21-07-2025
Gillian Murphy Left It All on the Stage
Nine days before her final performance with the American Ballet Theatre, Gillian Murphy is struck by a realization.
'I've never done retirement bows before,' she says to Amanda McKerrow, the company's director of repertoire and a former principal dancer, after a rehearsal.
Until last Friday, Murphy, 46, was ABT's longest-standing member. In her 29 years at the company—23 of them as a principal dancer—she conquered every leading lady one can imagine: Kitri, Giselle, Aurora, Juliet, Swanilda, the Sugar Plum Fairy. But Murphy is most famous for the dual role of the gentle Odette and beguiling Odile in Swan Lake, the work that she chose to end her career on. Far from an easy victory lap, the ballet is notorious for its demanding choreography, including a series of 32 rapid-fire fouetté turns in the Black Swan's grand pas de deux. When Murphy performed them on Friday, the crowd at the Metropolitan Opera House let out a roar, leaping to their feet.
Murphy was a 12-year-old living in South Carolina when she performed the Black Swan pas de deux for the first time (something she acknowledges was 'a very strange choice for a young child'). 'I didn't really know about turnout, I didn't know about port de bras, I wasn't fully aware of whether I was pointing my feet or not,' she recalls. Still, she had never felt so invigorated. 'I was just living my best life, feeling so exhilarated to be on stage and to be doing this thing that I absolutely loved. I remember feeling like it couldn't get better than that.' Not long after, she was off to high school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts; then along came ABT, where she joined the corps de ballet at 17.
Murphy made her debut as Odette-Odile with the company 24 years ago, before being tapped to dance the part in a telecast for PBS in 2005. 'It's one of several reasons why I chose to finish my career with this ballet,' she says. 'The messages that I've gotten, the cards that have been written to me…I still get DMs on a regular basis about what that film meant to people, which is so beautiful.'
