Counterclockwise Ballerina Found!

My last post looked at directional preference for dancers and athletes and reported that dancers tend to turn clockwise (CW) on pirouettes and jumps while figure skaters, gymnasts, and divers prefer the counterclockwise (CCW) direction. I looked at 50 female dancers over the past 50 years and could not find a single dancer that turned CCW.

On Twitter, Steve Ha (@youdancefunny) points me to a YouTube clip of Katherine Healy performing fouettés CCW.

Interestingly, Healy was a figure skater before turning to ballet. She was a professional figure skater at age 11. After staring in the movie Six Weeks, she focused on ballet and won the silver medal at the 1982 USA International Ballet Competition and the gold medal at the same event in Varna, Bulgaria the following year. She was a Principal Ballerina with Les Ballets de Monte Carlo and the Vienna State Opera Ballet and Senior Principal Dancer at London Festival Ballet, now known as the English National Ballet, according to Wikipedia