Sascha Radetsky

A popular and acclaimed American ballet dancer in the late '90s and 2000s, Sascha Radetsky also played earnest leading men in films and on television, most notably in "Center Stage" (2000) and the Starz miniseries "Flesh and Bone" (2015). Born in Santa Cruz, California, Radetsky began studying ballet as an adolescent, and showed enough promise to earn an invitation to study with the Bolshoi Academy in Moscow at the age of 15. He went on to additional studies at the Kirov Academy and American Ballet Theatre's School of Classical Ballet with Mikhail Baryshnikov, and cultivated a second career as an actor, playing juvenile roles in the PBS historical drama "Home at Last" (1988) and the NBC series "Midnight Caller" (1989-1991). In 1995, he joined the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) as an apprentice, and quickly moved up to corps de ballet the following year. In the midst of his rapid ascent in the dance world, Radetsky also earned his breakout acting role as a dancer in the film "Center Stage," which followed the lives of aspiring performers at a New York ballet school, and appeared in the music video for Mandy Moore's single "I Wanna Be With You," which was featured on the film's soundtrack. But in 2003, he put his acting career on hold to focus on his new status as a soloist with the ABT; there, he performed in numerous classical ballets, as well as works by modern choreographers like George Balanchine, Twyla Tharp and Mark Morris. Radetsky left the ABT in 2008 to join the Dutch National Ballet as a principal dancer; he remained with the troupe until 2010, when he returned to the ABT until his retirement from dance in 2014. By then, Radetsky had focused on his burgeoning second career as a writer, contributing to Vogue and Newsweek, among other publications, while also serving as a fellow in residence at New York University's Center for Ballet and the Arts. In 2015, he returned to the worlds of acting and dance in the Starz drama "Flesh and Bone," which cast him in his former real-life role as a principal dancer for a prestigious New York ballet company.