The stage is a battleground. Four women and four men, swirling like wind-driven flames, embody the primal pull of sacrifice. Sophie Poulain, in her first season with the Atlanta Ballet, stands among them. On Feb. 7, at the Cobb Performing Arts Center, the audience watched Poulain — who spoke with the Technique a week earlier — fight through a role that demands not just technical mastery, but absolute surrender.
“The choreography itself is very physical,” she told the Technique. “I couldn’t do it halfway. You have to be 100% in to do it.” There is no half-measure in “The Rite of Spring.” It is a ballet of extremity, of exhaustion, of limbs flung beyond reason. Stravinsky’s score does not dance so much as convulse, and the bodies on stage responded in kind.
Poulain prepared for two roles — Woman 4 and the Sacrifice. “[It was] very interesting and challenging in a good way to be learning both roles,” she said. The Atlanta Ballet’s interpretation departs from the original: the Sacrifice does not submit. “She’s not going to go willingly,” Poulain explained. “She’s fighting it the whole time until the very, very end.” And the audience saw it — the refusal, the struggle, the inevitable collapse.
Three to five hours of rehearsal each day carved this role into her body, but endurance alone does not make a dancer. Poulain carries a deep relationship with music. “For me, to know the music inside and out is the way that I can be most comfortable on stage. It’s like an anchor for me.” As a child, she played six different instruments. Now, that understanding manifests in movement, in the way she lets the music seep through her limbs, guiding her even when choreography demands she surrender to chaos.
Her journey to this stage began at 13 when she moved to Toronto to train at Canada’s National Ballet School, an institution as rigorous as it sounds. “Instead of just changing myself to fit in a box, it was more like finding how things can work in my own way,” she reflected. The ballet world is a paradox: it demands uniformity, yet its greatest artists carve out something singular.
She credits much of her development to her coach, Magaly Suarez. “I met her when I was 14 or 15, and she sort of took me under her wing and taught me everything that I know today.” Even during COVID, when Poulain was in Amsterdam and forced to return home, she trained with Suarez over Zoom for six hours a day. “We call it the Magaly magic,” she said. “She understands people so well and cares about them so much. She just has a way of telling them exactly what they need to hear to help them grow and develop as dancers and artists.”
Ballet relies on foundations as much as it does on flight. Poulain, aware of this, offered advice to young dancers: “Find a coach and teacher who has a good track record, someone who has trained students that have gone on to have success. Because when you’re a student, building a strong foundation in technique is so important.” But beyond technique, she emphasized the need for a mentor who sees the dancer as an individual. “That makes all the difference, especially when you’re young and maybe not so sure of yourself. It’s so important to have a teacher that believes in you and wants to bring out the best in you.”
The Atlanta Ballet has given her that same sense of belonging. “It’s my first season, and I think there’s a really good company culture here, especially among the dancers. There’s a lot of camaraderie, and I think people are pretty open as well. That camaraderie among dancers in a company can make or break a company, really, in my experience.”
As the final notes of Stravinsky’s score crashed into silence, Poulain and her fellow dancers stood panting in the aftershock. The Sacrifice had been made, but she had not gone quietly. She had fought, flailed, resisted — and ultimately, she had given everything.
Later, reflecting on why she endures this grueling art, she said simply, “I think that when you are doing something that you love so much, like I am really so passionate about what I do, it’s rewarding every day in a new way, which is cool.” Passion is often mistaken for ease. But as the audience watched Sophie Poulain on that stage, they saw what it truly is: a battle, a devotion, a relentless, exquisite sacrifice.