Women's Power

Rachel Beaujean moves to a different rehearsal room at Het Nationale Ballet (HNB), the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam. She has just finished an hour-long rehearsal with three soloists and is now beginning a half-hour solo session with Anna Tsygankova, Principal Dancer of the company since 2007. The greeting is brief and formal, the rehearsal proceeds in a businesslike, collegial, and respectful manner, "on equal footing", as they say. Rachel Beaujean and Anna Tsygankova discuss a sequence, occasionally watching a video on a laptop. It‘s the first rehearsal for the role that Tsygankova will dance in La Bayadère, due to premiere in Amsterdam at the end of March. She holds a pink silk scarf in her hand, which she winds around her body while dancing. Rachel Beaujean uses the textile as a ...