Evelyn Cisneros: Prima
Ballerina
Mexico’s Flag
Durango,
Mexico
Evelyn’s parents moved to the US from
Durango, Mexico to Huntington Beach, CA
California
Huntington Beach, CA
Huntington Beach, CA to New York
City back to San Fransico
Ballet
• Evelyn Cisneros
• Birth: 1959 in Long Beach, California
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Hispanic
American
Occupation: Ballerina.
Who is Evelyn Cisneros?
• Began training at seven and a half years of age
• Moved to San Francisco at the age of sixteen to
dance with the San Francisco Ballet as an
apprentice.
• Studied with the School of American Ballet for a
summer, studied with the San Francisco Ballet
School for three summers
• Has been dancing with the San Francisco Ballet
Company for twenty years now.
What does Prima
Ballerina mean?
• ballerina is a female ballet dancer.
• Although the term ballerina is used for any female ballet
dancer it was originally a rank given to an exceptional ballet
soloist in the Russian Imperial ballet companies. The
rankings, from highest to lowest, were:
• prima ballerina assoluta
• prima ballerina
• ballerina
• premieres danseur
• soloist
• coryphee
• corps de ballet
http://www.fogline.com/html/ecmain.html
Click for video of Evelyn Cisneros Dancing- click on
clips
In her own words…
"Dance was my passion. There was nothing else I
would have wanted to devote my life to," says
Cisneros. "except having children." At the beginning of
the 1998-99 season, she was nearing 40, and had
never suffered a serious dance-related injury or
undergone a surgery. Yet, she was noticing that
"things in my body were beginning to creak. And I
wondered if it were worth dancing, if I couldn't dance
at my highest level of expertise. I remembered my
colleague Cynthia Harvey saying you should go while
people are saying why, rather than when."
An end to a great era…
• The Evelyn Cisneros
era at the San
Francisco Ballet
ended with a gala
performance on May
9, 1999, and no
dancer could have had
fewer artistic reasons
to retire. For twentythree years, SFB had
been Cisneros' only
professional home.
• Five years later, Cisneros fulfilled her
mission of retirement. She is SFB's Ballet
Education Coordinator (the department
was created two years ago).
• She has coauthored Ballet for Dummies
with conductor Scott Speck.
Bibliography
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
http://www.pav.org/evelyn.htm
http://www.maps-of-mexico.com/
http://www.infoplease.com/atlas/mexico.html
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/us_2001/california_ref_2001
.pdf
http://www.netstate.com/states/maps/ca_maps.htm
http://www.ci.huntington-beach.ca.us/
http://www.ballerinagallery.com/
http://www.photostogo.com/content/topsearches/Ballet.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballerina
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1083/is_9_78/ai_
n6206519
Evelyn Cisneros: Prima
Ballerina