Susan Jaffe

Who is Susan Jaffe?

Susan Jaffe is an American former ballerina and is a ballet mistress at American Ballet Theatre. Beginning August 15, 2012, she became the Dean of the School of Dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC.

Jaffe studied ballet at the Maryland School of Ballet, the School of American Ballet, and the American Ballet Theatre School. At age 16 she became a member of ABT II, and joined ABT's corps de ballet at age 18. Mikhail Baryshnikov, ABT's Artistic Director at the time, pulled Jaffe out of the corps de ballet to replace Gelsey Kirkland in a gala performance. With two days of rehearsal, Jaffe danced Pas d'Esclave at the Kennedy Center in Washington with the late Alexander Godunov, a Bolshoi Ballet star whose former partner had been Maya Plisetskaya. Jaffe remained a principal dancer with ABT for the following 22 years.

Jaffe danced many roles: Odette/Odile, Kitri, Nikiya & Gamzatti, Aurora, Juliet, Swanhilda, Tatiana, Kate, and the title roles in Giselle, La Sylphide and Kenneth MacMillan's Anastasia and Manon. Ms. Jaffe worked with and performed the repertoire of many of the 20th century's most prominent choreographers, including George Balanchine, Antony Tudor, Kenneth MacMillan, Jerome Robbins, Agnes de Mille, Roland Petit, Twyla Tharp, Nacho Duato, Jiří Kylián and James Kudelka.