Nora Kimball is a small miracle. Something flexible, something powerful. Just unbelievable. Nora Kimball has passed sixty, by how much, politeness binds your tongue. She performed until two years ago. If she still did, she would definitely dance as if she wanted to bring ballet heaven to earth. With the ease and expressiveness she always has. Nora Kimball was popular with the greats of the ballet scene. Now she is passing on her knowledge, introducing young people to the high art of classical dance at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts.

She feels with these young people that contact is particularly important to her in times of Corona.

Even if it's only about the banal.

“You have to wait at an age when you actually want to get started,” she says of her students.

She has been teaching a specific body method at the university since 2001, body research is “my thing”.

She has seen a lot of young dancers come and go, some have insufficient talent, others make it from zero to a hundred.

The native American has observed that there are more men than women: "They have fewer scruples."

All the effort for this one moment

Nora Kimball first danced when she was eleven - at the National Academy of Ballet in New York. It worked right away. Her younger sister always "danced around", that tempted her. They are five siblings, their mother comes from Kobe in Japan, the father from Boston. He was stationed in Japan during the Korean War. At the time, of course, she didn't take the dance seriously, but the Nutcracker performance at school was "totally exciting" nonetheless. The feeling of being on stage. All the effort for this one moment. Nora Kimball speaks of "magic", she has felt it many times.

The next ballet school had its own company, training every day from nine to five in the afternoon, pas de deux, lace, jazz - everything. “Ballet is like mathematics, strict but diverse.” In addition, she prepared for the graphic and design exam, which she also took, according to the motto, you never know. But then the Stuttgart Ballet made a guest appearance in New York, they were looking for two dancers. There was a big audition in the basement of the "Metropolitan Opera". Nora Kimball was one. John Cranko, the great Stuttgart master, was just dead. And Nora Kimball was just 17 years old.

From a member of the Corps de Ballet to a solo dancer in Stuttgart, working with Jiri Kylian at the Nederlands Dance Theater - the stations in Europe have a sonorous name.

The choreographer Kylian called her his muse.

In 1988 she returned to America, the mother was very ill and she was exhausted.

However, she danced again, became a soloist at the American Ballet Theater.

So again the "Nutcracker" and "Sleeping Beauty".

The modern age did not come until William Forsythe in Frankfurt.

They knew each other from Stuttgart and danced there together.

She joined his troupe on the Main in 1988 and stayed until the end.

New forms of movement, improvisation, but still ballet - she liked that.

After Forsythe, she most recently toured and worked with Peter Sellars.

Two singers and only them on stage: "Pure luxury".

By the way, she got married in between and had two children. Her husband is a photographer and should be shooting a dance report. It sparked with the individual portraits. And she became a muse again, a muse of the private kind.