When I traveled to China a couple years ago, no one believed me when I told them I was from America. They told me I didn’t look American. Thanks to Hollywood movies, the word American has long been associated with being Caucasian, […]
Anyone ever heard of Lincoln Kirstein? It’s okay if you haven’t; even George Balanchine didn’t know who he was when Kirstein walked up to him in Paris in 1933. In the post-Diaghilev era in Europe, Balanchine was trying to find footing as a choreographer. He had just presented his new venture, titled Les […]
Ballet found eight year-old Karel in his native Cuba. His family had recently moved to Pinar del Rio and his aunt, a ballet teacher at the local arts academy (Escuela Vocacional de Arte), suggested he audition. Baseball was his thing, not […]
My mother, Yoko, was born in 1944, in the midst of World War II, in a Japanese relocation camp. Her father, Joe Shiomichi, died at age 23, a month before she was born. Her mother, Miye, was so devastated by his death […]
My American story begins sometime near the end of the last glacial maximum, around 13,000-16,500 years ago, when my ancestors crossed the Beringian Land Bridge to Alaska. Or so Wikipedia tells me. So while your great- greats- made their way over on planes and boats, mine did it on foot. In the snow […]
Blonde. Blue eyes. Fair skin. It doesn’t take an extensive examination of my family genealogy to guess what might make up my heritage—largely Scandinavian, more specifically, Swedish roots. My mother’s side is entirely, completely, 100% Swede—in fact, it […]
Blonde. Blue eyes. Fair skin. It doesn’t take an extensive examination of my family genealogy to guess what might make up my heritage—largely Scandinavian, more specifically, Swedish roots. My mother’s side is entirely, completely, 100% Swede—in fact, it […]
I remember clicking on what looked to be another ballet video on YouTube. This time though, the women were in black and the men in white. It was the first time I had seen a ballet like this. I was captivated by a male solo. I later learned it was Peter Boal in George Balanchine’s […]
My mom’s paternal grandfather Leopold Koch came over from Czechoslovakia, where his last name was pronounced with a hard O and a guttural ch. But upon landing in “the new country,” he asked the Ellis Island immigration officer how he’d pronounce […]
Jerome: I never excelled in English. But that changed after spending five weeks at the Miami City Ballet summer program. Luckily, ballet is a universal language, but I still found myself a bit lost outside of the studio.
My parents were proud to be Young Democrats for Kennedy, but I never took my own patriotism very seriously until I landed at the School of American Ballet as a young dancer. The passion Mr. Balanchine exuded for all things […]