One of the staples of the holiday season is The Nutcracker ballet, making this the perfect moment  for balletomane Heather Stevenson‘s guest blog on the enchanted world of exotic ballerina names.

　　Many little girls proclaim that they want to be ballerinas when they grow up—most are drawn to the sequined tutus, the rhinestone tiaras, the shiny satin pointe shoes, and the chance to wear make-up.  (Leaping and twirling to music are bonuses.)  As a little girl, I was not immune to these charms, and I began studying ballet at the age of ten.  Perhaps unlike most girls who take up dance, however, part of ballet’s appeal to me was that it fed my growing fascination with names.  Read the program at just about any ballet performance, or pick up a book on dance history, and you will find an array of beautiful ballerina names of many different nationalities.

　　A hundred years ago, the Ballets Russes began presenting their first performances in Paris.  Comprised predominantly of expatriate Russians, the fledgling company became wildly popular, and interest in dance soared.  Touring companies such as the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo were offshoots of the original Ballets Russes, and they brought ballet to small towns all across the United States.   Additionally, Russian choreographer George Balanchine honed his talent with the Ballets Russes, and eventually immigrated to America, where he began what was to become the New York City Ballet.  The glamour of these dancers who had traveled the world before showing up in places like Lincoln, Nebraska was matched by their exotic, “Russified” names.  For instance, Lilian Alicia Marks, an English girl who danced with the original Ballets Russes, became Alicia Markova.

　　These days, most dancers keep their own names, but that hasn’t made reading the roster of a company’s performers any less exciting or exotic.  The American Ballet Theatre in New York, for example, has dancers from the Ukraine, Italy, Cuba, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Russia, Uruguay, South Korea, England, France, China, Byelorussia, Australia, Finland, Portugal, and (of course) the United States in their ranks.

　　The language of ballet is French, but really, dance itself is the language that is spoken within ballet companies.  I myself have had more Russian and Chinese ballet teachers than American ones, and the fact that most of these teachers spoke little English was rarely a problem.  The international flavor of dance was enormously attractive to me as a young girl.  I grew up in Florida and my family never traveled anywhere.  I longed to see more of the world, but I settled for hearing about Beijing and St. Petersburg from my beloved teachers.

　　Reading magazines and books on dance, and seeing performances of different companies on television, I began to despair that I’d ever become a famous ballerina with a name like Heather Brown.  My favorite dancers had names like Altynai Asylmuratova, Alessandra Ferri, and Sylvie Guillem.  It seemed that you couldn’t be a ballerina without also having a lovely, feminine, and somewhat unique name.  That isn’t entirely true, of course, but reading about ballet could be a goldmine to expectant parents looking for underused girl names with a touch of the theatrical and glamorous .

　　Here are some intriguing names of dancers, past and present, along with the company with which they are most associated.  Some of these are stage names, but surprisingly, most are not:

　　ALLA Sizova (Kirov Ballet)

　　ALLEGRA Kent (New York City Ballet)

　　ANNELI Alhanko (Royal Swedish Ballet)

　　ANYA Linden (Royal Ballet)

　　AURÉLIE Dupont (Paris Opéra Ballet)

　　CORINA Dumitrescu (Bucharest National Opera Ballet)

　　DELPHINE Moussin (Paris Opéra Ballet)

　　FELIA Doubrovska (Ballets Russes)

　　FEYA Balabina (Kirov Ballet)

　　GELSEY Kirkland (American Ballet Theatre)

　　GEORGINA Parkinson (Royal Ballet)

　　GHISLAINE (zhees-LAYN) Thesmar (Paris Opéra Ballet)

　　IOHNA Loots (Royal Ballet)

　　KAIE (KIGH-ee) Körb (Estonian National Ballet)

　　KALERIA Fedicheva (Kirov Ballet)

　　KYRA Nichols (New York City Ballet)

　　LARISSA Lezhnina (Kirov Ballet)

　　LIANE Daydé (Paris Opéra Ballet)

　　LIS Jeppesen (Royal Danish Ballet)

　　LUCETTE Aldous (Australian Ballet)

　　MARA Galeazzi (Royal Ballet)

　　MARGOT Fonteyn (Royal Ballet)

　　MARIANELA Nuñez (Royal Ballet)

　　MARTINE van Hamel (American Ballet Theatre)

　　MERLE Park (Royal Ballet)

　　MERRILL Ashley (New York City Ballet)

　　METTE Bødtcher (Royal Danish Ballet)

　　MOIRA Shearer (Royal Ballet)

　　NADEZHDA (NAH-dee-ehsa-dah) Pavlova (Bolshoi Ballet)

　　NOËLLA Pontois (Paris Opéra Ballet)

　　OLESIA (oh-LEE-see-ah) Novikova (Kirov Ballet)

　　PALOMA Herrera (American Ballet Theatre)

　　RAISA Struchkova (Bolshoi Ballet)

　　ROSELLA Hightower (Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo)

　　SILJA (seel-YAH) Schandorff (Royal Danish Ballet)

　　SOFIANE Sylve (Dutch National Ballet)

　　SORELLA Englund (Royal Danish Ballet)

　　STARR Danias (Joffrey Ballet)

　　STERLING Hyltin (New York City Ballet)

　　SVETLANA Zakharova (Bolshoi Ballet)

　　SYLVIE Guillem (Paris Opéra Ballet)

　　TANAQUIL LeClercq (New York City Ballet)

　　TATIANA Terekhova (Kirov Ballet)

　　TILER Peck (New York City Ballet)

　　TRINETTE Singleton (Joffrey Ballet)

　　VALENTINA Kozlova (New York City Ballet)

　　VIOLETTA Elvin (Royal Ballet)

　　VIOLETTE Verdy (New York City Ballet)

　　VIVIANA Durante (Royal Ballet)

　　XIOMARA (see-oh-mar-a) Reyes (American Ballet Theatre)

　　ZENAIDA Yanowsky (Royal Ballet)

　　ZHANNA Ayupova (Kirov Ballet)

　　HEATHER STEVENSON performed and taught classical ballet for many years before returning to school to earn her MFA degree in Dance at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.  As a new mom, she’s recently been thinking about names even more often than usual.

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　　EXTRA ADDED ATTRACTION:

　　Our beloved and indefatigable anagrammer, Nephele, is offering to create your own special ‘sweet treat’ Nutcracker name, based on the ‘Land of Sweets’ movement of the ballet if you go to our Name Talk forums:

　　https://nameberry.com/nametalk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5015&hilit=nutcracker