Gillian Murphy is a renowned ballerina who recently retired from her 29-year performance career with American Ballet Theatre (ABT). Her repertoire included leading roles in ABT’s most iconic full-length classics and in shorter works by luminary choreographers of the past and present. Murphy danced a broad scope of styles and characters, including the title heroines in Cinderella, Giselle, La Bayadere, La Fille Mal Gardeé, Raymonda, The Sleeping Beauty, Sylvia, and Woolf Works. Raised in Florence, SC, Murphy was a member of Columbia City Ballet before attending high school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA). As a teenager, Murphy was awarded the Prix de Lausanne Espoir, and she joined ABT in 1996. After being honored with a Princess Grace Foundation Award, Murphy was promoted to Soloist in 1999 and to Principal Dancer in 2002. She starred as Odette/Odile in ABT’s PBS television production of Swan Lake and as Giselle in the New Zealand Film Commission’s movie of Stiefel and Kobborg’s production at the Royal New Zealand Ballet, where she was a Principal Guest Artist for three years. Murphy has danced as a guest artist throughout the world, performing with the Mariinsky Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet, the Staatsballett Berlin, the Kiev Ballet, the Australian Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, and in numerous other international engagements and galas. Murphy starred onstage in world premieres of new creations by Alexei Ratmansky, Mark Morris, Benjamin Millepied, Michelle Dorrance, Jorma Elo, Jessica Lang, Marcelo Gomes, James Whiteside, Aszure Barton, Peter Quanz, Natalie Weir, John Neumeier, Robert Hill, Christopher Wheeldon, Ethan Stiefel, and Twyla Tharp. She is a recipient of a Princess Grace Statue Award and an honorary doctorate from UNCSA. In 2018, Murphy graduated summa cum laude from St. Mary’s College of California with a Bachelor of Arts. In 2019, Murphy completed the Harvard Business School’s “Crossover into Business” program and served on the international jury panel of the Prix de Lausanne. For three summers in Martha’s Vineyard, Murphy directed a training program, Dreamcatchers, for dancers aged 12 to 14, and she has taught and coached globally and throughout the United States. She became Artistic Associate at American Repertory Ballet in 2021 and lives near Princeton, NJ with her husband Ethan Stiefel and their son. For the most current updates, Murphy can be followed on Instagram @gillianemurphy.