Susan Jaffe

Susan Jaffe
Born	1962 (age 54–55) Washington, D.C.
Occupation	ballet dancer
Years active	1980–2002
Former groups	American Ballet Theatre

Susan Jaffe (born 1962) is an American former ballerina and is a ballet mistress at American Ballet Theatre. Beginning August 15, 2012, she became the Dean of the School of Dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC.

Jaffe says she had a lot to overcome to make it as a professional ballerina. She remarked she was too tall. "I had legs up to my ears and big feet," she said. Jaffe studied ballet at the Maryland School of Ballet, the School of American Ballet, and the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) School. At age 16 she became a member of ABT II, and joined ABT's corps de ballet at age 18. Mikhail Baryshnikov, ABT's artistic director at the time, pulled Jaffe out of the corps de ballet to replace Gelsey Kirkland in a gala performance. With two days of rehearsal, Jaffe danced Pas d'Esclave at the Kennedy Center in Washington with the late Alexander Godunov, a Bolshoi Ballet star whose former partner had been Maya Plisetskaya. Jaffe remained a principal dancer with ABT for the following 22 years.

Jaffe danced many roles: Odette/Odile (she danced her first Swan Lake at the age of 19), Kitri (Don Quixote), Nikiya & Gamzatti (La Bayadère), Aurora (The Sleeping Beauty), Juliet (Romeo and Juliet), Swanhilda (Coppélia), Tatiana (John Cranko's Onegin), Kate (Taming of the Shrew), and the title roles in Giselle, La Sylphide and Kenneth MacMillan's Anastasia and Manon. Ms. Jaffe worked with and performed the repertoire of many of the 20th century's most prominent choreographers, including George Balanchine (Apollo, Mozartiana, Who Cares?, Theme & Variations, Ballet Imperial, Violin Concerto, La Sonnambula, and Bourree Fantasque; and as a guest artist with New York City Ballet where she danced Western Symphony and the finale of Symphony in C), Antony Tudor (Jardin aux Lilas, Undertow, Gala Performance, Dim Lustre), Kenneth MacMillan (Manon, The Sleeping Beauty, Romeo & Juliet, Requiem), Jerome Robbins (Afternoon of a Faun, Other Dances, N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz), Agnes de Mille (Fall River Legend), Roland Petit (Carmen), Twyla Tharp (Push Comes to Shove, Everlast, Sextet, How Near Heaven, Bach Partita, Americans We, Known By Heart), Nacho Duato (Without Words), Jiří Kylián (Stepping Stones) and James Kudelka (Cruel World, States of Grace).

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