Q&A with Nancy Crowley, PNB’s New Family Matinee Rehearsal Director
PNB Faculty member Nancy Crowley starts a new role as PNB’s Family Matinee Rehearsal Director this fall! Nancy begins her position by directing PNB School students preparing to perform Beauty and the Beast in March. Read on to learn more about Nancy, her dance career, and her new position with PNB.
What inspires you?
Knowledge. It has always inspired me to be around people who transmit knowledge. That is every day as a dancer, and now as a teacher. To learn, accumulate, and communicate skills is an inspiring process, and it brings confidence.
Before joining PNB, you had a distinguished performance career in the U.S. and Canada. Tell us about it!
My career was long and led me from the U.S. to Canada to Europe and back. When I started out, training programs like PNB School’s Professional Division program were not the model, but I was fortunate to have good training and natural gifts. In time, I gained experience dancing in smaller companies before joining Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. Balanchine ballerina Patricia Wilde was the artistic director then, and she developed me from the corps de ballet to the position of principal dancer. Looking back, I see how much I learned from Ms. Wilde, her unique integrity, experience, and knowledge, and how much I developed dancing in the broad range of repertory Ms. Wilde programmed, including Balanchine ballets, full-length classical ballets classics, original choreography, and modern works by choreographers such as Ohad Naharin and Jiří Kylián. When Ms. Wilde announced she would retire as director, I had been a company member for ten years. At the end of her final season, I believed I needed to move on.
I moved to Chicago to dance with The Joffrey Ballet for a season and then was offered a job as principal dancer for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal. I loved that company, which was under the direction of Lawrence Rhodes at that time, and developed so much dancing in the repertory of ballets and contemporary works that were Larry’s vision for Les Grands. After two seasons, however, Larry wished to return to the US to teach at Tisch and eventually Juilliard. Gradmir Pankov became artistic director for Les Grands Ballets after Larry’s departure, and this was not a good fit for me!
Fortunately, I had the opportunity to stay in Montreal and dance for Édouard Lock and his company, La La La Human Steps, in the new project Amelia. This was a three-year project. We first developed the live show in Montreal for one year and then toured in Europe and Canada for two years, but we also went into the film studios to record Amelia as a movie. Edouard also brought the company to Paris for a residency while he created all the dance sequences for the opera Les Boréades which we performed at the Paris Opera. So, I lived in and out of Montreal for this time and then returned to the US to begin dancing at Ballet Arizona.
At Ballet Arizona I danced for Royal Danish Ballet and New York City Ballet principal dancer Ib Andersen who was now artistic director. Over the years, I had met and worked with Ib and knew his strengths as a teacher and choreographer. I was very happy to experience these again and to return to a full repertory of ballets. In time I also began to teach for The School of Ballet Arizona and eventually, I became School Director and Student Rehearsal Assistant for Ballet Arizona. From there I came here to join PNB School!
You’ve been teaching at PNB School for about 10 years. What’s one of your favorite PNB School memories?
We work with so many students, and each one at some moment offers you something. I don’t know that I have a single moment, but this year I received a card from a student who wrote, “I admire your skills and your courage.” I didn’t realize that I show courage, and was really grateful to learn that. Moments like that are special.
You’re taking on a new role as the Family Matinee rehearsal director. Could you explain what that entails, and what you’re excited about in this new role?
Rehearsal directors work side-by-side with the artistic director on what happens in the studios each day, and they serve as an extension of a choreographer’s vision for their works. Choreographer Bruce Wells has developed several fairytale ballets for PNB’s Family Matinee series and Beauty and the Beast is the newest of these. I‘m excited that I’ll be working with many students who I have taught now over several seasons and who I know very well, and who know me. I know they will rely on me to help them be their best and that is special. It’s going to be a joy to be in the studios working on all the wheels and gears of a ballet again!
What’s your favorite character from Beauty and The Beast?
The Beast, of course. Transformed by love. Yeah, he’s the best!
