Wendy Whelan (/ˈhwiːlən/; born May 7, 1967) was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet and is a guest artist with Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company.
A native of Louisville, Kentucky (USA), she began her dance training with local teacher, Virginia Wooton, at the age of three. After performing as a mouse in "The Nutcracker" with the Louisville Ballet, she joined Louisville Ballet Academy, where she started formal training. In 1981, she received a scholarship to the summer course at the School of American Ballet (SAB), the official school of New York City Ballet, joining as a full-time student a year later.
Wendy joined NYCB in 1984 as an apprentice and entered the company's corps de ballet January 1986. She was promoted to soloist in 1989, and to principal dancer in 1991.
She has a repertoire of more than 50 ballets, including pieces by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Peter Martins, Twyla Tharp, William Forsythe, Christopher Wheeldon, and others.
Whelan is particularly known for her angular body and muscularity particularly suited to the Balanchine style. However, with Balanchine's death in 1983, a year after Whelan arrived at SAB, she only met him once.
I'm a believer
I fell down in sorrows garden
Wet night flowers
Red and black
Push me up
They can't give me up
They taste my touch
I tell them baby
I call them baby baby baby
They are crushed
Stars spit down
They try to hammer me underground
There is a black rainbow astride
This hallowed ground
Black rainbow
I pull it down
I pull it down
This nervous night
Swallows the eye
I drown my hands
I lay them down
The fools
Seduction tools
Let you go
Into the sun
The earth tightens
The dirt delivers me
I believe
I'm a believer baby
I believe you
Brought me
Undone
Don't push me away
Don't give me away
Believe in me