Janie Parker

Janie Parker’s training began in Atlanta, Georgia, at a small ballet school and continued when she joined a regional dance company, the Ruth Mitchell Dance Company.  She later trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts. She also trained for three summers and one year under full scholarship at the School of American Ballet, the school for New York City Ballet.

Ms. Parker began her ballet career in 1973 in Le Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève in Geneva, Switzerland, under the direction of former New York City Ballet soloist Patricia Neary. There, the late George Balanchine coached her in the role of Terpsichore in Apollo, the pas de deux in Concerto Barocco, and the pas de deux in Symphony in C among other roles.

In 1976, Ben Stevenson became the new Artistic Director of Houston Ballet.  That year, Janie Parker signed with him as a soloist for the fledgling company.  She was promoted to principal in her third year.  During the next twenty years, Parker danced the leading roles in all the major classical ballets, such as The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Giselle, Coppelia, Don Quixote, La Sylphide, Raymonda, etc. She also danced the leading roles in ballets such as Manon, Daphnis and Chloe, The Merry Widow, Etudes, Theme and Variations, The Two Pigeons, La Valse, and Serenade among others. With these roles came the great opportunity of being coached by Dame Margot Fonteyn, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Peter Wright, Glen Tetley, Lynn Seymour, Ivan Nagy, Helgi Tomasson, Ronald Hynd, Toni Lander, and so many more. Some of the ballets that gold medal choreographer Ben Stevenson O.B.E. created using Parker in leading roles included his Romeo and Juliet, Alice and Wonderland, Peer Gynt, Miraculous Mandarin, Esmeralda Pas de Deux, Romance, and Image.

During her tenure at Houston Ballet, the International Ballet Competition awarded Parker the first gold medal for America in the Senior Women’s Division since its inception in 1964 (placing her in the company of previous IBC gold medal recipients Natalia Makarova, Ivan Nagy, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Aleksandr Godunov, and Fernando Bujones). She also performed in cities all over the United States and in Canada, Mexico, Europe, Scandinavia, Indonesia, Chile, China, and Russia.  She danced in many galas including ones in Japan, Cuba, and the Anton Dolin Memorial Gala at Covent Garden with Princess Margaret in attendance (often with her partner, Li Cunxin, whose early life and defection was depicted in the movie Mao’s Last Dancer).  She has danced before many other dignitaries and royal family members, including Princess Michael of Kent, Princess Grace, King Olaf, Castro, and George and Barbara Bush.

Ms. Parker has set Ben Stevenson’s productions of Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, Four Last Songs, Three Preludes, and Esmeralda Pas de Deux on companies such as The National Ballet of Canada, La Scala, Ballet de Santiago, San Francisco Ballet, Colorado Ballet, Ballet West, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Atlanta Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet, Ballet San Antonio, Ballet Florida, and Richmond Ballet. She has also assisted Mr. Stevenson in Perm, Russia, in Helsinki, Finland, and at American Ballet Theater in New York City, New York.