00:00One, two, three, four, five, six, balance, balance, chenée, chenée, and hey, she's ready.
00:36Hi, I'm Maria Kurowski, and I'm a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet.
00:40I'm dancing as Genevieve in Barbie's new movie, The Twelve Dancing Princesses.
00:45This is the third time that I've been asked to dance with Barbie, and each time it's been a really
00:50great experience,
00:51and each movie is very different from one another, and I'm thrilled to be doing new choreography,
00:57and this one actually probably has more dancing than both the other ones, and it's going to be great.
01:03It's very exciting, and I hope you enjoy it.
01:07Barbie and the Nutcracker was Barbie's first movie, and I was lucky to be asked to dance for her.
01:13The New York City Ballet helped Barbie recreate these famous dance sequences from Tchaikovsky's beautiful ballet.
01:23In Barbie of Swan Lake, the New York City Ballet brought the dancing to life in another beloved Tchaikovsky ballet.
01:36Again, they asked me to help out with Barbie's dance movement.
01:46Once again, we created the dances for Barbie's movie, but this time not for a classic ballet, but for a
01:51whole new ballet.
01:58And the ballet stars Barbie, playing Genevieve, one of the Twelve Dancing Princesses.
02:05I think Princess Genevieve is great. She's confident, clever, and she has eleven sisters.
02:10Imagine twelve princesses, each one beautiful and independent.
02:14And just like me, they all love to dance.
02:21One night, the princesses discover a magical secret, a hidden world where the dancing never ends.
02:27And that's where their adventure begins.
02:33Playing the role as Genevieve in the Twelve Dancing Princesses and bringing Barbie to life through dancing is an unbelievable
02:41experience.
02:42I am so happy to be doing it.
02:45My little niece has been watching the Nutcracker and the Swan Lake Barbie movies and is so excited about them.
02:51And she's only two and a half.
02:52And so for me to be able to be a part of this process is just great, and I'm very
02:57honored to be chosen to do it.
03:01Being a principal dancer with a famous ballet company requires passion and hard work.
03:07I live in New York City, and I wake up in the morning, and I walk to Lincoln Center for
03:12my job.
03:14And usually I go to the locker, put on my ballet clothes, and get ready for class, put my hair
03:22up, take ballet class in the morning, which is usually an hour and a half.
03:27And then if I have to come back later in the afternoon, I usually do some stretching and warm myself
03:32up again.
03:34Stretching is important because it's very easy to pull a muscle or strain some part of your body if you're
03:41not completely stretched before you start a rehearsal.
03:44And it's just very important to keep your muscles, the blood flowing and the oxygen going in your muscles.
03:51And then after I stretch, I usually get ready to put my feet in my pointe shoes.
03:57And that's kind of a process.
03:58I usually have to allow myself about ten minutes to do that.
04:01So I usually take some masking tape, and I wrap it around, you know, pretty much every toe just to
04:07make sure I don't get any blisters.
04:10And then I use paper towel to further put more support and cushioning around my toes, and then I put
04:18them in the shoe.
04:19And then I go to the rosin box, which is there to help prevent slipping in the studio or on
04:26stage.
04:27And I usually put it all around the shoe, on the tips and on the back, and just around, just
04:32to make sure that I don't fall on the rehearsal.
04:35And then I start the rehearsal.
04:37You know, we can rehearse anywhere between one to six hours a day.
04:42After a long rehearsal day, we have two hours before a performance to prepare.
04:47And then we, you know, put our hair up, put the makeup on, put any kind of accessories that you
04:53have, earrings, a tiara.
04:55And then we put the costume on.
04:56And then we kind of go through the same routine of taping your toes, putting in the rosin, and putting
05:03on the pointe shoes to get ready for the performance.
05:07Do the performance.
05:08And then at the end of the day, which is usually around 10.30 at night, usually you're pretty tired
05:15by then.
05:16So you go to sleep, and then you wake up and start the day all over again.
05:20Like me, most ballerinas start as little girls and train for many years before they can dance professionally.
05:27While I'm originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, I started taking ballet class when I was five.
05:32And the reason I started was because my older sister was taking ballet lessons.
05:37And while she was gone at her ballet lessons, I would try on her oversized leotards and tights and shoes
05:43and just kind of be dancing around my house.
05:46And my mom just thought, you know what, we've got to put her into ballet.
05:50Being a mouse in the Nutcracker was the very first thing I did on stage.
05:53And I remember my best friend was Super Mouse because she was the smallest girl.
06:00She was one of the first ones that was killed, and I had to drag her off.
06:05And I couldn't see where I was going because the mask was very dark, and I didn't know what I
06:10was doing.
06:10And I grabbed her, and we ran right into the wing.
06:12And both of us, like, just fell, and our legs were up, and we were laughing.
06:17And to this day, it brings, like, really warm memories.
06:19As a little girl at age five, I never would have thought all my dreams would have come true.
06:24I never would have thought that I'd be dancing in one of the best companies in the world as a
06:29principal ballet dancer.
06:31Yeah, that shows.
06:34That's good.
06:35For Barbie and the 12 Dancing Princesses, we needed to create a totally new ballet.
06:40The creation of the dances is called choreography, and the choreography for these dances was created by Peter Martins,
06:47world-famous ballet master-in-chief of the New York City Ballet.
06:50You can do this.
06:53I like that.
06:55The 12 Dancing Princesses was never made it into a ballet.
06:59The story is endearing and charming.
07:01I love the story.
07:02Again, it's one of my, when I told my daughter,
07:04so what are you going to do in that town now?
07:06And I said, 12 Dancing Princesses.
07:08It's my favorite.
07:10It's my favorite.
07:11She loves it.
07:12I'm using Maria Kurowski, who was our first Barbie.
07:16She's both Nutcracker and Swanlight.
07:18And Chuck, who was doing Ken.
07:22He's just much taller.
07:23He's a real romantic prince, in my view.
07:26And has a wonderful demeanor.
07:30And the two little girls that I'm using are sort of little firecrackers.
07:33They can do anything.
07:34They're fantastic.
07:36Abby and Tyler.
07:40I rehearsed for days with my friends Abby and Tyler to get all the steps just right.
07:47There are 12 Dancing Sequences in this movie,
07:51and I'm involved in quite a few of them.
07:54They're all a little bit different.
07:56It's probably the most dancing I've done in one of the Barbie movies.
08:00There's one in particular called The Red Shoes,
08:03and it's a dance struggle where me and Charles are kind of struggling the whole time,
08:07and we're kind of glued together, and he's trying to make me dance,
08:10and I'm very frustrated because I can't seem to let go of him, and we're stuck together.
08:17I have to say I think my favorite part in the movie is when the cobbler and myself
08:24discover that we have to open the stone, the passageway at the same time,
08:29and we have to go to each stone together, and then we start this romantic dance,
08:33and I think, I don't know, I'm a sucker for love stories, so I don't know,
08:36I guess that romantic part of it is just very special to me, and I like it.
08:41So, that's my favorite part.
08:43That's right.
08:46After we open the portal for this final time,
08:49Derek and Genevieve are dancing so beautifully, so passionately,
08:53that they magically begin to dance on air.
09:06Well, I don't make dancers dance on air, but the people who know this medium understand this,
09:15but obviously it's much better than I at a certain point.
09:17and we like to see them sort of take off into the air and ascend,
09:22and so I try to conceive of a step that might look good,
09:27animating them, sort of flying into the air.
09:34Bringing Garby to life in this movie is a very unique process.
09:40There are many different steps it takes to bring this to a motion capture,
09:45and the first thing is, we come into a rehearsal room,
09:48and we learn the story,
09:50and then after we've choreographed all of that and everything works,
09:53then we take it to a studio, it's kind of like a black box,
09:56with cameras all around.
09:59And what the dancers have to do is get into this scuba-type gear,
10:03where we have these reflectors and motion capture sensors all over us,
10:08you know, on each part of our knees and our feet and our head and our arms
10:12to capture all the movements that we do.
10:15And it's a pretty interesting little get-out.
10:19I remember the first time we were giggling quite a bit,
10:21and we had to start over a lot because we were laughing at how ridiculous we looked.
10:26But it was really interesting to see.
10:29And even from the second time I did the movie, Swan Lake,
10:32the technology had grown so much that they had the computer there,
10:35and they were able to show us, right after we produced something,
10:38what it was going to look like in animation.
10:41And that was unbelievable.
10:43I was blown away because I could really tell that it was me dancing.
10:51Here, Chuck and I are creating the movements for the romantic dance
10:54where we begin to dance on air.
11:11As we dance, every little motion is recorded and goes into the computer.
11:15Then the animators use my movements to help Barbie dance so beautifully.
11:29There are so many things that I think little girls are going to love about this movie.
11:35To all the little girls out there that are dreaming of becoming a ballerina princess like I have,
11:40it can come true, and if you just follow your hearts and dreams
11:46and just know that that's what you want to do, it can become a reality.
11:50And I wish all of you out there, believe in yourself and make your dreams come true.
Comments