Los Angeles Ballet photo gallery presents a complete suite of season performance photos beginning with LAB’s inaugural season in 2005. Los Angeles Ballet performance photographer: Reed Hutchinson Media Gallery / 2015/2016 Photo Gallery / 2015/2016 Photo Gallery Giselle The Nutcracker Don Quixote Romeo & Juliet

Now is the perfect time to secure your seats for the season!  With a subscription, you’ll lock in your pricing and enjoy exclusive benefits. Opening Night Series / Opening Night Series (Available Shortly) Series A SELECT The Nutcracker Dec. 1, 2023 – 8:00 PM Pasadena Civic Auditorium Next Steps Mar. 22, 2024 – 7:30 PM The Broad Stage Firebird & Serenade May 11, 2024 – 7:30 PM Pasadena Civic Auditorium Start Now Select Venue

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Los Angeles Ballet presents a company of outstanding dancers from local communities and around the world. LAB dance artists master classical as well as contemporary techniques. Marco Biella Hometown Cremona, Italy Seasons with LAB 4 Seasons with LAB Marco graduated from the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg in 2021, where he performed with the Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow in classics such as Coppélia and Sleeping Beauty . He was awarded a full scholarship to join the Miami City Ballet pre-professional program. During his time in Miami, he performed frequently with Miami City Ballet in renowned productions such as George Balanchine’s Jewels and Prodigal Son , and Alexei Ratmansky’s Swan Lake . He also appeared with Miami City Ballet School, where he danced as a principal in Balanchine’s Western Symphony . Among his favorite featured roles performed with the Los Angeles Ballet are “Elegy Boy” in George Balanchine’s Serenade , Belles Lettres by Justin Peck, and Frank Bridge Variations by Hans van Manen.

As a Los Angeles Ballet donor, you join a community of people who help us to bring exceptional ballets to the stage and support the transcendent art form of ballet so that it can be shared with and enjoyed by as many people as possible. Your support will go wherever it is needed most—helping sustain performances, education programs, community access, and artistic growth across the organization. Giving Giving / Support All That We Do Join the community of donors who keep Los Angeles Ballet on stage. As a Los Angeles Ballet donor, you join a community of people who help us bring exceptional ballets to the stage and support the transcendent art form of ballet so that it can be shared with and enjoyed by as many people as possible. Your support goes wherever it is needed most — sustaining performances, education programs, community access, and artistic growth across the organization. GIVE NOW Targeted Ways to Make a Difference Throughout the year, Los Angeles Ballet offers focused giving opportunities that support artistic excellence, accessibility, education, and the creative community. Each campaign supports a vital part of LAB's work, from the stage to the community. Pointe Shoe Campaign Supports Los Angeles Ballet's artists by underwriting the most essential resource that enables artistic excellence on stage. Pointe shoes are not a costume — they are the foundation of every performance. Every LAB ballerina uses at least 40 pairs of pointe shoes each season at nearly $200 per pair — a company investment of $150,000 annually. GIVE NOW Sensory‑Friendly The Nutcracker Campaign Expands inclusive access to dance by supporting Los Angeles Ballet's Sensory-Friendly The Nutcracker. With guidance from community partner The Autism Society of Los Angeles, this performance is specially adapted to create a more comfortable and accessible environment for individuals with autism, sensory sensitivities, or other cognitive or social challenges, as well as their families. GIVE NOW Education Outreach Campaign Sustains Los Angeles Ballet’s education and community engagement programs, bringing high‑quality dance experiences to students and underserved communities. Our signature programs — A Chance to Dance , which provides free classes in residency in schools and at our home studios, and Power of Performance (POP!) , which gives 10% of tickets to every performance for free (a value of $300,000) to community organizations serving underserved communities across LA County — are at the heart of this work. GIVE NOW Los Angeles Ballet Orchestra Fund Support the power of live performance through the Los Angeles Ballet Orchestra Fund. Your gift helps bring world-class musicians and dancers together onstage, elevating the artistic experience for audiences while sustaining professional orchestral musicians in Los Angeles. Live music transforms ballet from performance into an unforgettable experience. GIVE NOW Membership Circles Become a Member of Los Angeles Ballet. Membership Circles are LAB's community of annual donors who enjoy exclusive access to studio rehearsals, artist conversations, and intimate events alongside the company. VIEW MEMBERSHIP LEVELS Contact to Join Questions? Let's talk. Olivia O'Connor Director of Development (310) 477-7411 ext 1006 oloconnor@losangelesballet.org Tax Information Los Angeles Ballet is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Tax ID #20-1819852 All gifts are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. Photo Credits Pointe Shoe Campaign, Photo by Robert Ballantyne Sensory-Friendly The Nutcracker Campaign, Photo by Cheryl Mann Photography Education Outreach Campaign, Photo by Mary Katherine Leslie Space Residency Program Campaign, Photo by Mary Katherine Leslie

Los Angeles Ballet first danced “Giselle” in its fifth season. Now, at the start of Season 10, it has returned to the full-length Romantic tragedy with great freshness and authority. Home / News / New Item Review: Missteps aside, Los Angeles Ballet brings new life to 'Giselle' October 4, 2015 Los Angeles Times by Lewis Segal Los Angeles Ballet first danced “Giselle” in its fifth season. Now, at the start of Season 10, it has returned to the full-length Romantic tragedy with great freshness and authority. At the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center on Saturday, the level of classical dancing remained praiseworthy, but the big news involved the attempt to bolster the work’s dramatic credibility in Act 1. The unfamiliar Desmond Heeley scenery and costumes (borrowed from the National Ballet of Canada) and the unusually detailed and convincing portrayal of the jealous Hilarion by Alexander Castillo showed that this traditional staging of “Giselle” was being reconsidered or improved. In the title role, longtime principal Allyssa Bross again displayed a touching sweetness and vulnerability in her early scenes, but the superb fierceness and fury of her mad scene proved a welcome innovation. As Albrecht, Kenta Shimizu always partnered her skillfully, but the passion in his performance flowered in Act 2, where his high Romantic fervor exceeded anything I’ve seen in Shimizu’s seven seasons with the company. Julia Cinquemani and Dustin True brought a sense of occasion and honed technical abilities to the Peasant Pas de Deux, along with a brilliant knack for recovering perfectly from slips -- she at the beginning of a solo, he at the end. Indeed, True’s improvisation could well become an original virtuoso step-combination, if he can repeat it. A few small problems remained in Act 1: Berthe’s incomprehensible pantomime-speech, for example -- not how it was executed by company co-artistic director Colleen Neary, but the mime-text itself. In Act 2 the company’s refined classicism couldn’t offset major dramatic lapses. Kate Highstrete’s technically flawless but small-scaled dancing and mime as Myrtha never dominated the stage, the corps or the men intended to be her victims. The role needed a diva, and it didn’t help that everyone stood around doing nothing in particular when Myrtha’s evil power should have faltered in the face of true love -- or the magic of the cross in some stagings. What’s more (spoiler alert), the dawn of Albrecht’s salvation became merely a music cue in this version, without the change in lighting or corps attack that can and should be thrilling. One final disappointment: our last look at Albrecht. When you’re walking away from love beyond the grave, dignity is no substitute for heartbreak. That left Act 2 all about footwork: satisfying work by the corps, even better when the deep rapport between Bross and Shimizu informed their dancing. Some of Adolphe Adam’s music (on tape) seemed a mite slow for this spirited Giselle. It would be exciting to find her exploiting sudden tempo shifts. But her floating pointe-work and Shimizu’s climactic batterie set the seal on an evening that sent Los Angeles Ballet into an ambitious season of full-length classics, boldly and confidently. ---------- “Giselle” Who: Los Angeles Ballet Where: Program repeats at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 24 at the Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale, and at 2 p.m. Nov. 1 at Royce Hall at UCLA Tickets: $31-$99 Info: (310) 998-7782, losangelesballet.org READ ARTICLE AT SOURCE

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Still, it seemed some local dance fans remained wary of the new company, which had adopted the same moniker as so many other upstarts that showed promise, but quickly fizzled out. Home / News / New Item BCBGMAXAZRIA and Los Angeles Ballet Partner for an Exclusive Event December 30, 2010 Company News from the Staff at LAB Allyssa Bross danced the title role with appealing sweetness and vulnerability. She made her mad scene nuanced and sparked with creepiness, and if she had some unsteadiness in her ghostly extended balances, she more than compensated elsewhere with poise.

Los Angeles Ballet is excited to unveil LAB’s 2014/2015 season, which includes the Tchaikovsky Trilogy, with three full-length ballets featuring the music of Peter Tchaikovsky, plus a mixed bill program of contemporary masterworks. Home / News / New Item 2014/2015 Season Announced June 1, 2014 Company News from the Staff at LAB Los Angeles Ballet is excited to unveil LAB’s 2014/2015 season, which includes the Tchaikovsky Trilogy, with three full-length ballets featuring the music of Peter Tchaikovsky, plus a mixed bill program of contemporary masterworks. Swan Lake will open the season in October 2014, followed by LAB's acclaimed production of The Nutcracker. Closing out the Tchaikovsky Trilogy in February/March 2015 will be The Sleeping Beauty, a World Premiere choreographed by LAB Co-Artistic Directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary. In May/June 2015, Christensen and Neary will present Directors' Choice, contemporary and classical pieces to challenge and delight dancers and audience alike, including Balanchine's Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2.

Unlike certain 20th-century artists who found themselves miserable in Hollywood — F. Scott Fitzgerald comes to mind — George Balanchine was fond of the place in the 1930s. Home / News / New Item Balanchine's Palm-Fringed Muse May 17, 2013 New York Times by Victoria Looseleaf LOS ANGELES — Unlike certain 20th-century artists who found themselves miserable in Hollywood — F. Scott Fitzgerald comes to mind — George Balanchine was fond of the place in the 1930s. He loved the orange groves, Romanoff’s glamorous boîte and choreographing dances for movies. But after founding New York City Ballet with Lincoln Kirstein in 1948, the man who changed America’s dancescape became synonymous with the East Coast. Now, 30 years after his death, Mr. Balanchine is having another West Coast moment, through the prism of different ballet troupes. The Balanchine repertory is standard fare for the Los Angeles Ballet, founded in 2006 by the husband-and-wife team of Colleen Neary and Thordal Christensen. Yet this year, having grown to 35 dancers from 21, with an annual operating budget to $2.5 million, the directors felt the time was right for a full-fledged Balanchine Festival. The festival, which opened in March, is presenting seven works over four months. The remaining performances in the second and final installment, featuring “La Valse,” “Agon” and “Rubies,” will be presented at three theaters in May and June. The latter two works, set to Stravinsky, are also part of the program for July in Grand Park, in line with the Los Angeles Music Center’s yearlong Stravinsky celebration “Balanchine loved this city,” Ms. Neary said in an interview, “and it is my wish that the passion he felt in his work is given to L.A. in these programs.” Ms. Neary, 60, first met Balanchine as an 8-year-old student at the School of American Ballet, the official school of New York City Ballet. She joined City Ballet in 1969 and was a soloist from 1975 to 1979. In 1985 the George Balanchine Trust authorized her to teach and stage his ballets. Ms. Neary says she feels a responsibility to the choreographer, who created more than 400 works. “It’s my job to help dancers get to know him,” she said during a rehearsal break at the company’s Westside headquarters. “It’s not only teaching steps he taught us, and the intention, but also the ballets’ different styles. One thing I always say he told us is, ‘You shouldn’t save anything — you should give all your energies to what you’re doing now.’ ” On a recent afternoon in the Los Angeles Ballet’s 12,000-square-foot studios, Ms. Neary scrutinized her dancers, who range in age from 19 to 31, as they rehearsed the fiendishly difficult steps of “La Valse,” a 1951 ballet about death set to Ravel’s work.“Don’t bounce, glide,” Ms. Neary urged Allyssa Bross, the female lead in white, while Mr. Christensen, 47, leapt onto a chair to observe the unsettling funereal circling in the finale. Ms. Neary and Mr. Christensen’s 28-year partnership has included dancing with City Ballet, and their exchanges in the studio veer from detail-oriented simpatico to the occasionally prickly. “She’s been my boss, and I’ve been hers,” he said, “but because we know each other so well, there’s a certain aesthetic we try to pull from the dancers together.” Renae Williams Niles, the Music Center’s vice president for programming, suggested in an interview that promoting Balanchine’s legacy is strategically smart for a young dance company seeking a bigger profile. “When I think of Balanchine here, I think of Colleen, one of our local treasures,” she said. Preconcert talks are also part of the Balanchine Festival, and they help to shed light on the time he spent in Southern California. Audiences learn that Balanchine adored the climate, food markets and movie culture of Los Angeles, where he choreographed five films, all featuring Vera Zorina, then his wife, from 1938 to 1944. For the first, “The Goldwyn Follies” (1938), he worked with the composer Vernon Duke, a friend who wrote music for the “Water Nymph Ballet,” a Botticelli-esque sequence in which Ms. Zorina rose from a pool. The sequence is said to have been beloved by Samuel Goldwyn, the film’s producer. Hollywood also proved congenial for Mr. Balanchine’s collaborations with Stravinsky, with whom he worked on some 40 pieces over the years. Conversing in their native Russian over many a meal, the pair worked on masterpieces like “Orpheus,” which had its premiere in 1948 with Maria Tallchief. Another Los Angeles troupe seeking to lay claim to part of Balanchine’s legacy is the American Contemporary Ballet, now in its second season. The 10-member company is directed by the choreographer Lincoln Jones, a native Angeleno who returned here in 2010 after spending seven years performing and teaching in New York. While laying the groundwork for forming the company, he spent hours devouring all things Balanchine at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. “Dance is fairly limited as a storytelling medium, but as a musical one that works in a visual realm, it’s unlimited,” Mr.Jones said in an interview. “It was Balanchine’s realization of this — and his development of its musical vocabulary, aside from the works themselves — that was his greatest contribution.” Mr. Jones said he was drawn back to Los Angeles by its widening classical music scene. He took along his muse, the ballerina Theresa Farrell, who is now the company’s associate director; seeking to expand the audience for dance, they soon paired with Da Camera Society, a group that was founded four decades ago and performs chamber music at historic sites. Its top musicians accompanied American Contemporary Ballet last year when it gave its first concerts — two instrumental works interspersed with a pair of dances — in a warehouse in the city’s mid-Wilshire area. Next month four more concerts are scheduled over two nights. “The fact that they’re so good and just getting started, I feel I owe it to the art of dance to help build whatever I can,” said Martin Chalifour, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s principal concertmaster, who donates his time to performing with the troupe. “Lincoln caters to the complexities of the musical score and, like Balanchine, that’s his inspiration. Music transports you, and when you augment that with beautiful dance, it becomes a unique sensory experience.” Another troupe with Balanchine ties is the Barak Ballet, founded by Melissa Barak, a Los Angeles native who danced with New York City Ballet for nine years. For now, no Balanchine works are planned for the ballet’s inaugural concert in October, she said, “but my choreography is influenced by him, and I’d like to think he may have seen something special in me.” While Los Angeles has metamorphosed into a sprawl-to-the-wall metropolis since Balanchine walked its palm treelined streets, his spirit lives on here for these choreographers. “When we’re teaching and talking about him, Mr. B is with us,” Ms. Neary said. “I believe that.” DOWNLOAD PDF

Nipper has had an admittedly stunted childhood. By age 5, he had enjoyed only the first halves of "Peter Pan," "Annie" and "Dr. Doolittle." Home / News / New Item The short set: baby's first 'Nutcracker' December 13, 2007 Los Angeles Times by Los Angeles Times Nipper has had an admittedly stunted childhood. By age 5, he had enjoyed only the first halves of "Peter Pan," "Annie" and "Dr. Doolittle." One day he'll discover there's more to these popular stage musicals, maybe learn a little something about closure, but during his fidgety post-toddler years I had no qualms about bursting into applause as the curtain came down for intermission, gleefully exclaiming, "Wasn't that great?!" and then hurrying both of us to the exit. But he's 6 now, so I decided it was time to test his limits with "The Nutcracker." We went with the Los Angeles Ballet, mounting its well-received "Nutcracker" (pictured) for the second year. Would we make it to intermission without the boredom squirmies? Was there a chance of seeing an actual ending? Between the youngsters in Victorian costumes, flamboyant Uncle Drosselmeyer and a lissome Clara, Nipper was transfixed until intermission. (Full disclosure: A scrumptious $2 brownie bridged the gap.) Act 2 held new wonderments, including a Mother Giger perched atop her movable gingerbread house like a cheery Bride of Frankenstein, and fine displays of athletic prowess by the Spanish, Arabian and Russian dancers. When Nipper finally witnessed his first true ending, he applauded like he was related to the Sugarplum Fairy. "I want to see it every year until I'm a skeleton" came his review from the back seat on the drive home. His favorite part? "The fight between the Mouse King and the Nutcracker." His least favorite part: "When it ended." On the car stereo came Emerson Lake & Palmer's overwrought, manic prog-rock version of the Nutcracker theme. Nipper was appalled. "Turn that off!" he ordered. "That's not what Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky wanted us to hear!" Ilyich? Guess the kid is all grown up. For the Nutcracker mother lode, go to theguide.latimes.com. READ ARTICLE AT SOURCE

Los Angeles Ballet Co-Artistic Directors Colleen Neary and Thordal Christensen have been honored with the McCallum Theatre Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. Home / News / New Item LAB Co-Artistic Directors Receive Lifetime Achievement Award November 1, 2012 McCallum Theatre Los Angeles Ballet Co-Artistic Directors Colleen Neary and Thordal Christensen have been honored with the McCallum Theatre Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. Previous recipients of this award include Julie McDonald, of MSA Agency, Nigel Lythgoe, and Lula Washington. The award will be presented at the 15th Annual Dance Under the Stars Choreography Festival on Saturday, November 10, 2012. To attend the Festival and learn more, visit McCallum Theatre's website. READ ARTICLE AT SOURCE