Genevieve Penn-Nabity has always loved pushing the limits of ballet. From a daredevil 11-year-old sliding across the stage en pointe at local youth dance competitions to a principal dancer at The National Ballet of Canada tackling everything from the daunting classics to cutting-edge contemporary works, the Casco, Michigan, native has retained her passion for threading the needle between tradition and innovation.
“I’ve always tried to break the boundaries, I guess — never status quo,” she says with a laugh when reminiscing about her childhood dancing.
The drive behind that approach has led to her swift rise in the ballet world: At just 21 years old, she was promoted to the top rank at her prestigious company. In the nearly three years since, she’s debuted in a number of iconic roles, garnering rave reviews from critics. And she’s just getting started.
Penn-Nabity began dancing at 2 years old at the studio where her mom grew up taking lessons, Main Stage Center for the Arts in New Baltimore. Ballet always called to her, although she studied a variety of styles — jazz, tap, hip-hop, contemporary — and performed them at youth competitions around metro Detroit.
In 2015, at age 14, she attended Boston Ballet School’s summer intensive, where she fell in love with ballet and the discipline it required. The next year, she enrolled in the year-round program at Canada’s National Ballet School in Toronto, the feeder school for The National Ballet of Canada — and the closest to Detroit with an accredited high school. After two years, she graduated and was accepted directly into the company.
She says her background in competitive dance has given her an edge in her professional life, since as ballet evolves, companies are performing more and more contemporary and modern works.
“Ballet has so many ridges and very specific positions and you’re supposed to be in a box, for the most part,” she says. “I can adapt a little quicker and draw on my experience as a teen to help me when new choreographers come and want to create something that’s different from ballet.”
In her time at the company, she’s originated roles in new creations by world-renowned contemporary choreographers, including Wayne McGregor’s MaddAddam and Crystal Pite’s Angels’ Atlas. She was also selected to lead opening night of ballet legend Carlos Acosta’s production of Don Quixote last June. Despite the pressure, “it’s the most fun I’ve ever had onstage [in] a ballet,” she says. But her favorite role so far has been the one that led to her promotion to principal: the dual part of Odette/Odile in Swan Lake.
After the last show of the season in June 2022, during the dancers’ bows, Artistic Director Hope Muir came out onstage, presumably to thank the audience for coming. Instead, she announced Genevieve Penn-Nabity as the company’s newest principal dancer. Penn-Nabity was stunned.
“I was like, ‘No way, this is not my dream coming true onstage with everybody, and my mom’s in the audience,’ and it was incredible. … Everyone was so excited for me, and it was a really sweet moment, one that I’ll cherish forever.
“I still kind of can’t believe it,” she adds.
The life of a ballerina is, of course, not all glittering costumes and thundering applause. To start with, the days are long, often stretching 12 hours during show season. Injury affects every dancer — Penn-Nabity spent much of last spring recovering from a nasty ankle sprain — and building up confidence for a big performance takes time. Once she’s under the stage lights, though, “all those worries kind of melt away.”
“But the day before is usually pretty rough,” she says with a grin.
Her next big performance will be reprising her starring role in Swan Lake at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto this month (March 8, 11, 14, and 22). It’s her first time revisiting a full-length principal role.
“I’m really excited for that,” she says. “I don’t have to worry as much about the technique, and now I can dive into the character even more, because you only scratch the surface the first time.”
Farther into the future, she’d like to try her hand at the main roles in all the “story” ballets — especially Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, whose enormous technical demands she relishes (“I mean, who doesn’t want to try those balances, you know?” she says, referring to arguably the most challenging section) — and while she’s already traveled to London, Paris, and Tokyo with the school and company, she hopes to experience performing with other dancers around the world in galas or as a guest artist as well.
“And really just keep digging artistically and finding myself in all of this,” she adds. “I just want to keep dancing. There’s really not too much [else].”
For a schedule of upcoming performances, visit national.ballet.ca.
This story originally appeared in the March 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Our digital edition will be available on March 10.
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