National Ballet of Canada’s Genevieve Penn Nabity swaps the stage for the stadium to throw the first pitch
Genevieve Penn Nabity swapped the Four Seasons Centre stage for the Rogers Centre mound this week, throwing the ceremonial first pitch at the Toronto Blue Jays’ game against the Seattle Mariners.
For the uninitiated, “throwing the first pitch” refers to a tradition at baseball games where someone outside the two competing teams – often a celebrity or politician – throws the ball from the pitcher’s mound to officially open the game, before the actual players take over.
The appearance was arranged to help launch The National Ballet of Canada‘s upcoming 75th anniversary season – a rare crossover between the city’s ballet and baseball audiences, and one that put its newest Principal Dancer in front of a very different kind of crowd.
Genevieve Penn Nabity’s promotion to Principal Dancer came in June 2022, moments after her debut as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake. Artistic director Hope Muir announced the promotion in front of the Four Seasons Centre audience – four years after Penn Nabity had joined The National Ballet of Canada as an RBC Apprentice, and only a year after her promotion to Second Soloist.
From Michigan to Toronto
Born in Casco, Michigan, Penn Nabity trained at Main Stage Center for the Arts in nearby Armada before continuing at Canada’s National Ballet School. She joined The National Ballet of Canada in 2018, received the Peter Dwyer Award in 2017 and the RBC Emerging Artist Apprentice Award in 2019, and was promoted to Principal Dancer in 2022.
What Critics Have Said
Reviewing that same Swan Lake, Bachtrack described her as delivering high attitudes and clean fouetté work in Act III. The Toronto Star, reviewing her Cinderella debut, credited her with dramatic range and called her performance the real thing. The Globe and Mail’s review of the same production was more mixed, noting some difficult landings in the pas de deux even as she kept her composure through the performance. In writing about The Four Seasons, the same paper described her as an athletic performer, dancing with energy and finesse. In a review of Morpheus’ Dream for Critics at Large, she and her partner Ben Rudisin were noted for their stamina and contemporary athleticism.
Repertoire
Her classical roles now include Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, the title role in Cinderella, Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Olga in Cranko’s Onegin, the Sugar Plum Fairy, Kitri in Don Quixote, and fairy roles in The Sleeping Beauty. More recently, she debuted in the title role in the North American premiere of Christian Spuck’s Anna Karenina and as Myrtha in Giselle. Her contemporary work spans pieces by David Dawson, Crystal Pite, Christopher Wheeldon, John Neumeier, Emma Portner and Marco Goecke, among others.
In 2025, she appeared at the Tivoli International Ballet Gala alongside fellow Principals Heather Ogden and Ben Rudisin. She is sponsored through the company’s Dancers First programme by George and Kathy Dembroski.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
