GILLIAN MURPHY

Born April 11, 1979
Wimbledon, England
Current group American Ballet Theatre

Gillian Murphy (born 1979) is a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre.


Murphy was born in Wimbledon, England and took her first ballet class at the age of three in Belgium while her father was working overseas. At a young age the family moved to Florence, South Carolina, where she received most of her early dance training, most notably dancing the Black Swan pas de deux at age eleven. After some experience with the Columbia City Ballet, she continued her studies at the North Carolina School of the Arts. There, under the tutelage of the famous ballerina Melissa Hayden, Murphy danced principal roles in several of the school’s ballets including a production of The Nutcracker and George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, Western Symphony, Tarantella and Theme and Variations. Murphy is sponsored by the dancewear company Gaynor Minden.


Murphy joined American Ballet Theatre at the age of seventeen as a member of the corps de ballet in August 1996, and was promoted to Soloist in 1999 and then to Principal Dancer in 2002. Her repertoire with the Company includes Polyhymnia inApollo, Nikiya and Gamzatti in La Bayadère, Cinderella in Cinderella, Swanilda in Coppélia, Medora and Gulnare in Le Corsaire, Kitri in Don Quixote, Titania in The Dream, the Accused in Fall River Legend, second girl in Fancy Free, Lise in La Fille mal gardée, the pas de deux Flames of Paris, Grand Pas Classique, Myrtha in Giselle, His Memory and His Experiences in HereAfter, the Queen of Hearts in Jeu de Cartes, Manon in Lady of the Camellias, Lescaut’s Mistress in Manon, the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, Desdemona in Othello, Hagar in Pillar of Fire, Raymonda in Raymonda, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Princess Aurora and the Lilac Fairy in The Sleeping Beauty, Odette-Odile in Swan Lake, Sylvia in Sylvia, the first and third movements in Symphony in C, the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, and the ballerina in Theme and Variations. She has also performed leading roles in Allegro Brillante, Ballet Imperial, Ballo della Regina, Baroque Game, Birthday Offering, Paul Taylor’s Black Tuesday, The Brahms-Haydn Variations, Clear, Désir, Diversion of Angels, Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes, Études, From Here On Out, Gong, In The Upper Room, Meadow, Les Patineurs, Pretty Good Year, Push Comes to Shove, Sinfonietta, Les Sylphides, Symphonie Concertante and The Bright Stream. She has additionally performed featured roles in Company B, The Elements, Overgrown Path and Without Words.

Murphy is the longtime girlfriend of American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer, Ethan Stiefel.

Awards

Awarded the Prix de Lausanne Espoir after performing the final round at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (1995).
Finalist at New York International Ballet Competition (1983)
Presidential Scholar nominee (1996) Harvard 42a.
Awarded the Princess Grace Foundation-Ballet deu (1992)