Julie Kent

Julie Kent (born 1969 in Bethesda, Maryland) with birth name Julie Cox, is an American ballerina. Julie Kent began her dance training with Hortensia Fonseca at the Academy of the Maryland Youth Ballet. She attended the American Ballet Theatre II Summer session and the School of American Ballet before joining American Ballet Theatre as an apprentice in 1985. In that same year, Kent won first place in the regional finals of the National Society of Arts and Letters at the Kennedy Center. In 1986, she was the only American to win a medal at the Prix de Lausanne International Ballet Competition, and she became a member of ABT's corps de ballet. Kent starred in the Herbert Ross film Dancers in 1987. She was appointed a Soloist with ABT in 1990 and a Principal Dancer in 1993, the year in which she won the Erik Bruhn Prize in Toronto.

Kent’s roles with the Company include the Girl in Afternoon of a Faun, the title role in Anastasia, Terpsichore and Calliope in Apollo, Nikiya in La Bayadère, the third movement in Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1, the title role in Cinderella, Medora in Le Corsaire, the Lady with Him in Dim Lustre, Kitri and the Queen of the Driads in Don Quixote, Titania in The Dream, the Dying Swan,Anne in Christopher Wheeldon’s VIII, the second girl in Fancy Free, the Glove Seller in Gaîté Parisienne, Giselle in Giselle, Caroline in Jardin aux Lilas, Manon in Manon, Hanna Glawari in The Merry Widow, the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, Tatiana in Onegin, Desdemona in Othello, the pas de deux Other Dances, the pas de deux in Les Patineurs, Hagar in Pillar of Fire, the Siren in Prodigal Son, the Ranch Owner’s Daughter in Rodeo, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, a Lover in Sin and Tonic, Princess Aurora, the Lilac Fairy, and Princess Florine in The Sleeping Beauty, the Sylph in La Sylphide, Odette-Odile in Swan Lake, Sylvia in Sylvia, the second movement in Symphony in C, the Nocturne and the Prelude in Les Sylphides, Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew, the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, the Woman in Weren’t We Fools? and leading roles in Ballet Imperial, Dark Elegies, Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes, Gong, Kaleidoscope, The Leaves Are Fading, Meadow, Mozartiana, Sinfonietta, “…smile with my heart”, Spring and Fall, Stepping Stones, Symphonie Concertante and Theme and Variations. She created Artemis in Artemis, Sibyl Vane in Dorian, His Memory and His Experiences in HereAfter and leading roles in Americans We, Baroque Game, The Brahms/Haydn Variations, Clear, Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra, Cruel World, Getting Closer, Known by Heart, Rigaudon, States of Grace, Within You Without You: A Tribute to George Harrison and Without Words.

In April 2000, Kent won the “Prix Benois de la Danse” which was held in Stuttgart. She is the only American ever to have won this prize. Kent starred in the motion picture Center Stage (2000), directed by Nicholas Hytner with original choreography by Susan Stroman.

Kent is married to Associate Artistic Director Victor Barbee and they are the parents of a son, William Spencer Barbee.

External links

*imdb name|name=Julie Kent|id=0448785
* [http://www.abt.org/dancers/detail.asp?Dancer_ID=23 American Ballet Theatre profile of Julie Kent]
* [http://www.soundventure.com/web/footnotes/kent.html Footnotes - Julie Kent]

External links

* [http://www2.lhric.org/pocantico/womenenc/kentsb.jpgJulie Kent as Princess Aurora in "The Sleeping Beauty"]
* [http://balletbookstore.com/ballerina/pic/jkent02.jpgJulie Kent as the Black Swan in "Swan Lake"]
* [http://www.abt.org/images/db_images/news/LesSylKentms.jpgJulie Kent in "Les Sylphides"]
* [http://www2.lhric.org/pocantico/womenenc/kent.jpgJulie Kent in the title role of "Giselle"]