Jolinda Menendez

Artist, Ballerina, Teacher and Director

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BIOGRAPHY

American Ballet Theatre (1972 – 1982)

Leading Ballerina Roles in La Bayadere, Giselle, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Les Sylphides, The Firebird, and Raymonda Act III and in Leading Roles in Contemporary Works by Sir Kenneth MacMillan (Danses Concertantes, Concerto Second Movement Pas de Deux), Alvin Ailey (The River), Glen Tetley (Gemini, Voluntaries Pas de Trois, Sphinx) and Agnes De Mille (Rodeo’s Cowgirl, Fall River Legend’s Lizzie Borden)

The Bavarian National Ballet (1983 – 1989)

As Principal Ballerina, she danced the leading roles in Peter Wright’s Swan Lake, Giselle and Sleeping Beauty, John Neumeier’s The Nutcracker, Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations, Ronald Hynd’s Papillon and The Four Seasons, George Ballanchine’s Apollo and Divertimento No. 15, Birgit Cullberg’s Miss Julie, and John Cranko’s Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet and Eugene Onegin.

Company Guest Appearances

Giselle with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in New York City; Odette/Odile in Berlin Ballet’s production of Swan Lake; Giselle at the Budapest State Opera House; Juliet in Erich Walter’s Dusseldorf Production of Romeo and Juliet; and Odette/Odile with the Niedersächsisches National Ballet – Hanover, Germany.

Ronald Hynd

Jolinda is a ballerina of stature and has danced the entire classical repertoire with distinction. Her range is wide, embracing the romanticism, chic sophistication, drama and comedy. (She is) a many faceted and dedicated ballerina.”

Ronald Hynd (July 1986)

Natalia Makarova

“I recognized her classical and lyrical possibilities and, in fact, entrusted the role of Nikiya in my production of La Bayadere to her, secure in my opinion that she would realize the essential spirit of this most classical part. Jolinda has something inside her that she can project, that she can give. She is unique. There are not that many Swan Queens around – not that many ballerinas of her quality.”

Natalia Makarova (Ballet News, August 1980)

Mikhail Baryshnikov

“I am pleased to say that Miss Menendez is an exceptionally gifted ballerina. I believe that Jolinda has the capacity for great authority and passion on stage. In addition, she possesses a supple, lithe body with a long line that is ideal for classical ballet. She is aware of her particular assets and has worked intelligently to create her unique style.”

Mikhail Baryshnikov (June 1981)

Guest Appearances – Tours/Specials

Frequent guest artist in the United States and Europe; Toured Australia with Stars of World Ballet; Gala Evening, A Night at the Ballet, The Civic Theatre, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Featured in Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s television special “A Tribute to Pavlova”

Classical Ballet Teaching

New York University/Tisch School of the Arts Faculty (1996 – present)

John Cranko School – Stuttgart Ballet (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015)

Academie Americaine de Danse de Paris (2011, 2012, 2015)

Canada’s National Ballet School (2010, 2011)

Ben Stevenson Academy of the Houston Ballet (2007, 2008, 2009)

The Joffrey Ballet School (2009)

The Royal Ballet School (2006, 2007)

English National Ballet (2007)

American Ballet Theatre’s Summer Intensive Workshop (1998 – 2008): ABT Studios, New York City; Wayne University – Detroit, Michigan; University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa; University of Texas, Austin; and University of California at Irvine

Coaches Students for International Ballet Competitions

Company Guest Teaching:

Scottish Ballet Company (Glasgow)

Ballet Ireland (Dublin) and

Croatian National Ballet Company (Zagreb)

Mavis Staines

“I invite Jolinda Menendez to guest teach annually at Canada’s National Ballet School as she is truly an exceptional pedagogue- inspiring senior students to deeply explore their artistic instincts while also challenging them to push beyond what they perceive as their physical capacity. I have every confidence any organisation fortunate enough to host Ms. Menendez as a guest teacher will be thrilled with the results she achieves.” Mavis Staines, Artistic Director, National Ballet of Canada School (December 2011) 

Ashley Page

“Widely admired as an exceptional principal dancer during her career, she brought her knowledge and experience to bear on a series of distinguished classes at Scottish Ballet in which the company benefited greatly from her sure and clear teaching techniques. In addition, she brought a depth of knowledge to her coaching sessions of the classical repertoire, which was greatly appreciated by all the participants.”  Ashley Page, Artistic Director, Scottish Ballet (November 2004)

Shelly Power

“Jolinda’s classes are mixed with the demands and strength of technique, accented with the beauty of moving femininity. She embraces the nuances of artistry and demands her students find a way of expressing themselves. Classes command strength and a willingness to grow throughout. I especially appreciate the musicality and intricacies of her allegro combinations. She brings a wealth of experience and skills to the classroom that inspire students to work hard and embrace artistry and the love of movement.” Shelly Power, Associate Director, Ben Stevenson Academy of Dance at Houston Ballet (October 2009) 

Jock & Penny Fortune Master Class Series

Director of monthly master classes with distinguished teachers with streamed Q&A’s  including: Patrick Armand, Merrill Ashley, Karin Averty, Maxim Beloserkovsky, Ashley Bouder, Wilhelm Burmann, Herman Cornejo, Guillaume Côté, Joaquin De Luz, Franco De Vita, Brooke Desnoës, Irina Dvorovenko, Edward Ellison, Megan Fairchild, Paloma Herrera, David Howard, Susan Jaffe, Allegra Kent, Darci Kistler, Valentina Kozlova, Alexei Kremnev, Louise Lester, Clinton Luckett, Tadeusz Matacz, Denis Matvienko, John Meehan, Gillian Murphy, Veronika Part, Tiler Peck, George De La Pena, Miguel Quinones, Xiomara Reyes, Iana Salenko, Gennadi Saveliev, Larissa Saveliev, Suki Schorer, Daniil Simkin, Mavis Staines, Ethan Stiefel, Gailene Stock, Yuan Yuan Tan, Margaret Tracey, Daniel Ulbricht, Martine Van Hamel and Wendy Whelan.

Gailene Stock, CBE

Thank you so much for being here and teaching some excellent classes at the Upper School! They were very instructional and had a lovely dance quality and sense of movement. I know that you were a great source of inspiration for the dancers.Gailene Stock, CBE AM, Director, The Royal Ballet School (March 2006)

John Meehan

“After a wonderful international career dancing in many of the world’s great opera houses, Jolinda has developed into a fine classical ballet teacher and coach. She brings years of working with the best dancers and teachers in the world to the fore as she passes on her knowledge with passion, commitment and attention to detail.” John Meehan, Artistic Director, Hong Kong Ballet (September 2008)

Jane Hackett

“We really enjoyed having Jolinda visiting English National Ballet School as a guest teacher. She brought a fresh style and energy to the school and her classes were very popular with all the students”. Jane Hackett, Director, English National Ballet School (January 2008)

 

Dance Competitions

Director and Co-Founder of internationally renowned education and competition events including the 2019 Dance Prix de New York at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, 2017 Indianapolis Dance Competition at Anderson University and the 2015 Indianapolis International Ballet Competition with Butler University. Based on the structure of the Prix de Lausanne, these competitions feature prestigious judges, lectures, master classes and coaching with directors and artists from major international companies and schools providing contracts and scholarships including:

Classical Companies and Schools ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, The Ailey School, American Ballet Theatre,  Atlanta Ballet, Ballet Austin, Canada’s National Ballet School, Cincinnati Ballet, Colorado Ballet Academy, Ellison Ballet, Houston Ballet Academy, Indiana University/Jacobs School of Music, The Joffrey Academy of Dance, John Cranko Schule, Korean National University of Arts, National Ballet of Canada, Pennsylvania Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Washington Ballet.

Contemporary Companies and Schools: Buglisi Dance Theatre, Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance, David Dorfman Dance, Doug Elkins Choreography, Heidi Latsky Dance, Jessica Lang Choreography, Limon Dance Company, NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, Seán Curran Company and the Taylor School & Paul Taylor Dance Foundation.

Classical judges Edward Ellison, Nicola Biasutti, Angel Coirella, Laurel Toto, Erica Fischbach, Julie Kent, Jessica Lang and Hae Shik Kim
Alexei Ratmansky and John Meehan, Q&A
Evgenia Obraztsova and Vladislav Lantratov, Romeo and Juliet

Evening with the Stars

Artistic Director of an Annual Gala Series in Indianapolis called Evening with the Stars that featured artists: Stella Abrera, Alicia Amatriain, Maxim Beloserkovsky, Adrienne Benz, Isabella Boyleston, Elisa Carrillo Cabrera, Fabrice Calmels, Jose Manuel Carreno, Herman Cornejo, Guillaume Cote, Joaquin De Luz, Carlo Di Lanno, Denys Drozdyuk, Irina Dvorovenko, Robert Fairchild, Gonzalo Garcia, Paul Ghiselin, Marcelo Gomes, Craig Hall, David Hallberg, Melissa Hamilton, Alexandre Hammoudi, Tyler Hanes, Paloma Herrera, Victoria Jaiani, Mikhail Kaniskin, Julie Kent, Maria Kochetkova, Misa Kuranaga, Sarah Lane, Vladislav Lantratov, Kristie Latham, Vitor Luiz, Brooklyn Mack, Anastasia Matvienko, Denis Matvienko, David Moore, Gillian Murphy, Ron ‘PrimeTyme’ Myles, Gennadi Nedvigin, Evgenia Obraztsova, Natalia Osipova, Veronika Part, Georgina Pazcoguin, Tiler Peck, Miguel Quinones, Jason Reilly, Iana Salenko, Gennadi Saveliev, Daniil Simkin, Antonina Skobina, Damian Smith, Aaron Smyth, Cory Stearns, Sofiane Sylve, Yuan Yuan Tan, Devon Teuscher, Daniel Ulbricht, Eric Underwood, Ivan Vasiliev, David Ward, Wendy Whelan, James Whiteside, Roman Zhurbin and more.

Awards and Recognitions

Emmy Award Nomination in Arts and Entertainment as Director of: The Young Stars of Ballet (2012), A Perfect Balance (2014), Designers of the Dance (2017) for WFYI-Public Television; Best Entertainment Event of the Year, 2009 to 2016 for Evening with the Stars by Indianapolis Business Journal; Nominated for the David Payne Carter Award for Teaching Excellence by the Student Body at New York University; Awarded the German newspaper Abendzeitung’s Weekly Cultural Award in 1984 for the portrayal of Tatjana in John Cranko’s Eugene Onegin.

Natalia Osipova, Ivan Vasiliev, Don Quixote, Click to Load Films

Director and Co-Producer for WFYI/PBS

Director and co-producer of Young Stars of Ballet (2012), A Perfect Balance (2014), Designers of the Dance (2017) and currently United We Dance (Three-part series premiering September 2020). Additionally, a documentary film to support the exhibition of Retrospective: Roy Round.

American Public Television
Load Films

Dance Reviews

“Jolinda Menendez and Patrick Bissell danced a ‘Swan Lake’ of great depth for American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House Saturday night. It is hard to remember two dancers reaching so deeply into the emotional and lyrical core of ‘Swan Lake’ unless one brings back memories of Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.”

Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times

 

“Jolinda Menendez’s performance of the Dying Swan’ was the evening’s only trace of dance poetry — a quality Pavlova’s name has always symbolized… you could understand why Natalia Makarova has championed her as a major artist.”

Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times

 

“Long of limb and gracefully proportioned, Menendez has an almost Russian eloquence. The way she moulds her dancing, the particular curve of her legs in attitude, for instance, or the stretch of her arms, recalls the Kirov. There is an unusual plasticity here as well as a dramatic motivation seen equally effectively in the melancholy of her Odette or the scheming vivacity of her Odile.”

Patricia Barnes, Dance and Dancers

 

“As Giselle, Miss Menendez is a genius for her phrasing. She has the ability to show ‘life within life’ as Browning said. The measure of her talent was that she could bring off the romantic languishing gestures of another century.”

Kelly Christman, The Morning Union

 

“The domineering, outstanding personality of the evening belongs to Jolinda Menendez as the Firebird. Her concentrated, precise skill, together with her beautiful expression, fascinated the audience to realize that she is a classical Prima Ballerina.”

Dr. Oskar Zonkil, KTZ (Austria)

 

“As Tatiana in Cranko’s Eugene Onegin, Miss Menendez brings to this tragic dramatic role a very special and sensitive talent. It is very rare that a dancer succeeds in bringing out all the many facets of Tatiana; her tenderness, her infatuation, her vulnerability and in the end when Onegin, after twenty years, lies at her feet, her control overcomes her passion for him. Miss Menendez is able to portray all these feelings through her body and skin.”

Malve Gradinger, Munchner Merkur (Munich)

 

“But perhaps the most unheralded and promising of this year’s astonishments came in the person of a tiny, oval-faced, long-neck elf, Jolinda Menendez. From the first Les Sylphides and Giselle to her exposed pas de deux in Concerto, Menendez brought to mind the great Natalia Makarova. The suggestion was in the suddenness of her movement, the delicacy of her arms, the deliberateness of her acting, the withdrawn, ethereal, other-worldliness of her dance, that incredibly regal carriage. Here is a Giselle for the future, mark these words.”

Blake A. Samson – Fine Arts News Services – San Francisco

 

“The first thing you notice is she is powerful, indomitable, imperious, simultaneously unattainable and impossibly desirable” (in Sphinx, Glen Tetley)

Robert Pierce – Soho Weekly

 

“Jolinda Menendez possesses qualities of rare beauty – clean classic line, beautiful extension, breathtaking technique, an imperious manner and indefatigable zeal.”

Phyllis Stern – Our Town

“Jolinda Menendez returned to New York on Thursday as a guest artist with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and judging by the cheers at the end of her performance of the title role in ‘Giselle’, it was obvious she’d been missed.”

Jennifer Dunning, New York Times

 

“Jolinda Menendez has a glorious fluid quality and lyricism.”

John Gregory, Dancing Times – London

 

“Even as the well mannered wife of Gremin, she keeps something of the shy, tender and sensitive Tatiana, although she moves calmer. She can make herself transparent, and then you notice that she did not study the role step-by-step, gesture-by-gesture, but from the beginning feels it. So difficult moments as the bedroom scene or admitting that she wrote the love letter are very genuine and very beautiful. It is very rare that she never loses the role despite the difficulty of the Cranko vocabulary. For her, life and dance are one.”

Malve Gradinger – Munchner Merkur (Munich)

 

“Jolinda Menendez was a revelation in Fall River Legend to which she brought a new interpretation, a chilling neuroticism which was valid.”

Nancy Goldner – Dance News, Chicago

 

“Jolinda Menendez took over the role of Nikiya twice. A near look-alike for Natalia Makarova, she duplicated that artist’s appealing vulnerability in the role and added a sense of abandonment. Menendez was, especially Thursday, in excellent technical state and both performances showed her in perhaps her most propitious assignment yet.”

Bill Zakariasen & Barton Wimble – New York Post

 

“Her versatility makes her a dancer in the old Ballet Russe style…Not long after she had received rave reviews for her Odette-Odille performance in Swan Lake, the tragic and classic Swan Queen had suddenly turned into an awkward, very funny cowgirl (Rodeo), tomboyish and love-struck, happier in the paddock than on the dance floor, and naive enough to be fascinated by the art of tap dancing. This transformation would be interesting enough, but Menendez has proved that her range goes further than that. Her Lizzie Borden in Fall River Legend was hailed as an excellent acting job. As it is, she is one of the few who has been able to project the European ‘repertoire’ concept where a ballerina is occasionally asked to get off her toes and do an earthy role.”

Hilary Ostlere, The Westsider, 1980

 

“Jolinda Menendez proved in Romeo and Juliet that ballet equals form plus expression, Her genius is both dramatic and lyric and she captured the exact spirit of Juliet. She possessed an exoticism with her endlessly attenuated limbs, her enormous eyes, and long face and feet. She left one breathless as she ran up lightly to her lover, then swung down sorrowfully, or turned in attitude with girlish abandon.”

Kelly Christman, Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival, The Morning Union, August 1983

 

“Jolinda Menendez surprised the audience with a beautiful and technically balanced Aurora debut. You witnessed her stabilized performance in the passage of the Grand Pas de Deux and the birthday picture of the Rose Adagio. She proved herself to be a Prima Ballerina in her awareness throughout the performance. Although she is in her early thirties, she surprised everybody with the pure classical, young girl appearance.”

Malve Gradinger – Munchner Merkur (Munich)

 

“With Jolinda Menendez, the State Opera has a real ‘White Ballerina’… Beautiful, expressive lines, noble swan arms, soft back and wonderful attitude in lifts. In the bravura of the black swan, here also she presents a fascinating performance and where else can one find two swans which are artistically equal?”

TZ-E Lindermeier

Professional Training

National Academy of Ballet and Theatre Arts, Academic and Performing Arts High School, NYC

Contact

JolindaM@aol.com