[3][4] She attended the Birch Wathen School in New York, studied piano with Vladimir Drozdoff, and dance with Mikhail Mordkin.
[4][5][6] Essen danced in Mordkin's productions of The Sleeping Beauty (1936), The Goldfish (1937), and Giselle (1937), with Lucia Chase in the lead roles.
[4][7][8] In 1944, she won praise as the Queen in a production of Swan Lake, when John Martin of The New York Times wrote that she "dances with a fresh and ingratiating young competence, if not with as much style as she will one day acquire.
[12] She appeared in the ballet-themed thriller film Specter of the Rose (1946)[13][14] and in the televised adaptation of the operetta The Desert Song (1955).
Essen danced in the first productions of the Ballet Theatre in 1940,[15][16] and in 1955 reprised her part in Jardin aux lilas with Hugh Laing, at the company's fifteenth anniversary event, held at the Metropolitan Opera House.