As a young American ballet dancer, Kathryn Elizabeth Morgan, is a former soloist with the New York City Ballet. Born August 17, 1989 in North Carolina, Morgan calls Mobile, Alabama home. This is despite having a father who was a dentist in the Air Force and moving around a lot. However, Morgan’s family eventually ended up in Minot, North Dakota at Minot Air Force Base. At the age of two years old, she started to take dance lessons in ballet, jazz, and tap. When her family relocated to Mobile, she was five years old and started training at Mobile Ballet, focusing solely on ballet.
At the age of nine, the Morgan family visited New York City and saw George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker” as performed by the New York City Ballet. A young Kathryn Morgan decided that it was her aspiration to someday join the dance company.
When Morgan was 11, she joined a youth company that was a regional branch of Mobile Ballet. Already she was performing in ballets which were infamous and full length including “Sleeping Beauty,” “Swan Lake” and “The Nutcracker.” She was playing Clara, and by age 13 to 15, was playing Arabian and Snow Queen in “The Nutcracker.”
When Kathryn Morgan was 15, in the year of 2004, her family made an ultimate sacrifice so that she could pursue dance even more. She went to New York City’s School of American Ballet and attended a summer program and it was then that her mother decided to rent an apartment in the Big Apple and every other weekend her father would travel from Alabama to New York City twice a month.
At 17 years old, in the early summer months of 2006, Morgan became an apprentice at the New York City Ballet. Less than a year later in 2007, she became a member of the dance company’s corps de ballet. In the fall of 2009 she was promoted again to the soloist rank within the company. As a dancer with the New York City Ballet from 2006 to 2012, she had a role in many performances. She danced in “The Nutcracker,” by George Balanchine playing the roles of Dewdrop, Marzipan, and the Sugar Plum Fairy She danced in several other performances by Balanchine including “Stars and Stripes,” “Ballo della Regina,” “Western Symphony,” and others. Morgan also played in roles in performances by Christopher Wheaton including “Scenes de ballet” and “Carousel (A Dance)” in 2006 when she had just begun and then later in 2009, “Mercurial Manoeuvres.
In 2009, Morgan also danced in “2 and 3 Part Inventions,” by Jerome Robbins, as well as “The Four Seasons” as Winter, “Les Noces,” “Dances at a Gathering,” and as Maria in “West Side Story Suite.” She also performed other roles in other prominent ballets such as “Romeo and Juliet” as Juliet and Princess Aurora in “Sleeping Beauty,” as well as dancing in “Swan Lake.”
Unfortunately, in 2010, she learned that she had a health issue regarding her thyroid that was under-functioning and left the dance company in 2012 to try to recover from her illness. Some of the symptoms she experienced were depression, loss of muscle strength, hair loss, fatigue, and excessive weight gain. It was then that she retreated back to Mobile to get treatment.
Morgan returned to the stage by 2014 to perform as a guest artist with numerous ballet companies throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. Her story has appeared in Teen Vogue, Dance Magazine, and Dance Spirit Magazine.
Morgan not only has taught dance classes but also developed her own mobile app. She also has a podcast on iTunes, operates a blog, a YouTube Channel and does public speaking engagements. She has thousands of subscribers on her YouTube Channel and she uses the platform to discuss positive body image, lifestyle habits that are healthy, as well as makeup tutorials and tips regarding dance.
Kathryn Morgan is not only a talented dancing professional, but she is also award-winning. She won the Mae L. Wien Award for Outstanding Promise in 2006 along with the Movado Future Legends Award. In 2009, she won the Janice Levin Award which is presented annually to promising corps de ballet members at the New York City Ballet. The Mae L. Wien Award was founded by the family of Ms. Wien at the School of American Ballet.
Morgan has gone on to continue to perform, make special appearances, attend special events, and to teach classes. Some of her classes are offered online through her website to learn some of the basics of ballet as well as learn more about fitness, artistry, and technique.
