Gillian Murphy
Raised in Florence, South Carolina, Gillian Murphy was a member of Columbia City Ballet before attending high school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Under the tutelage of Melissa Hayden, she performed principal roles in several of the school’s ballet productions including The Nutcracker and George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, Western Symphony, Tarantella, and Theme and Variations.
In 1995, at the age of 15, Murphy was awarded the Prix de Lausanne Espoir after performing in the final round of the Prix de Lausanne international ballet competition at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. In 1996, she was a National YoungArts Foundation Winner in Dance. In 1998, she was honored with a Princess Grace Foundation-USA grant. The Princess Grace Foundation awarded her its highest honor, the Statue Award, in 2009. In May 2014, Murphy was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from her alma mater, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Soon thereafter, the Gillian Murphy Scholarship was established at UNCSA, to fund a full-tuition scholarship each year, in perpetuity.
Her career includes performing as a guest artist with the Australian Ballet, the Staatsballett Berlin, the Kiev Ballet, the Mariinsky Ballet, the New York City Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet, and three years as Principal Guest Artist with the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Additionally, she has performed in numerous galas and guest appearances throughout the United States and across the globe.
Murphy joined American Ballet Theatre as a member of the corps de ballet in August 1996 before being promoted to Soloist in 1999 and to Principal Dancer in 2002. Her repertoire with the Company includes Nikiya and Gamzatti in La Bayadère, the Ballerina in The Bright Stream, Swanilda in Coppélia, Medora and Gulnare in Le Corsaire, Kitri in Don Quixote, Titania in The Dream, the Accused in Fall River Legend, Lise in La Fille mal gardée, Grand Pas Classique, Giselle and Myrta in Giselle, Mama Elena in Like Water for Chocolate, Lescaut’s Mistress in Manon, the Sugar Plum Fairy in Kevin McKenzie’s The Nutcracker, Desdemona in Othello, Other Dances, Hagar in Pillar of Fire, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Princess Aurora and the Lilac Fairy in The Sleeping Beauty, Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, Princess Tea Flower in Whipped Cream, and Virginia Woolf/Older Clarissa and “Tuesday” in Woolf Works; title roles in Cinderella, Raymonda, and Sylvia; and roles in Ballet Imperial, Black Tuesday, The Brahms-Haydn Variations, Company B, Études, Fancy Free, From Here On Out, In the Upper Room, Piano Concerto No. 1, Sinfonietta, Les Sylphides, Symphony in C, Theme and Variations, and Without Words, among others.
She created Clara, the Princess, in Alexei Ratmansky’s The Nutcracker; Pierrette in Ratmansky’s Harlequinade; leading roles in Her Notes, Kaleidoscope, Rabbit and Rogue, and Thirteen Diversions; and featured roles in After You, Dream within a Dream (deferred), Glow – Stop, One of Three, Praedicere, and Within You Without You: A Tribute to George Harrison.
Murphy danced Odette/Odile in the ABT telecast of Swan Lake and also appeared in the ABT telecast of Le Corsaire. During November 1999, she participated in the Melissa Hayden Project, part of the Balanchine Foundation’s video series filming dancers who worked with George Balanchine, teaching their roles to young performers. The Foundation filmed Hayden teaching Murphy the pas de deux from Stars and Stripes and Donizetti Variations. In 2013, she starred as Giselle in the New Zealand Film Commission’s movie of Ethan Stiefel and Johan Kobborg’s production of Giselle at the Royal New Zealand Ballet. In 2015, Murphy was featured in the Ric Burns American Masters documentary entitled American Ballet Theatre: A History.
For three summers, Murphy directed Dreamcatchers, a training program in Martha’s Vineyard for dancers aged 12 to 14, and she has taught master classes in Japan and throughout the United States. In 2018, Murphy graduated summa cum laude from St. Mary’s College of California with a Bachelor of Arts, and she completed the Harvard Business School’s “Crossover into Business” program. She is currently Artistic Associate at American Repertory Ballet. Murphy is married to former ABT Principal Dancer Ethan Stiefel.