American Ballet Theatre (ABT) is a classical ballet company based in New York City. Founded in 1939 by Lucia Chase and Richard Pleasant, it is recognized as one of the world's leading classical ballet companies. Through 2019, it had an annual eight-week season at the Metropolitan Opera House in the spring and a shorter season at the David H. Koch Theater in the fall; the company tours around the world the rest of the year. The company was scheduled to have a 5-week spring season at the MET preceded by a 2-week season at the Koch Theater beginning in 2020. ABT is the parent company of the American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, and was recognized as "America's National Ballet Company" in 2006 by the United States Congress.
Ethan Stiefel is an American dancer, choreographer, and director. He was a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre (ABT) from 1997 until July 2012. He was the artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet from 2011 to 2014. His wife is Gillian Murphy, also a principal dancer with ABT.
Ballet San Jose was a ballet company based in San Jose, California, US, operating from 1985 to 2016.
François Perron is a French ballet dancer, choreographer and teacher, who now works and resides in the United States. Perron is a graduate of the Paris Opera Ballet School where he studied under the direction of Claude Bessy. In 2011, Perron founded the French Academie of Ballet, based in New York City.
Sascha Radetsky is a former ballet dancer and actor. He was a soloist with the American Ballet Theatre and a principal with Dutch National Ballet. He is known for having starred as Charlie in the motion picture Center Stage and as Ross in the Starz miniseries Flesh and Bone. In 2018 he was named artistic director of American Ballet Theatre's Studio Company.
The Minnesota Ballet is a ballet company and school located in Duluth, Minnesota. Founded in 1965 by Donna Harkins and Jan Gibson as the Duluth Civic Ballet, the company has since expanded into a touring company with seventeen professional artists. From 1992 to 2007 the Artistic Executive Director of the Minnesota Ballet was Allen Fields, who retired to become Artistic Director Emirtus. Fields acquired rights to works by choreographers including Agnes de Mille, Antony Tudor, and George Balanchine. He was succeeded by Robert Gardner. In 2019 Karl von Rabenau was appointed Artistic Director. The Minnesota Ballet entered its 54th season in 2019/20.
The Washington Ballet (TWB) is an ensemble of professional ballet dancers based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1976 by Mary Day and has been directed by Julie Kent since 2016.
Carolina Ballet is one of America's arts organizations, programming traditional ballets and new works by contemporary choreographers. The Ballet was launched as a professional company in 1998 under the direction of Founding Artistic Director Robert Weiss. In 2019, Zalman Raffael became the Artistic Director/CEO joined by Michele Weathers as executive director. For more than 20 years, Carolina Ballet has garnered critical praise from the national and international media, staged over 100 world premiere ballets, and in 2018, chartered the School of Carolina Ballet. Since its inaugural season in 1998, Carolina Ballet and this community have accomplished something remarkable. The company has grown from a budget of $1.2 million featuring sixteen dancers and five apprentices in three programs to a $6.0 million budget featuring 38 dancers in eight programs including the holiday tradition, The Nutcracker.
The Minnesota Dance Theatre (MDT) dance company and school in Minneapolis, Minnesota was founded by Loyce Houlton in 1962 as the Contemporary Dance Playhouse. It was renamed the Minnesota Dance Theatre in 1969. Lise Houlton succeeded her mother as artistic director in 1995. Each holiday season MDT presents the ballet Loyce Houlton's Nutcracker Fantasy based on Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. Ballet Arts Minnesota and the company's school joined in 2006 to become The Dance Institute. The organization is based in the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts.
Ballet Arizona is a professional ballet company in Phoenix, Arizona directed by Ib Andersen. The company was created in 1986 by a merger of three smaller Arizonan dance companies that were struggling to survive. Today, the company of thirty-one dancers occupies a prominent place in American ballet. The company is also integrated into the School of Ballet Arizona.
Colorado Ballet encompasses a 31-member professional performing ballet company, a studio company for advanced dance students, an academy, and an education and outreach department. Based in downtown Denver, Colorado, Colorado Ballet serves more than 125,000 patrons each year.
Pittsburgh Playhouse is Point Park University's performing arts center located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It houses three performance spaces and is home to The Rep, Point Park's resident professional theatre company, as well as three student companies—Conservatory Theatre Company, Conservatory Dance Company, and Playhouse Jr. The Conservatory Theatre Company offers five productions each year that are performed by undergraduate students at Point Park; each season consists of a mixture of established plays and musicals, as well as occasional new works.
The Kansas City Ballet (KCB) is a professional ballet company based in Kansas City, Missouri. The company was founded in 1957 by Russian expatriate Tatiana Dokoudovska. The KCB presents five major performances each season to include an annual production of The Nutcracker. The KCB, its school, and its staff are all housed in, operate from, and rehearse at the Todd Bolender Center for Dance and Creativity, a renovated, seven-studio, office, and rehearsal facility in Kansas City, Missouri, that opened in August 2011. The company performs at and is the resident ballet company at the nearby Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, a performance venue in downtown Kansas City that opened in September 2011.
The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre is the associate school of American Ballet Theatre located at 890 Broadway, within the Flatiron District of Manhattan, New York City. The school comprises a children's division for ages 4 to 12, a pre-professional division for ages 12 to 18, and the preparatory program "Studio Company" for ages 16 to 20. It was established in 2004 and named in honor of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who served on ABT's Board of Trustees as honorary chairman emerita for many years prior to her death. Besides its parent company, graduates of JKO have found employment in various companies, such as National Ballet of Canada, The Royal Ballet, Joffrey Ballet and Dutch National Ballet. Stella Abrera became the school's interim artistic director for a year, starting in August 2022, following Cynthia Harvey's departure in May.
Steven Libman is a nationally recognized performing arts executive known for leading major orchestra, dance and theatre companies and performing arts centers with an emphasis on classical music and jazz. Currently, Libman is the President & Chief Executive Officer for the Jacksonville Symphony. His career spans more than three decades and he has previously served as the Managing Director or Chief Executive Officer for the Pittsburgh Ballet, La Jolla Playhouse and The Palladium at the Center for the Performing Arts. He has also served as the chief advancement officer for the Atlanta Ballet. He is also a public speaker and was the co-host and co-founder of "The Voice of the Performing Arts," a weekly public radio show devoted to the importance of arts education.
Greensboro Ballet is a professional ballet company in North Carolina. It is the only ballet company in the Piedmont Triad. It is one of the few non-profit ballet companies in North Carolina. Greensboro Ballet has presented works by George Balanchine. The company also has performed a number of works made especially for the Greensboro Ballet by Rick McCullough, Jill Eathorne Bahr, Leslie Jane Pessemier, Elissa Minet Fuchs, and Emery LeCrone. Maryhelen Mayfield, who served as artistic and executive director of Greensboro Ballet from 1980 to 2019, choreographed over twenty-five works for the company.
Stella Abrera is a Filipina-American ballet dancer. She danced as a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre until her retirement in 2020, and is the company's first Filipina principal ballerina. She then became the artistic director of the dance cultural park Kaatsbaan, and in September 2022 took up the role of artistic director of the ABT JKO School. following Cynthia Harvey's departure in May.
Patricia Wilde was a Canadian-born ballerina and dance instructor. She was a principal ballerina of New York City Ballet, where she danced every major role in the repertoire, many of them created especially for her by George Balanchine. Following her retirement from NYCB, she became a famed ballet mistress and teacher. In 1982, she was appointed artistic director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre where she served until 1997. She is a recipient of the Dance Magazine Award and the 56th Inductee into the National Museum of Dance Hall of Fame. Her biography Wilde Times: Patricia Wilde, George Balanchine and the Rise of New York City Ballet, by Joel Lobenthal was published in 2015 by the University Press of New England.
Leon Falk Jr. was a steel company executive and philanthropist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Falk was involved in the founding of several arts and cultural institutions in the Pittsburgh area, notably the University of Pittsburgh's Falk Clinic, Falk Laboratory School, the Pittsburgh Playhouse, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater and the Chancellor's Residence for the University of Pittsburgh.
Loti Falk Gaffney was an art philanthropist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
