Georgina Pazcoguin


Georgina Pazcoguin is an American ballet dancer who is a soloist with the New York City Ballet. She has originated featured roles in the ballet productions of Romeo + Juliet, Lifecasting and Ocean's Kingdom. She has also performed featured roles in a variety of ballet revivals, including productions of The Nutcracker, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Sleeping Beauty and West Side Story Suite. Being of Filipino descent, Pazcoguin has advocated for better Asian representation in the ballet community.
Pazcoguin has also branched out into musical theater. She made her Broadway debut in 2015 in a short stint as Ivy Smith in On the Town. She went on to play the role of Victoria the White Cat in the 2016 Broadway revival of Cats.

Early life

Pazcoguin was born and raised in Altoona, Pennsylvania. She is biracial; her father is a retired surgeon who immigrated from the Philippines after medical school, and her mother is Italian. Growing up as a middle child with five siblings, Pazcoguin would try to get noticed by being "really weird", such as putting on performances of The Nutcracker with her siblings in the family's basement. She began training at the Allegheny Ballet Academy when she was four years old. Growing up, Pazcoguin also took classes in other dance styles besides ballet, including African, tap and jazz.
She graduated from the Professional Children's School with a high school diploma.

Ballet

In 2001, Pazcoguin enrolled in the School of American Ballet, the associate school of the New York City Ballet. The following year, she started an apprenticeship with NYCB, and in 2003 became a member of its corps de ballet. She became a soloist following a promotion in 2013, which Pazcoguin says makes her the first Asian American female soloist in NYCB's history.
With NYCB, Pazcoguin performed featured roles in the original productions of Romeo + Juliet, Lifecasting, Ocean's Kingdom. She has also had featured roles in numerous NYCB revivals, including George Balanchine's The Nutcracker, Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Sleeping Beauty and West Side Story Suite. The role of Anita, which Pazcoguin first played in NYCB's 2008 American Songs and Dances program, was the first that required her to sing on stage.
Pazcoguin also appeared in the 2010 film adaptation of , directed by Jody Lee Lipes and Henry Joost.

Branding and advocacy

Pazcoguin considers herself the "complete antithesis" of the stereotypical ballet dancer. During her early days at NYCB, she struggled with body image issues, noting in a 2013 interview with Time Out New York that she "will never be that super, super thin, skeletal ". She has since styled herself as "The Rogue Ballerina" as a means of embracing the qualities that make her stick out as a dancer, such as her body type and ethnicity.
Pazcoguin is a proponent of greater diversity and inclusion within the ballet community. With former dancer Phil Chan, she started "Final Bow for Yellowface" in 2017, a campaign to combat Asian stereotypes in ballet productions such as The Nutcracker.

Theater

After years as a corps de ballet dancer, Pazcoguin felt her career was stagnating and began to explore opportunities in theater. In 2012, she joined American Dance Machine for the 21st Century, a dance company that performs Broadway theater dance numbers. Pazcoguin made her Broadway debut in August 2015 for a two-week stint as a replacement for Megan Fairchild in the role of Ivy Smith in the revival of On the Town. Her next Broadway role came when she was asked to audition for Victoria the White Cat in the 2016 Broadway revival of Cats. She got the part and took a leave of absence from NYCB for the role. Pazcoguin noted that playing Victoria pushed her beyond her comfort zone, as the ingénue character was a departure from her usual roles and the part required her to sing and hip-hop dance. Cats officially opened in July 2016 and Pazcoguin eventually left the production in March 2017.

Accolades