gymnastics generally in opposition to and consequently affecting ballet form, though the flexibility is an advantage.
My teachers strongly discouraged us from skating because, even though the upper body carriage may be pulled up, the downward emphasis and 'stroke' (sorry if wrong terms) into the ice would build up the wrong muscles in the legs. Or maybe they were afraid my ankles would be even more likely to get messed up if I did both skating and ballet?
I also found out later in life that riding was much more difficult than my younger days because of my turn-out, and consequently the 'torquing' sensation in my knees could make it excruciating--don't know what the poor horse thought as it felt my leg pressures constantly changing as I tried to compensate; but keeping my back straight was not a problem.

I remember Katherine Healey too. In that "A Young Skater/Dancer? book, and boohoo that tear-jerker film--which I only saw because SHE was in it. The first time I saw her was when she was about 7-8 doing "Papillon" piece for John Curry (my favorite skater). Then some 8-10yrs later in the (first?) Jackson IBC where I think she competed in the Jr class? Then lost touch, and didn't even know she had spent so much time back in ballet. But recently saw those major multiples thrown into the fouette mix in some clip posted online (YouTube?) but not sure how old it was.

katherine's medal in the ibc in jackson came in 1982, the second time it was held, when she was about 13, so it's hard to remember that she still isn't 40 years old!

Katherine was actually nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in Six Weeks.

I've known several professional dancers over the years who transitioned to ballet after gym, my husband being one of them. Sometimes, his gym background was a disadvantage for him. On several occasions, he was asked to do a gymnastic move in some piece of original ballet choreography that other dancers wouldn't have been capable of attempting. Gymnasts work on a sprung floor which has much more give than any ballet floor. This eventually led to some knee trouble...

Can I add a gymnast who SHOULD have been a ballerina?

1987 World Champion Aurelia Dobre from Romania.

Her dance, grace, and flexibility are DIVINE!!! Several of her routines are on Youtube.

Too bad a knee injury cut her career short.

Why do these competitions allow 14 yr olds to compete as adults? Arbitrary age limits make non sense, but I looked at one of these girls and I thought.. she is a child not a woman.

Why don't they have junior and adult division.. or do they?

Is anyone disturbed by this age thing or not? I am very off put by the promotion of children as "artists".

As far as these children as ballet dancers.... I can't imagine a 14 yr old as a principal dancer in ballet... maybe when she is 28?

The oldest of the "baby ballerinas" was 14.

I don't know about gymnastics, but there are junior and senior divisions in figure skating. To get to compete as a senior nationally, a skater has to pass technical tests. (Michelle Kwan famously snuck out and completed her senior test at age 12 behind the back of her then coach, Frank Carroll.) If they pass, they can compete in regionals and sectionals to make it to Nationals. (The top 5 or 6 skaters from last year's US Nationals, for example, get byes to Nationals, as do skaters who are competing in international competitions during the qualifying regionals.)

A 14-year-old can dance the lead in a ballet, but if she tries to dance Giselle or Odette/Odile, she will be compared to the greats of all ages. A 15-year-old Darci Kistler danced Odette in Balanchine's "Swan Lake, Act II" for an SAB performance, and from the clips from a handheld camera that I've seen, I am sorry I missed it in person. On the whole, young prodigy dancers are cast in age-appropriate roles. Skaters have complete choice of music to which to perform, and the younger skaters, if they want strong presentation marks, pick age-appropriate music and choreography and rely upon high technical scores.

Three of the last four Olympic Ladies champions were 16 or younger: Hughes in 2002, Lipinski in 1998, and Bauil in 1994.

In International competitions, but not major championships (Worlds, Olympics, Europeans, Four Continents), a 14-year-old can compete. However for major championships, a skater must be 15 on 1 July before the season begins. There was a huge controversy in 2006, as neither Mao Asada, who won the Grand Prix final two months before the Olympics (over Olympic Silver Medallist Cohen and Olympic Bronze Medallist Slutskaya), and had beaten Olympic Gold Medallist Arakawa and Cohen at Trophee Eric Bompard in November 2005, nor Yu-Na Kim, the two skating wunderkinder, was age eligible for the Olympics. (Ironically, it was the Japanese Federation that had pushed for the age limits on medical grounds, and that considered an official protest to over-turn the rules on Asada's behalf.) As a result, three of the top seven women after the short program at US Nationals are ineligible for Four Continents and Worlds, while the 16-year-old Junior champion is. (And at this point in the competition, it looks like there's a chance two of the three medallists will be ineligible.) It would be possible to have a 14-year-old Senior champion and and 19-year-old Junior champion.

Kistler was a Principal Dancer at NYCB at 18, Patricia McBride at 19. I think Allegra Kent was another teenaged Principal, and George Balanchine "discovered" Maria Tallchief and Mary Ellen Moylan when they were around 17 and dancing with the Ballet Russe.

It looks like a 14 year old who speaks like an 8 year old is the US champion... but she is not old enough to go to the Worlds. This is appalling. She may be very skilled but something is very wrong here in my opinion.

Why are these children allowed to compete in these things?

This is really exploitation of children in my opinion.

I heard Nessun Dorma among other pop tunes kids would dance to.

Vishneva thought about figure skating but decided to get serious and has become one of the worlds best ballerinas.

Thanks to those who guided her in this decision. Our gain. Imagine see a genius like her fooling around on ice.

The 14-year-old National Champion, Mirai Nagasu, was able to compete in Seniors because she passed her senior tests and was eligible. She is last year's US Jr. Champion, and the reigning Jr. World silver medallist. She will compete at Jr. Worlds again later this spring.

I think Vishneva got the better deal with choreographers: Mishin is no Petipa.

About age limits in gymnastics:
Some competitions have junior and senior divisions (eg, US championships, European championships) and some are effectively seniors only. A gymnast must turn 16 in the calendar year of the competition to compete in the Olympics and _usually_ at the World Championships. For Worlds, an exception is made in the pre-Olympic year: age-eligible gymnasts for the following year's Olympics may compete.

Thus, at the 2006 World Championships (not a pre-Olympic year), competitors had to turn 16 in calendar year 2006 (ie born 1990 or earlier). At the 2007 World Championships, competitors needed to be 16 by the end of 2008 (the Olympic year), meaning born 1992 or earlier. As a result, there were a few 14 year olds competing, but they were all due to turn 15 by the end of the year.

For many, many reasons both physiological and other, few young ladies continue in gymnastics at the elite level beyond age 18 or 19.

I was sent this video which looks like a cross between ballet and gymnastics and pair skating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5lN96dgt_Y

Incredible balance there!

Ethan Stiefel started in gymnastics.