Extract
That’s why the charming Principal with the San Francisco Ballet likes to learn something new. Even outside of the ballet world, as she explains to Alessandro Bizzotto while talking with him about life, politics and ambitions. After all, to her ballet is “a conscious daily choice, not something you do as you are kinda good at it”
With her charming smile and straightforward verve, Dores André is one of those European dancers who succeeded in crossing the Atlantic Ocean to dance in America. Today she seems at her ease in her role as a Principal dancer at the San Francisco Ballet. Originally from Vigo, Spain, as a kid she wanted to become an architect. She even learned to play the piano and she took swimming lessons, but she soon started wanting to so something more social.
André had her first introduction to ballet in a small school in her hometown before winning a scholarship to the Estudio de Danza de María de Ávila in Zaragoza, where she completed her training. Today she looks both your ideal contemporary dancer and the ballerina whose intensity can surprise when she dances milestone ballets. Dores created roles in William Forsythe’s “Pas/Parts 2016” and in Liam Scarlett’s “Fearful Symmetries” among others, and got great praise when she danced Juliet, the Sugar Plum Fairy in “The Nutcracker”, Swanilda in “Coppelia”, Myrtha in “Giselle” and the title-role in Wheeldon’s “Cinderella”.
(© Erik Tomasson)
Several ballet dancers moved from America in order to join European companies. You did the opposite. What brought you from Spain to San Francisco?
I have always admired American dancers. I still remember a video of a Balanchine Gala I had when I was a kid – I can’t forget watching Elizabeth Loscavio and being amazed of how fast and free she moved. I have always liked how dynamic American dancers are, it is less about the form and more about the movement. I guess even as a kid I had an affinity for movement over form, to a degree of course. However, I knew she had been in San Francisco, so I gave it a try, and I ended up falling in love with the company’s repertory and whole approach to ballet. It is a unique company, in the sense that its diversity in dancers’ nationalities and trainings and its broad and diverse repertory make it almost impossible to not learn something new daily.
(© Erik Tomasson)
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