Edward Villella
Who do many agree is America’s most celebrated male dancer? Edward Villella, Founding Artistic Director of Miami City Ballet. His ballet company achieved international fame in less than a decade. His contributions to classical dance and inclusion of the arts in education are widely respected. Evidence of this includes receiving the 1997 National Medal of Arts, and the National Society of Arts & Letters Award for Lifetime Achievement, as well as numerous other prestigious awards. The Dance Heritage Coalition perhaps summed up his value best when selecting Villella as one of “America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures.”
Born in Bayside, New York in 1936, he both began and ended—temporarily—his dance career at an exceptionally early age. At age ten he entered the School of American Ballet, but left ballet under pressure from his father to earn a college degree, which he did in marine transportation at the New York Maritime Academy. He also played baseball and became a championship boxer. However, after earning the degree, he returned to ballet. Disappointed in this choice of profession, his father didn’t speak to him for a year. To point out the demands of ballet, Villella said, "I have nine broken toes, stress fractures in both legs, I have a knee that can't be operated on again, two artificial hips, a bad back, and a bad neck. None of that from that sissy stuff--from baseball and boxing--but from this other thing [ballet]."
Villella quickly rose to prominence in the ballet world, becoming the first American-born male star of the New York City Ballet. Among his accomplishments and honors are performances in the ballets of several prestigious European ballet companies, including being the only American to dance an encore at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford invited him to perform for them. His successes in television include the PBS series “Dance in America” and the CBS show “Harlequinade”, for which he won an Emmy Award.
His wife, Linda, is a former Olympic figure skater and Founder and Director of the Miami City Ballet School. They have a son and two daughters. To learn more about this amazingly talented performer, read his autobiography, Prodigal Son: Dancing for Balanchine in a World of Pain and Magic. It tells of life in the extremely difficult world of dance and Villella’s personal struggles, one of which was to win the respect of George Balanchine, master dancer, director, and choreographer. Of his mentor, Balanchine, Villella says, "All I wanted to do was please him. But I was not willing to destroy myself in order to do so." His tremendous athletic ability, emotional strength, artistic vision and other unique qualities have enabled Villella himself to become a master dancer, director and choreographer of the beautiful yet exceptionally challenging dance of ballet.