{"id":384,"date":"2025-06-03T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/?p=384"},"modified":"2025-07-23T09:34:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T09:34:28","slug":"the-etoile-ballet-swap-is-fiction-but-these-dancer-exchanges-really-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/03\/the-etoile-ballet-swap-is-fiction-but-these-dancer-exchanges-really-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201c\u00c9toile\u201d Ballet Swap Is Fiction, but These Dancer Exchanges Really Happened"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the first episode of Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino\u2019s series \u201c\u00c9toile,\u201d<\/a> a ballet company director from Paris says to another in New York City: \u201cI propose a swap!\u201d<\/p>\n

They devise a plan\u2014which becomes the premise for the whole show\u2014to rescue both organizations from their post-COVID fragility: They\u2019ll trade artists for a year, a publicity stunt and an artistic experiment rolled into one.<\/p>\n

If that all sounds a little dramatic and made-for-TV, well, it is. The show\u2019s creators have said<\/a> they weren\u2019t aware of any real-life basis for their plot, which isn\u2019t surprising\u2014examples of real-life dancer swaps are few and far between. But, though they\u2019ve never looked quite like \u201c\u00c9toile\u201d\u2019s supercharged exchange, they\u2019re not unheard of.<\/p>\n

In 2009, for instance, New York City Ballet announced a partnership with the Paris Op\u00e9ra Ballet<\/a> to swap stars for performances of George Balanchine\u2019s \u201cRubies.\u201d In\u00a02013,\u00a0American Ballet Theatre lent<\/a>\u00a0Isabella Boylston to the Royal Danish Ballet and Cory Stearns to the Royal Ballet. In return, Copenhagen and London sent Alban Lendorf and Steven McRae, respectively, to New York.\u00a0 And in 2017, Texas Ballet Theater and Australia\u2019s Queensland Ballet executed a Sugar Plum swap<\/a>. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Isabella Boylston (center front, in pink tutu) with Royal Danish Ballet dancers. Photo courtesy Boylston.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI gained a lot of confidence from the experience, being in a completely new environment and having to perform something really hard,\u201d Boylston<\/a> says. The Royal Danish Ballet swap marked her first appearance as a guest artist. \u201cIn my mind, that was just for really established dancers,\u201d she says. She felt grateful for the opportunity to grow as a dancer and gain perspective on the ballet world. She remembers fondly the warm Danish welcome, the cozy Copenhagen apartment, the chance to tackle Balanchine\u2019s Nutcracker<\/em>, and the exchange\u2019s influence on her dancing. \u201cI kind of surprised myself,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

For TBT\u2019s Samantha Pille<\/a>, the exchange with Queensland was formative. \u201cIt was incredible and also terrifying,\u201d she says. \u201cI was so nervous [about] how I was going to represent TBT.\u201d Ultimately, \u201cit made me trust myself more as a dancer,\u201d she says, helping her come out of her shell and feel more at ease onstage.<\/p>\n

Professional development was part of the goal for Li Cunxin, who was artistic director of Queensland Ballet during its swap with TBT, and Ben Stevenson, who was artistic director of TBT at the time. \u201cLooking back at my career, exchange or guest performance experiences truly made me a better artist,\u201d says Li, who years earlier had been a star Houston Ballet dancer under Stevenson\u2019s direction<\/a>. Li wanted to help the Queensland dancers boost their confidence and mature as performers. Those who stayed home also learned from the colleagues they hosted. \u201cIt was a thrill for all of us to see how they interpret roles,\u201d says Li, joking that the wings were packed and he had to warn dancers not to miss their own cues.<\/p>\n

That said, \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to spare some of your top dancers,\u201d Li says. Plus, there are financial considerations to factor in, and, he suspects, \u201cartistic directors probably harbor the fear of losing their dancers to other companies.\u201d But from Li\u2019s perspective, it was worth it. \u201cOur audiences were delighted,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

So often, movies and TV portray ballet as a grim world of psychological distress and cruel backstabbing. However, Boylston, who\u2019s watched a couple of \u201c\u00c9toile\u201d episodes so far, notes that the show \u201cdoesn\u2019t rely on a lot of the usual tropes.\u201d She\u2019d want any swap storyline to reflect \u201cthe camaraderie between dancers\u201d she felt in Copenhagen. \u201cThe ballet world is small,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s very much a community of people that get each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that sense, \u201c\u00c9toile\u2019s\u201d grandiose swap may be more rooted in reality than viewers realize. Perhaps the series will, in turn, inspire more real-life exchanges. Despite the logistical challenges, Li says, \u201cIt\u2019s a win-win.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The post The \u201c\u00c9toile\u201d Ballet Swap Is Fiction, but These Dancer Exchanges Really Happened<\/a> appeared first on Dance Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the first episode of Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino\u2019s series \u201c\u00c9toile,\u201d a ballet company director from Paris says to another in New York City: \u201cI propose a swap!\u201d They devise a plan\u2014which becomes the premise for the whole show\u2014to rescue both organizations from their post-COVID fragility: They\u2019ll trade artists for a year, a publicity stunt and an artistic experiment rolled into one. If that all sounds a little dramatic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ballroom-dances"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions\/387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunflorvame.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}