Rosella Hightower

Rosella Hightower is the first dancer who attained an élite position on European stages. She is considered one of the most well-known dancers of her time.

In 1938, she was a teenager and she came in Europe to rejoin Léonide Massine who promised her a place in the “Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo". Her financial means were modest, so she was able to travel thank to some ladies from Kansas City, who generously joined their resources to give her a chance. Rosella passed that first audition successfully.

In 1941 her career began. The “American Theater Ballet”, recently founded, took her as one of its soloists. Her name appeared in the performances of the main ballets next to other young talents as Nora Kaye, Jérôme Robbins, Alicia Alonso.
She was offered her first role as étoile by the “Metropolitan Opera” of New York, when suddenly she had to replace Alicia Markova in her favorite role, “Giselle”. Audacious as usually, she took the colleague’s role after few hours of rehearsals. The bet turn out to be winning and people started talking about her.

In 1946 in New York she created “Constantia” and “Sebastian” with the company of the “Original Russian Ballet”, whose famous patron, the Marquis of Cuevas, was one of the participants. The Marquis introduced her to Europe at the inauguration of the “New Ballet of Monte-Carlo”.

Rosella’s first show in Paris in 1947 was a sensation. She arrived impetuously, sustained by a kind of a sensual exaltation, free from any constraint, even in her most prodigious braveries. The audience is enraptured by her dynamism and her relaxed virtuosity.

Rosella Hightower worked for 15 year for the Marquis of Cuevas, at the head of the company she was the uncontested queen of. Notwithstanding her itinerant life and a superhuman physical work, she never stopped to get passionate by everything that surrounded her.

Dancer of movement, not of lines, she vibrated and quivered, even in the immobility. This Oklahoma daughter, of Indian origins, she ignored the affected postures, she danced “largely”, tracing audacious curves in the space, often refusing to care for the details. She conferred at her own way of dancing a sort of malicious humor, just like she was laughing at her braveries, her own perfect balances, her stunning pirouettes.

In 1961 she founded the International Dance Center, a center that revolutionized the conception of the dance teaching. It became in a few years one of the ten best dance school in the world, and it taught to a multitude of internationally famous artists.