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The new gypsies: ballet dancers who call their own shots and carry their own bags.

Article Excerpt
"And you Gypsies who speak the language of horses and make a quest of roaming the world, you will live in the open, wandering by chance, sleeping in trees or besides the rivers, watching reflected stars."

(From a Portuguese fable translated by Sophia Healy.)

Traveling by foot, train, and bus, Bonnie Pickard distinguishes herself from the average commuter by her swept-back hair, pointe shoes peaking from her dance bag, and street-meets-dancewear ensemble. In a single day, Pickard dances in three, sometimes four, different studios spread across New York Cib'. In one year, she performs in a dozen companies, including The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, DanceGalaxy, and Chamber Dance Project. Though Pickard calls Washington, D.C., her home, she lives more than half the year out of bags, one of which carries three pairs of pointe shoes. Arriving at a studio in Greenwich Village, Pickard doesn't waste any time. She selects a pair of shoes appropriate for the choreography and the studio's scuffed floor. Then, like a bird taking flight, she propels her lithe body upwards and outwards, soaring into an arabesque. In that instant, Pickard demonstrates why the life of a ballet gypsy is enthralling.

Most ballet gypsies forego health insurance, financial stability, and the consistency of daily class in order their thirst for new and artistically challenging work. In the past decade,...

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