The return of Sylvia at ABT

A role that dancers cherish

In Frederick Ashton’s Sylvia, which returns to @abtofficial on July 8, ballerinas trade swan wings for hunting bows and dance to music fit for a warrior princess. The role of Sylvia is part nymph, part wonder woman, part canny seductress. As Clive Barnes once put it, speaking of its original interpreter, Margot Fonteyn, “It gives us Fonteyn triumphant, Fonteyn bewildered, Fonteyn exotic, Fonteyn pathetic, Fonteyn in excelsis.”

This time around, it will be danced by Isabella Boylston and our dancers making their débuts: Catherine Hurlin, Christine Shevchenko, Chloe Misseldine, and Skylar Brandt. For the Times, I watched rehearsal and spoke with three of them, plus Gillian Murphy, who made such a splash in the role in 2005, at the company premiere.

Photos by George Etheredge for The New York Times