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Antonia Franceschi

Antonia Franceschi’s screen career may be compact, but it is inseparable from the life she built in dance. Born in Grand Rapids in 1960 and raised in the American Midwest, she moved to New York City with her mother at eight. By nine, she was studying ballet and working in theater for the Metropolitan Opera, beginning a path that would take her from movie musicals to the New York City Ballet and, later, choreography. Franceschi trained in the Cecchetti method under Margaret Craske and attended Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts. She appeared as a dancer in Grease in 1978, working under a falsified birth certificate because she was too young to be employed legally. The job led to her expulsion, since students were not permitted to work professionally. She used her earnings to attend the Professional Children’s School, which allowed her to continue training at the School of American Ballet. That experience gave her role in Fame an unusual closeness to home. In the 1980 film, Franceschi played Hilary van Doren, a wealthy ballet student at a fictionalized version of the same performing arts school she had attended. Her poise suited the character, but dance—not Hollywood—became the center of her career. After working with Makarova and Company, including as an understudy to Natalia Makarova, Franceschi was recruited by George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet. She remained with the company for eleven years and performed in about 50 of Balanchine’s works. Choreographers including Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Lar Lubovitch and Karole Armitage created work for her. Franceschi moved to London in 1995 and expanded her work as a choreographer, teacher, producer and guest artist. Her later projects have ranged from the semi-autobiographical Up From the Waste to productions including Dr. Semmelweis and Othello. Across film, ballet and theater, her career reflects an artist who found her way through movement and kept widening what that movement could express.