| Ballet BC | |
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 The Queen Elizabeth Theatre, home of Ballet BC | |
| General information | |
| Name | Ballet BC |
| Previous names | Ballet British Columbia |
| Predecessor |
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| Year founded | 1986 |
| Founders |
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| Artistic Director |
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| Location | Vancouver, BC |
| Principal venue | Queen Elizabeth Theatre |
| Website | balletbc |
| Senior staff | |
| Chief Executive |
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| Artistic staff | |
| Artistic Director |
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Ballet BC is a contemporary ballet company located in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Ballet BC is a professional contemporary ballet company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. [1] The company was founded as Ballet British Columbia by Jean Orr, David Y. H. Lui [3] and Sheila Begg in 1986, with Annette av Paul as first Artistic Director.
Artistic direction passed to Reid Anderson, Patricia Neary and Barry Ingham and in 1992 to John Alleyne, who introduced a program with original choreography including his The Faerie Queen [4] in 2000 and dances by other Canadian choreographers. Alleyne was followed by Emily Molnar after the reorganization in 2009. Molnar was followed by Medhi Walerski in 2020. [1]
As of April 2015 [update] , the company is the only professional ballet company in British Columbia. [1] Its home performances take place at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. [5]
In 2023, Ballet BC moved into their own facility for the first time, at Granville Island. [6]
Ballet BC presents a repertoire of contemporary ballet. [7]
The company opened the 2015 Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, presenting three dances each by a different choreographer, including Twenty Eight Thousand Waves by their own resident choreographer Cayetano Soto. [8] The company travelled on their 30th anniversary tour in late 2015 and 2016. [9]
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Emily Molnar is a Canadian dancer. Maclean's magazine featured her as one of Canada's "new generation of ballet sensations". Since July 2009, she has worked as the artistic director of Ballet BC. A graduate of The National Ballet School of Canada, Molnar is a former member of the National Ballet of Canada; Frankfurt Ballet. There she created and performed an extensive Ballet repertoire under director William Forsythe and principal dancer with Ballet BC.
Crystal Pite is a Canadian choreographer and dancer. She began her professional dance career in 1988 at Ballet BC, and in 1996 she joined Ballett Frankfurt under the tutelage of William Forsythe. After leaving Ballett Frankfurt she became the resident choreographer of Montreal company Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal from 2001 to 2004. She then returned to Vancouver where she focused on choreographing while continuing to dance in her own pieces until 2010. In 2002 she formed her own company called Kidd Pivot, which produced her original works Uncollected Work (2003), Double Story (2004), Lost Action (2006), Dark Matters (2009), The You Show (2010), The Tempest Replica (2011), Betroffenheit (2015), and Revisor (2019) to date. Throughout her career she has been commissioned by many international dance companies to create new pieces, including The Second Person (2007) for Netherlands Dans Theater and Emergence (2009) for the National Ballet of Canada, the latter of which was awarded four Dora Mavor Moore Awards.
Simone Orlando is a Canadian ballet dancer and choreographer born in Vancouver, British Columbia. Orlando received her early dance training at the Carisbrooke School of Dance, the Vancouver Academy of Dance, and the Goh Ballet Academy. She completed her training at the National Ballet School in Toronto and subsequently joined the National Ballet of Canada in 1989 under the direction of Reid Anderson where she danced a wide range of repertoire from the ballets of John Cranko and Kenneth MacMillan to those of George Balanchine and Glenn Tetley. In 1995, Robert Desrosiers invited her to join Desrosiers Dance Theatre, where she originated roles in several new productions and toured to Brazil and Aruba. In 1996, Orlando joined Ballet British Columbia under the direction of John Alleyne where she danced for twelve years as principal artist, joining the reorganised Ballet BC as Artist in Residence for 2009–10. She has performed in theatres and festivals around the world including The Kennedy Centre, The Joyce Theatre, The Bayerische Staatsoper, The Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Cervantino Festival, Canada Dance Festival, and Ballet Expo Seoul. While dancing with Ballet BC, Orlando was prominently featured in new creations by John Alleyne, garnering accolades for her performances as Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Puck in The Faerie Queen, Fate in Carmina Burana, and the Elder in The Rite of Spring. She has also created roles with James Kudelka, Crystal Pite, Dominique Dumais, Mikko Nissenen, and Jean Grand-Maitre and has been featured in the works of William Forsythe, Paul Taylor, Nicolo Fonte, Jiri Kylian, Martha Graham, and Twyla Tharp, among others. Orlando also taught and set repertoire on the dancers of Ballet BC and the pre-professionals in the Ballet BC Mentor Program.
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John Alleyne was a Canadian ballet choreographer and dancer, now retired.
