Georgina Pazcoguin

Georgina Pazcoguin is an American ballerina and Broadway performer, best known for her career as a soloist with the New York City Ballet and for her advocacy against racism in the ballet world.

Pazcoguin was born and raised in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the third of six siblings. Her father, a retired surgeon, immigrated from the Philippines after completing medical school, and her mother is Italian. She began training at the Allegheny Ballet Academy at age four, studying ballet alongside African dance, tap, and jazz. At sixteen, in 2001, she relocated to New York City to attend the School of American Ballet, the associate school of NYCB, while simultaneously enrolling at the Professional Children's School.

After a single year at the School of American Ballet, Pazcoguin was invited by Peter Martins to join NYCB as an apprentice, and she became a member of the corps de ballet the following year. A decade of performing featured and principal roles preceded her promotion to soloist in 2013, a milestone that made her the first Asian American female soloist in the company's history. Among her featured roles in original NYCB productions were the Nurse in Romeo + Juliet (2007), a role in Douglas Lee's Lifecasting (2009), Scala in Ocean's Kingdom (2011), and parts in works by Alexei Ratmansky, Lauren Lovette, Angelin Preljocaj, and Kyle Abraham. In NYCB revivals, she performed Dewdrop in George Balanchine's The Nutcracker, Hippolyta in Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Carabosse in Peter Martins' The Sleeping Beauty, and Anita in Jerome Robbins' West Side Story Suite, a role she first took on during the company's 2008 American Songs and Dances program. She also appeared in the 2010 film adaptation of Jerome Robbins' N.Y. Export: Op. Jazz, directed by Jody Lee Lipes and Henry Joost. Pazcoguin retired from NYCB in May 2023 following final performances of Namouna. In 2002, she received the Mae L. Wien Award for Outstanding Promise.

Pazcoguin has described herself as the "complete antithesis" of the stereotypical ballet dancer and adopted the persona "The Rogue Ballerina" to embrace her distinctive body type and ethnicity. Her memoir, Swan Dive: The Making of a Rogue Ballerina, was published in 2021. In 2017, she and former dancer Phil Chan launched "Final Bow for Yellowface," a campaign to eliminate Asian stereotypes from ballet productions such as The Nutcracker. The campaign's pledge was signed by more than 100 dancers and industry leaders.

Her theater work began in 2012 when she joined American Dance Machine for the 21st Century, a company dedicated to recreating celebrated dance numbers from Broadway musicals. In that capacity, Pazcoguin performed Chita Rivera's role in Jack Cole's Beal Street Blues, Victoria the White Cat's solo from Cats, and the female soloist role in Jerome Robbins' Mr. Monotony. She made her Broadway debut in August 2015, stepping in as a temporary replacement for NYCB colleague Megan Fairchild in the role of Ivy Smith in the revival of On the Town. The following year she returned to Broadway in the 2016 revival of Cats, playing Victoria the White Cat, a role she noted pushed her beyond her comfort zone given the ingénue character's departure from her usual parts. She left the production in March 2017 to resume dancing with NYCB. Her performance in Cats earned her a 2017 Chita Rivera Award nomination for Outstanding Female Dancer in a Broadway Show.