An ABT Dancer Jumped Onto the Subway Tracks to Save a Man's Life

June 4, 2017

We often call dancers superheroes, but rarely do we mean it literally. Today, though, we do: American Ballet Theatre’s Gray Davis is a superhero.

The 31-year-old corps member was waiting for the train at NYC’s 72nd Street Station on Saturday night with his wife, soloist Cassandra Trenary, who’d just performed in The Golden Cockerel at the Met Opera House. When they saw a woman push a man onto the tracks, Davis jumped down after him, risking his life to lift the man to safety.

A post shared by Grayson Davis (@graysongray86)
on Mar 15, 2015 at 9:52am PDT

(Above, Davis and Trenary in a performance of The Nutcracker.)

Davis wasn’t dancing that night because he’s injured, recovering from a herniated disk, which makes his act of physical courage even more extraordinary. Our favorite detail from the New York Times story about the incident, though, is this one, describing how Davis got back up on the subway platform:

“I never realized how high it was,” he said. “Luckily, I’m a ballet dancer, so I swung my leg up.”

Bravo, Gray. You’ve more than earned the special tribute ABT’s giving you in company class this morning.