No Dancing Required: ABT Supernumeraries Take the Stage

Playbill: Full-length ballets, such as Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Le Corsaire, La Bayadère, and The Nutcracker, are evocative productions involving large casts of dancers, with elaborate costumes, scenery, and lighting. Because of their scope, these works require additional stage personnel: supernumeraries, extras that appear in the background. Supers, as they are called, contribute to the stage picture, providing rich dimension and enlivened presence, key to ballet’s unique form of storytelling.