“To many of her students, Danilova represented the elegant past of ballet; she was a true ballerina. Darci Kistler, now a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, was coached by Danilova in Swan Lake for an SAB workshop: “Madame loved the femininity of dance, what she called ‘the perfume of dance.’ She taught you the allure, the haughtiness‹she was a grande dame of ballet. For Madame, if you didn’t look like a dancer, you weren’t a dancer; she liked girls to dress well, to have their hair up‹the old aesthetic. She could be very tough, but she was very generous and kind to me.’”
—SIOBHAN BURNS, Playbill, 2003
Comments