American Ballet Theatre’s Gillian Murphy Left It All on the Stage

While Murphy is renowned for her technical prowess, it is her emotional intelligence that drew her to dance as a child. “Some people have a different approach, a more academic approach to the steps, and I think [McKerrow] and I are aligned in that the musicality and the storytelling are the driving forces of choreography,” she says.

Recalling her first time dancing Swan Lake, Murphy adds, “I wasn’t sure if I even knew what I was doing, but I felt like I was going to go with my intuition and just feel the music and the story as much as possible. It was just all this raw energy and not as much awareness of some of the technical and artistic sort of choices that could be made.”

Her understanding of a character deepens with every performance. “I love that feeling of transformation when I go out on stage. There’s so much of me that’s obviously in it, but I really step into their world,” she says. “That feeling of being in that zone, bringing their internal world to life, is special and something that I’ll really miss.”

Photo: Emma Zordan

While the small “lasts,” from her final Giselle to her last class in the company’s primary rehearsal space at 890 Broadway, have helped her to prepare for her retirement, Murphy admits that the entire season has been more emotional than she expected. “How supported I felt by my colleagues and by the audience really does feel celebratory, and also bittersweet,” she says. “It was my own choice to retire, and it feels like the right time, so I feel really good about it, but at the same time, I’ve always loved to dance, since I was really little. I always dreamed of being a ballerina. It’s not easy to walk away from that.”

She also realizes there are things she hasn’t thought about yet, like that looming farewell bow. “It is weird when you get those moments,” she says. The spotlight can feel awkward: “You feel like everyone’s singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to you.”

Back in the studio, Murphy tries out a few swanlike curtsies for McKerrow. “At a certain point, you’re going to want to not be a swan anymore,” McKerrow tells her. “Be you. Be Gillian.”