Lupe Serrano

Guadalupe Martínez Desfassiaux Serrano (December 7, 1930 – January 16, 2023), known professionally as Lupe Serrano, was a Chilean-born, Mexican-trained American ballet dancer and teacher. She spent most of her dance career at the American Ballet Theatre (ABT), where she was the troupe's first Hispanic American principal dancer. She retired from the stage in 1971. She later returned to ABT to teach company classes at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. at a suburban dance school that offered lessons in ballet, modern dance, and castanets. By the age of 17, Lupe Serrano had become a celebrity in Mexico. In 1952, she joined Ballet Concerts, a company formed by Igor Schwezoff, and toured South America. Her repertoire included lead roles in major classical ballets such as Swan Lake, Giselle, Aurora's Wedding, and the Don Quixote pas de deux. Also writing for The New York Times, critic Allen Hughes declared her performance of Giselle as a "personal triumph" which "indicated that Lupe Serrano must now be ranked as one of greatest ballerinas dancing today."

Serrano created several roles at ABT for Capital of the World by Eugene Loring, Paean by Herbert Ross, Sebastian by Agnes de Mille, and Lady from the Sea by Birgit Cullberg. At the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow, she received twelve curtain calls after dancing William Dollard's The Combat. During her performance in Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg), the audience insisted that she dance her solo again as an encore, after seven curtain calls; it was the first encore performed in ABT's twenty-year history. and "Lupe Serrano Dazzles Russ[ia] in 'Don Quixote,

After Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West in 1961, he invited Serrano to partner with him, forming a celebrated but brief partnership. The same year, Serrano danced excerpts from Raymonda for President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House.

Teaching career

Serrano had a teaching career spanning five decades. In 1981, Ballet News reported, "Not only has Serrano kept her perfect figure but, without pausing for breath, she can rip off a brilliantly executed allegro combination that stymies even company members and guarantees a permanent crowd of awestruck acolytes at her studio doors." She was a guest teacher and taught masterclasses for companies throughout the United States, such as the San Francisco Ballet, Cleveland Ballet, and Cincinnati Ballet, as well as the Rome Opera Ballet in Italy. She was also a sought-after judge in international ballet competitions.

After their first child, Erica, was born in 1963, Serrano returned to work at ABT, commuting daily from their home in New Jersey. A 1965 review in The New York Times praised Serrano's musicality in performing the lead in Giselle, noting that her husband Schermerhorn was conducting, "ready with rallentandos when they were needed for expansive lifts and with accelerandos when fleet footwork was involved."

She took a year off after giving birth to their second daughter, Veronica, in 1967. They moved as a family to Wisconsin, after Schermerhorn became the music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Serrano and Schermerhorn divorced around the same time she retired as a performer. When Serrano started teaching at the Pennsylvania Ballet School, both her daughters took classes there. Her daughter Veronica Lynn later became a soloist with the ABT.

In her final decades, Serrano lived in Long Island, New York. She died on January 16, 2023, in Syosset, New York, of complications from Alzheimer's disease.