Rebecca Rhodes, a 28-year-old senior corps dancer at San Francisco Ballet, also spent years as a trainee, working on repertoire during the day and performing at night with other trainees all over the Bay area, and augmenting the company in larger productions when needed.
Katie Bonnell, a dancer in her mid-20s at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, danced first as an aspirant while still in the company’s school and then as an apprentice for a total of four years before she was offered a full-time corps contract last year.
#Ballet principal or principle full
To find out more about the challenges and rewards of life in the corps de ballet, I spoke with several corps dancers at a variety of stages in their performing careers - all fine artists in their own right - from large ballet companies in North America and Europe, as well as two ballet mistresses.Īlmost all dancers start their career in the corps, but increasingly they perform with a company for some time without any guarantee of being hired full time. But while the spotlight may shine more brightly on the stars, a company’s reputation is won or lost by the artistry and standard of dancing by its corps de ballet. Hierarchy is embedded in the canonical works, populated as they are by peasants and gypsies, and dukes and princesses, and in the companies themselves where the principal dancers quite literally reign, onstage and off. For classical ballet, an art form born in the court of the aristocracy, rank is foundational.
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