The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Chae Eun Yang, Houston Ballet, Houston, TX

Chae Eun Yang is another ballet dancer from Korea who has found success in North America.

The Seoul-born Ms. Yang joined the Houston Ballet in 2013, but she also danced with the National Ballet of Canada for the 2017-18 ballet season before returning to Texas and joining the Houston company once again, as a member of the corps de ballet.  She has played roles in numerous ballets, including The Sleeping Beauty, The Winter's Tale, and, of course, The Nutcracker. 

Well, it's New Year's Eve, so that concludes my seventh series of beautiful dancers. My eighth series will appear in December 2020.  Happy new year - back in January with new subjects! 

The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Erica Villalpando, Nannette Brodie Dance Theatre, Long Beach, CA

Erica Villalpando is a modern dancer with the Nannette Brodie Dance Theatre, and she's also a teacher.

She's taught at colleges and universities all over southern California, including Chapman University and California State University at Long Beach.  Not only has she worked with numerous choreographers, her own choreography has been staged throughout the United States.  

Also, in her time with  Nannette Brodie Dance Theatre, Ms. Villalpando has presented dances such as Faith, Hope &  Love. . . , Polymorphic and Journey of Change.

Fun fact.: In 2003, she helped develop a creative dance program that has served as a state model program in California.

The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Shoko Tamai

Shoko Tamai doesn't belong to a dance company.  She is a dance company.

 

Originally from Japan, Ms. Tamai began training as a ballerina at an early age and worked her way up to perform with some of the most prestigious companies and schools, including the Central School of Ballet in London, the American Academy of Ballet in New York,m and the Paris Opera.  She's toured throughout the world as well.

Now based in New York., Shoko Tamai is a free agent, performing in her own Shoko Tamai Dance Theatre.  She's expanded her repertoire to include modern and contemporary dance, and she done gigs in experimental theaters dance venues and with numerous collaborators, including the Dance Theatre of Harlem.   She's even worked as - big surprise - a model.

By defying expectations, Shoko Tamai is one dancer who refuses to be pegged.

The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Courtney Robinson, Philadanco, Philadelphia, PA

Courtney Robinson is a dancer in Philadanco, Philadelphia's premier black contemporary dance troupe.

Her training took her through different schools and programs. including the Ailey School's Fellowship Program, Bates Dance Festival, and she even trained with the Richmond Ballet, as well as with the Codarts Rotterdam Dance Academy in the Netherlands.

Ms. Robinson's repertoire includes works from Bella Lewitzky, Pam Tanowitz, and Stephen Petronio,  

The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Madeline Parrish, Parsons Dance, New York, NY

Madeline Parrish is one of the newest additions to Parsons Dance, a renowned contemporary dance company in the Big Apple.

The Tennessee-born Ms. Parrish received her earliest training at the Franklin School of Performing Arts. In 2015, she moved to New York and attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she performed dances by Crystal Pite and Sonya Tayeh, among others.  Graduating from NYU in 2018 - after a stint studying dance in Prague - she joined Parsons Dance almost instantly.

It looks like Madeline Parrish is about to enjoy a meteoric rise in the world of contemporary dance.

The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Amanda Morgan, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle, WA

When the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle needed an apprentice in 2016, the company didn't have to look too far.  Amanda Morgan was just a short distance away in Tacoma.

Ms. Morgan was already a familiar face to to the Pacific Northwest Ballet, having studied at its school and also having studied at Dance Theatre Northwest.  She became an official member of the company in 2017 as a member of the corps de ballet.

Her roles with the Pacific Northwest Ballet have included roles in Red Angels and Emergence.

The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Chelsy Meiss, National Ballet of Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Chelsy Meiss went a long way to find her place in ballet. Though she dances for the National Ballet of Canada, she's originally from Melbourne, and I ain't talking about a small town in Florida.

Yes, she's from Melbourne, Australia.  She trained there as a student at the Victorian College of The Arts and at the Australian Ballet School before making her way to the Great White North.  Having joined the National Ballet of Canada in 2008, she became a first soloist in 2015.

Ms. Meiss has danced some quite prestigious roles as a member of Canada's national ballet company, such as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, the Snow Queen in The Nutcracker, the Queen of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire.  Her other credits include Giselle, The Winter’s Tale, Don Quixote, and In The Upper Room.

Citing another one of Ms. Meiss's performances, a role in The Seagull, the Ottawa Citizen declared her to be someone to watch in the National Ballet of Canada. So this wonder from Down Under has clearly left an impression on America's neighbors to the north.

The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Gayeon Jung, Joffrey Ballet, Chicago, IL

Gayeon Jung is a ballet dancer from Seoul who joined the Joffrey Ballet in 2015.

Ms. Jung had already assumed a very impressive number of credits by the time she graduated from the the Korea National University of Arts in 2014. Among the ballets she performed in then were Sleeping Beauty, La Fille mal gardée, Diana and Actéon, and Le Corsaire.  She also received numerous medals and prizes during her studies, including the 2011 gold medal in the Sicilia Barocca  International Dance Competition.  In 2012 she won the Arabesque Ballet Competition Gold Medal for Best Female Dancer, and in 2014 she won the gold medal at the Cape Town International Ballet Competition in South Africa.  She brought all of those accolades to the Joffrey, the great ballet company of the American heartland.

I have a feeling that she'll be a Joffrey staple for quite some time to come. 

The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Camila Ferrera, Indianapolis Ballet, Indianapolis, IN

How does a girl from Hoboken end up in two of the most prestigious ballet companies in the American Midwest?

Having a mom who's a dance instructor sure does help. :-)

Of dual Cuban and Argentine heritage - Cuba and Argentina about as far apart from each other as you can get in Latin America - Carla Ferrera began her training under her mother, Sonia Grimaldi, and continued at the School of American Ballet, which allowed her to perform in many productions of the  New York City Ballet before going into the really big time in ballet instruction - the American Ballet Theatre's dance school.  

She got two scholarships while at the ABT's school - the National Training Scholarship and the Mae L. Wien Scholarship for "outstanding talent, ability, and promise."  Pretty impressive!

Ms. Ferrera parlayed that outstanding talent, ability, and promise into a stint at the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, and performed in numerous works. She joined the Indianapolis Ballet in 20118.

Fun fact: Camila Ferrera is also a dance instructor at the university level, having taught at universities in Ohio and in Argentina.

The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Jacqueline Callahan, Pennsylvania Ballet, Philadelphia, PA

Jacqueline Callahan is from Abington, Pennsylvania, a sprawling suburb just north of Philadelphia.  Although she went far and wide to train in ballet, she didn't have to go too far from home to find her place in the world of dance.

She trained in Boston and New York before going back to the Keystone State and joining the Pennsylvania Ballet's corps de ballet.  Her performances include roles in Angel Corella's Don Quixote, Christopher Wheeldon's Swan Lake, and of course, The Nutcracker.

Fun fact:  She's currently pursuing a communications degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Kathryn Boren, American Ballet Theatre, New York, NY

Kathryn Boren is a striking young dancer who joined the American Ballet Theatre's corps de ballet in 2015. 

She brings to the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) a wealth of experience from her training at the company's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School.  Her first major professional gig was at Staatsbellett Berlin, where she danced for two years beginning in 2011.  From 2013 to 2015, she danced with the Boston Ballet, where,she performed in George Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante, danced the principal in Jerome Robbins’ Interplay, and also danced in Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes.  She amassed even more credits in Boston - too many to list here.

A beautiful young woman, yes, but looking at her résumé, it's easy to see that Kathryn Boren is not just another pretty face.  Look for her to become a principal at ABT.

And speaking of pretty faces . . . one of the articles of faith that encourages me to keep this blog going is that a woman's natural beauty is always preferable to her cosmetic beauty. So as glamorous as Kathryn Boren looks when made up for a stage role . . . 

. . . she looks absolutely gorgeous without any makeup at all.

I told you that finding beautiful women in dance was easy-peasy! :-) 

The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven: Erica Alvarado, Atlanta Ballet, Atlanta, GA

Erica Alvarado is a dancer with a long track record prior to joining the Atlanta Ballet.

The Tucson native trained on both coasts, at the schools of both the San Francisco Ballet and New York's American Ballet Theatre. She stated out professionally at her hometown company, Ballet Tucson, where she danced leading roles primarily in ballets choreographed by Antony Tudor.  She later joined the Milwaukee Ballet II program, and, in 2011, became a principal dancer at the City Ballet of San Diego. 

Among the ballets she was a principal dancer of in San Diego are Firebird, Giselle, Romeo and Juliet, and Serenade.  With such an impressive resume, it was inevitable that Ms. Alvarado would join one of the most important ballet companies in the Southeast.

New Series: The Beauty of Dance, Part Seven!

I'm featuring a month's worth of beautiful dancers - twelve of them this time - for the seventh time on this blog, and, when it comes to finding new subjects, I feel lucky.

And why not?  Dance, be it ballet or modern, requires a lot of grace and strength, even as it's easily the most effeminate art form ever conceived.  So finding beautiful women in dance is like shooting fish in a barrel.

So why do I only feature dancers every other year?  It would obviously be too tempting to include dancers all the time, as there are so many of them, and then it wouldn't be special when I did feature them.  Dance it its best represents performing artistry in its most beautiful and precious form, and so featuring on this blog women in ballet or modern dance should honor that by being available only rarely, at an appropriately timed interval - which, I've concluded, is two years.

So why in December?  I don't remember why I chose the last month of the year, but it may have had something to do with the fact that ballet companies thought the United States always stage The Nutcracker for Christmas.  And people always go to dance recitals over the holidays, whether the dance is Christmas-related or not.  So December seems to make sense.

Right, enough of my yakking.  Let's get this new series started.  Back soon with the first subject!

Sugar plum fairy, sugar plum fairy . . . 

The Beauty of Retrospect: Juli Foster and Sheila Johnson

Two of my favorite models from the late seventies and early eighties . . . together in not one, but two pictures!

Juli Foster and Sheila Johnson were quite ubiquitous back in the glory days of modeling, appearing in numerous ads and magazines, so it was inevitable that their paths would cross eventually.  Both of these pictures. I believe, are from a catalog from the early 1980s.

   

Of course there was a distinguishing difference between them.  Sheila Johnson has a winning smile, while Juli Foster has . . . uh, no smile at at all.  Although, if you look closely at the photo directly above, Juli manages a slight, almost mischievous smile.  She must have been thinking about those garish tops she and Sheila were wearing! :-D

Of course, Juli Foster, whom I last featured here in February 2018, and Sheila Johnson, whom I last featured here in April 2018 (with Carol Perkins) and also in February 2018 before that, could make anything look great.

That's it for retrospectives now.  Back soon with my seventh series devoted to dancers.   

The Beauty of Retrospect: Dianne deWitt

November is almost over, and before I move on to my seventh - my seventh! - series of beautiful dancers for December, I thought I'd revisit a few models I've featured here before.  One of them is Dianne deWitt.

This is my first post featuring Dianne deWitt. one of the classiest cover girls of all time, since September 2016.  The above picture is from a late-seventies TV commercial for Revlon nail polish.  Her appearance in this commercial is just what you see here - a fixed stare into the camera.  It was more than enough to sell the product to the female viewer and mesmerize the male viewer. :-D

 

The more recent picture above, showing Ms. deWitt from the 2010s, shows that, while she's not active as a model anymore, she still has that impeccable class that you can't pick up in a Barbizon modeling course.  You either have it or you don't.

Model Yvonne Westling

Yvonne Westling is model who was primarily active in the early 1980s.

She was represented in Paris by the L'Agence agency.  Further biographical details about her are unavailable.

British actress Rachel Ward

If you watched a lot of TV or went to a lot of movies in the 1980s, chances are you remember Rachel Ward.

Originally a model who appeared on the covers of magazines such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan, she made the transition to acting at the beginning of the eighties, impressing critics with her performance as a prostitute in the 1981 Atlanta cop thriller Sharky's Machine, starring and directed by the late Burt Reynolds.  Two years later (1983) she played Meggie Cleary in the American miniseries version of Colleen McCullough's novel "The Thorn Birds," opposite Richard Chamberlain, a soap-opera-style story about three generations of a family in Australia and New Zealand.  It was one of the highest-rated miniseries ever in American television history.

She distinguished herself in several movies throughout the decade, including Taylor Hackford's 1984 thriller Against All Odds, the 1987 Australian romantic drama The Umbrella Woman (about a complication between a woman and the brother of her husband) and 1989's farcical How To Get Ahead in Advertising (doesn't the title alone make you want to see that one?). 

Rachel Ward has remained active in movies and television, albeit at a slower pace than in the 1980s.  Her most recent film as of this writing is 2016's The Death and Life of Otto Bloom, a pseudo-documentary about a man who experiences time backwards and can only remember the future.

And here's something you may not know about her: She has been married to Australian actor Bryan Brown since 1983.  They met while working together on "The Thorn Birds."

Actress/singer/blogger Bligh Voth

An actress, a singer and a blogger? Well, Bligh Voth and I have at least have one thing in common!

:-D

Bligh Voth originally hails from Washington, D.C., but don't hold that against her.  Now a New York resident, she has appeared in different stage productions, including a turn as Dyanne in Million Dollar Quartet, the musical based on the December 1956 Sun Records session involving Elvis Presley, Jerry lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash.

She runs two blogs, "Avocados Are For Rich People," a blog of varied opinions and observations, and the provocatively titled "Nasty Women of New York," a blog profiling the many and diverse women of New York who stand up against the misogyny and patriarchal attitude associated with the current White House occupant. (Guess how she came up with that blog's name.)

In her Web site's bio, the not-so-shy Ms. Voth, referring to herself in the third person, says she "loves fancy things, but secretly, is happiest at Olive Garden with that "'all you can eat' soup/salad/breadsticks deal."

To find out more about Bligh Voth, you can access her Web site here.

Model Alicia Thompson

Alicia Thompson is a model who was active in the late eighties.

She was based in Los Angeles, and she was represented by the Wilhelmina West agency.   

Model Chrissy Teigen

Chrissy Teigen is one of the hottest models of this decade (the 2010s).

Her best known modeling gig was in the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in 2010, but she's also been in ad campaigns for Oil of Olay, Nike, and Gap Factory. She's been on television as well, as a host on several celebrity-news programs.  She gets her exotic looks from her Norwegian-American father and Thai-American mother. 

These days she's recognized as the wife of soul singer John Legend. :-)  

Model Nena von Schlebrügge

Nena von Schlebrügge was born in Mexico City to a German father, who was a cavalry officer for the Kaiser in the First World War, and a Swedish mother.  That's not the most interesting thing about her.

Nena von Schlebrügge's parents fled to Mexico to escape fascism in Europe.  She went to Europe after the war, where she became a teenage model, eventually moving to New York to pursue modeling as an adult. She found herself working with the top photographers in the fashion business, including Norman Parkinson (who discovered her) and Gleb Derujinsky, and she appeared in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.  The picture below is from Vogue, from March 1962 and taken by Horst P. Horst.

She later appeared in filmmaker Edie Sedgwick's Ciao! Manhattan, but her scenes were cut.  By then, 1967, she married Buddhism expert Robert Thurman, and she embraced his cause to preserve Buddhist and Tibetan culture. They are still married today.

And yes, she's the mother of actress Uma Thrman, an earlier honoree on this blog.  She sired three other children as well.

Nena and Robert Thurman founded the Tibet House US Cultural Center of H. H. the Dalai Lama, whose purpose is to present and preserve the heritage of Tibet. Since 2001, Nena von Schlebrügge has been the managing director of the Tibet House-owned Menla Mountain Retreat, which is the home of a medicinal spa.

Not just another pretty face.  Below is a picture of her today. 

And if you think all of that is astonishing, here's another fun fact for you - before she met Robert Thurman, she'd been married to Timothy Leary for a year.  

Actress Kelly Reilly

Kelly Reilly is an English actress who has made big splash in America. 

She plays Beth Dutton in the Paramount TV series "Yellowstone," about a family who owns the largest ranch in the lower 48 states. Beth is a financier who helps run the ranch but battles with personal demons.

Ms. Reilly got her start playing a role on the British television drama "Prime Suspect," which led to other small television roles.  Her breakthrough came in the 2008 film Eden Lake, a horror movie in which she played a nursery school teacher who makes a journey to a lake in the English countryside.  This led to, among other things, two Sherlock Holmes moves as Dr. Watson's wife,  and as a heroin addict in Robert Zemeckis' 2012 airline thriller Flight, starring Denzel Washington. 

Ms. Reilly is no stranger to American television, by the way.  In 2014 she starred the ABC series "Black Box" as Catherine Black, a famed neuroscientist who studies and solves issues concerning the human brain while trying to keep private her own bipolar disorder from the world.

"Black Box" was not a hit but "Yellowstone," having just been renewed for a second season, should ensure that Kelly Reilly will be around a little longer this time.  

New Zealand TV newswoman Alison Pugh

Alison Pugh is a television reporter in New Zealand, so most of you are likely hearing about her from the first time here. That is, unless, you live in New Zealand. 

Ms. Pugh works for 1 News Now, the news channel that's part of TVNZ network, as a reporter; she's based in Christchurch, New Zealand's third largest city, situated on South Island.

She joined TVNZ in 2009 and soon became part of the on-camera staff of the morning show "Breakfast" that September.  Ms. Pugh was the co-host of "Breakfast" from 2014 to 2016, though she's remained a part of the 1 News team as a part-time reporter after having a child.

She holds an communications honors degree and journalism graduate degree from Canterbury University.

Colombian model Carla Ossa

Sofia Vergara isn't the only Colombian woman to take the world by storm. There's also Carla Ossa.

Represented by Elite Model Management,  she has appeared on the covers of numerous magazines in South America and in Germany, where she has had a lot of success.

You can also find her in catalogs for the German mail-order clothing brand Bonprix.  She's even done ads for Burger King.

Carla Ossa has too large a portfolio for me to encapsulate sufficiently on a single blog entry.  Expect many retrospective posts of her here in the future. :-)

Actress/singer Idina Menzel

Idina Menzel is a Broadway actress of intense beauty.  You might even say her beauty is . . . wicked!

Ha ha!  Yes, that was a play on the musical that made her famous.  She originated the role of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch Of the West, in Wicked, about the witches of the land of Oz.  But that was not her first major role on Broadway.  She originated the role of performance artist Maureen Johnson in Rent, the Broadway show about struggling actors in the bohemian area of Manhattan.  There she met fellow cast member Taye Diggs; they were married for eleven years beginning in 2003.

She has played other roles, though, most notably Elizabeth, a woman who moves to New York City for a fresh start and imagines two different possible paths on how to live her life going forward, in the Broadway musical If/Then.  Coincidentally, it premiered in 2014, the same year she divorced Taye Diggs.  (She's currently married to actor Aaron Lohr.)

She's also played vocal Shelby Corcoran on the musical comedy.dram series "Glee."

These days, Idina Menzel concentrates more on voice-acting for animated movies and on records than musical plays.  She released her latest LP, idina.live, in October 2018.  It's her seventh album.

Swedish model Gunilla Lindblad

Gunilla Lindblad has been a model since before your mother was born, or almost.

She arrived in Paris from Sweden in 1968, and soon after that, she would go to New York, where she became a favorite of legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland.  In the seventies, Ms. Lindblad would come to personify the "haute hippie" look, a style that combined hippie culture with haute couture.  

It was indicative of how the Merry Pranksters and the Deadheads would influence mainstream culture, though they probably weren't too thrilled with seeing their look get turned unto a commodity.

But if any model was going to legitimize it, it was definitely Gunilla Lindblad. :-)    

She was represented in Paris by the Paris Planning and Elite agencies, appearing on Vogue covers as well as in Vogue editorials.  She would be represented by the New York and Los Angeles offices of Elite as her modeling career progressed in the 1980s.

After fifty years as of this writing, Ms. Lindblad continues to model, and she is a client of Iconic Focus, an American modeling agency that specializes in veteran models, many of them famous names like Ms. Lindblad herself.  

I ask you, does this look like a woman who has been modeling for half a century?  Well, believe it.  And believe this: Real beauty never fades, It improves with age, like a fine wine.  Gunilla Lindblad certainly proves that in spades. :-)

Model/actress Vendela Kirsebom

Vendela Kirsebom is so unique in the modeling profession that, like Iman (Abdulmajid) and Wanakee (Pugh), she usually goes by her first name alone.

Discovered in her native Sweden in 1980 by legendary modeling agent Eileen Ford, eventually she became the face of Almay cosmetics in the United States.  Not only did she appear repeatedly in Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue, she has also graced the covers of American magazines such as Bride's and Shape, as well as the British magazine FHM.

She's also branched out into acting, playing - what else? - a bridal gown model in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, as well as episodes of "The Larry Sanders Show" and "Murphy Brown"  (the original "Murphy Brown," not the reboot).  Ms. Kirsebom has also been the host of both Norwegian and Swedish versions of the reality-contest show "Top Model."

Vendela Kirsebom is of unique ancestry. Though born in Sweden, she's the daughter of a Turkish father and a Norwegian mother.  She currently lives in Oslo, and she remains active in modeling while also serving as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. 

TV actress Ashley Jones

Ashley Jones has distinguished herself on not one, but two CBS soap operas at a time when the soap opera is an endangered television genre.

 

She played Megan Dennison on the CBS soap "The Young and the Restless" from 1997 to 2000 and briefly again in 2001.  Coincidentally, her character on "The Bold And the Beautiful," Bridget Forrester, became a regular character in 1997 after a number of child actresses played the little girl.  By the time Ms. Jones assumed that role, she became the fourth actress since 1997 to play Bridget, who by then had grown up and would eventually become a doctor.  She assumed the role of Bridget in 2004.   

Dr. Forrester ceased being a regular character in 2011, but Ms. Jones has played her periodically since then.

Among Ashley Jones' other roles are as Daphne in the dark-fantasy series "True Blood" and a slew of Lifetime TV movies.  

Fun fact #1:  Ashley Jones was married to actor Craig T. Nelson's son Noah for seven years beginning in 2002.

Fun fact #2:  The role of Bridget Forrester was also played by Jennifer Finnigan, an earlier honoree on this blog.  

CNN newswoman Poppy Harlow

Katharine Julia Harlow - called Poppy by everyone who knows or watches her - is one of the more prominent anchors on the Cable News Network (CNN).

Originally from Minnesota, Ms. Harlow interned for CBS News while in college  and worked there for a spell after graduation.  She later worked for the local cable-news channel NY1 in New York City, covering Staten Island and New Jersey.

At CNN, she has been a business correspondent for the parent channel, CNN International, and CNN's Headline News (HLN) Channel.  She also anchors part of the parent channel's morning newscast.  She has been at CNN since 2008.    

Model Andrea Ford

Andrea Ford is a model from the late 1980s.

She worked in Vienna, and she represented by the Tausendsassa agency in that city.  No other biographical information is available.   

Musical actress Kerry Ellis

Never heard of Kerry Ellis?  That's probably because you're an American who has never been to London and seen a West End play.

Ms. Ellis is as big a star there as Patti LuPone and Betty Buckley have been on Broadway. 

Her credits include the Queen musical We Will Rock You at the Dominion Theatre, the role of Fantine in Les Misérables, and the role of Nancy in a  2010 production of Oliver!  Oh yes, and she also played the role of Elphaba in Wicked at London's Apollo Victoria Theatre from 2006 to 2009, and also reprised the role at the Gershwin Theatre in New York in 2014 - her only American credit of note, at least so far.

When she's not appearing on the West End, Ms. Ellis is doing TV appearances in Britain and Ireland, appearing in British touring companies, and also making records of various show tunes.  She's regarded as the leading lady of British musical theater, and and hopefully she'll perform stateside again.