Eric is a seasoned box office operations & ticketing management professional who first began as a Ticket Seller with AEG/Staples Center in 2008 and was soon promoted within AEG to Manager, Box Office Operations at the formerly named Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE (now Peacock Theater) in Los Angeles. He has had further box office and ticketing management leadership roles with AEG and the Los Angeles Clippers, gaining valuable management and guest experience knowledge that he has applied to his role as LAB’s Box Office Manager since 2022. Home / Staff / Administrator Eric Gonzalez Director of Box Office Operations Eric is a seasoned box office operations & ticketing management professional who first began as a Ticket Seller with AEG/Staples Center in 2008 and was soon promoted within AEG to Manager, Box Office Operations at the formerly named Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE (now Peacock Theater) in Los Angeles. He has had further box office and ticketing management leadership roles with AEG and the Los Angeles Clippers, gaining valuable management and guest experience knowledge that he has applied to his role as LAB’s Box Office Manager since 2022.

Los Angeles Ballet is the latest company to attempt success against long odds. We wish it well. Home / News / New Item Get the 'pointe' November 26, 2006 Los Angeles Times from the Staff of the LA Times Los Angeles Ballet is the latest company to attempt success against long odds. We wish it well. Of course we're rooting for the new Los Angeles Ballet, which will debut December 2, at the Wilshire Theatre with a production of (what else?) "The Nutcracker. " Still, it's hard to ignore the historical odds against ballet in the L.A. area. The company may begin with the graceful aarabesque of Clara, but we have to brace ourselves for the thud of "Swan Lake's" Odette dumped to the floor during the pas de deux by a feckless Siefried we call "the public." Locally based ballet has been tutu scarce in Southern California. This remains the only U.S. megopolis without a top-tier classical company, despite well-ranked ballet schools that churn out world-class dancers. There have been at least five attempts to launch a premier company in the last decade, and all of them flopped – in one case, owning large sums of money to its dancers. L.A. Ballet – it even rhymes! – seems like a natural for a dynamic metropolitan area with such a love for arts new and old (including an otherwise lively dance scene). It's always been puzzling that we haven't support a world-raned company. But the survival of an elite adn expensive art form is tricky anywhere. Chicago's renowned 50-year old Joffrey Ballet, whose part-time residence in L.A. during the 1980's didn't work out either. Even superstar Ethan Stiefel couldn't bring in the big bucks when he spent a tour as artistic director of Ballet Pacifica, a small Irvine-based company he had hoped to take regional. Now two notable ballet dancers, Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary, are putting their best slippers forward as artistic directors. Their L.A. Ballet will be affiliated with the respected Westside School of Ballet and make its premanent home at th Malibu Performing Arts Center. In a canny move, its version of "The Nutcracker " will be performed at three venues around the county, hoping to draw views by chopping their commutes. None of the locations are with L.A.'s city limits, but there's time to build toward that. The main issue is whether Southern California will provide enough cash and audience to sustain this latest effort. Perhaps some of the major centers of money in town, such as Hollywood, will see the value in supporting the performing arts. It would help L.A. Ballet delivers the goods, and if ballet fans buy tickets. Then, perhaps, L.A. will be ready for a major jeté forwards in the arts. DOWNLOAD PDF

Nearly 9,000 Angelenos applauded LAB's The Nutcracker last month at 9 performances at UCLA's Royce Hall, Glendale's historic Alex Theatre, and Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. Home / News / New Item Los Angeles embraces Los Angeles Ballet's The Nutcracker January 1, 2008 Company News from the Staff at LAB

A few weeks ago, as I sat in Walt Disney Concert Hall for a concert by the New York Philharmonic, I mused to my companion that – in our 60s – we were some of the youngest people there. That isn’t news. But this is: the much-lamented “graying” of the audience for classical music, opera and dance seems to have missed Los Angeles Ballet. Home / News / New Item Los Angeles Ballet's "NextWaveLA" May 31, 2012 CultureSpotLA by Penny Orloff May 31, 2012 | By Penny Orloff Category: Theater and Dance A few weeks ago, as I sat in Walt Disney Concert Hall for a concert by the New York Philharmonic, I mused to my companion that – in our 60s – we were some of the youngest people there. That isn’t news. But this is: the much-lamented “graying” of the audience for classical music, opera and dance seems to have missed Los Angeles Ballet. I looked around the lobby of Santa Monica’s Broad Stage as the audience assembled for the final performance of LAB’s “NextWaveLA,” a program of four – count ’em, four – world premieres by some of the brightest lights in contemporary dance. The presence of a few other silverhaired old dames kept me from feeling completely out of place among a vociferous throng largely composed of teens and 20-somethings, madly twittering on smartphones. LAB’s artistic directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary have commissioned new works in every year of the company’s six-year existence. Two years ago, they offered “NewWaveLA” – a wildly successful program of four world premieres. Attracting hordes of young dance aficionados weaned on TV dance shows, the sold-out shows necessitated adding performances to accommodate the demand for tickets. Capitalizing on that success, this season Christensen and Neary presented a similar production featuring pieces by Kitty McNamee, Sonya Tayeh, Josie Walsh and Stacey Tookey. “NextWaveLA” opened with McNamee’s “Colony,” to music of Anna Clyne. This mesmerizing work utilizes traditional elements of classical ballet in surprisingly unique combinations. A large, synchronous group moves in disciplined lines and circles, giving way to a quasi-traditional pas de deux… singly or in pairs or trios, characters conform to the group or risk ostracism. Six-year LAB veteran Kelly Ann Sloan offers a fiercely dramatic performance reminiscent of her brilliant work in LAB’s third-season “The Evangelist.” Woven through and beyond McNamee’s piece is a melancholy statement about the danger of individuality. Conformity may confine and chafe, but, in dancing to the beat of a different drummer, one risks a lonely life outside the safety of the circle. Kudos to McNamee. It takes courage to swim against the tide. “Duets in the act of —” is Tayeh’s third world premiere for LAB. Arguably one of the most innovative of contemporary choreographers, Tayeh uses her highly personal dance vocabulary to illustrate subtle layers of desire, action and memory as four couples explore the universal conflicts of love partnerships, to music of Olafur Arnalds. One gradually senses that each couple represents but one aspect of a single relationship. Company principal ballerina Allyssa Bross contorts in “the act of cold desperation,” struggling to hold on to an indifferent and increasingly repelled lover, danced by Zheng Hua Li. This duet morphs into “the act of artificial seduction,” as Julia Cinquemani manipulates Vincent Adams with an elastic sensuality. The parting lovers – now represented by Molly Flippen and Nicolas de la Vega – briefly remember the good times in an “act of fleeting nostalgia,” before “the act of false ego,” danced by Kate Highstrete (alternating with company principal Allynne Noelle) and Alexander Castillo, ultimitely destroys any chance of reconciliation. Tayeh brings all four couples together in a blazing finale suggestive of her groundbreaking work on the hit TV show, “So You Think You Can Dance.” After an intermission, the curtain opens on “Sirens,” from last year’s LAB choreographic workshop, by returning choreographer Walsh. Formerly an international ballerina, Walsh borrows from the 150-year tradition of the great supernatural Romantic ballets, in which female nature-spirits captivate and charm unsuspecting young men. A master of the narrative story ballet, she imbues every smallest gesture with meaning as she creates a watery matrix where nine Sirens seduce five hapless mariners onto the rocks. This is a highly complex work, and Walsh’s dancers are to be congratulated for superb ensemble work. The women’s corps de ballet exhibit their acclaimed precision and unity throughout; and the men’s ensemble, led by Nicolas de la Vega, is uniformly excellent. Composer Paul Rivera Jr. contributes crashing waves, Siren songs, creaking ship’s timbers and other sound effects woven through a driving, custom-designed rock score. The program ends with Tookey’s “Be Still,” to music of Matthew Banks and Johann Johannsson. Emmy-nominated for her work on “So You Think You Can Dance,” Tookey has synthesized a sui generis style incorporating ballet, jazz and contemporary dance. Largely abstract, her first work for LAB explores the human interaction with Time as both element and concept. “We are always faced with the inevitability of Time running out,” she says in the program notes. “We crave that perfect moment when we’re completely present and time stands still.” Her dancers appear trapped in the inexorable ticking of the clock; legs seem to describe the eternal pendulum; Ben Pilat’s lighting contracts, compressing and squeezing the dancers as the hourglass runs out. Bross, Li and Flippen sustain the dramatic tension of balancing on the razor’s edge of this extraordinary work of art. Highly effective original costumes for all four pieces are by LAB resident designer Kanique Thomas. Pilat’s sensational lighting design emerges as a character in each dance. —Penny Orloff, Culture Spot LA DOWNLOAD PDF

Los Angeles Ballet announces the opening of the Los Angeles Ballet Center, the new home of LAB and the Los Angeles Ballet School. Home / News / New Item Los Angeles Ballet Center Opens June 1, 2008 Company News from the Staff at LAB Los Angeles Ballet announces the opening of the Los Angeles Ballet Center, the new home of LAB and the Los Angeles Ballet School.

While Los Angeles has become a world-class cultural capital with top-notch museums, galleries, opera, symphony orchestra and theaters, it has lagged in one important area - ballet. Home / News / New Item 'Don Quixote’ at the Los Angeles Ballet March 29, 2016 Huffington Post by Hoyt Hilsman While Los Angeles has become a world-class cultural capital with top-notch museums, galleries, opera, symphony orchestra and theaters, it has lagged in one important area - ballet. Despite herculean efforts over the years, ballet companies have struggled and ultimately failed to gain a foothold in Southern California. But all that has changed with the emergence over the past decade of the Los Angeles Ballet company, under the leadership of Artistic Directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary, and Executive Director Julie Whittaker. Operating on a shoestring budget and performing without a permanent home, LA Ballet has managed through dedication and careful planning to establish itself as a vibrant, energetic and professional company on the national ballet scene. By carefully building a talented company over the past ten years, and relying on a core of supporters, LAB has emerged as a bright light of the performing arts in Los Angeles. Its most recent production of Don Quixote, originally choreographed by Marius Pepita for the Bolshoi in 1869 and repurposed by Alexander Gorsky in 1900, was performed for sold-out audiences in various venues around Southern California. As with its other ballet productions, Don Quixote showcased the talented ensemble company at its best, along with several promising soloists who highlighted this engaging ballet. Julia Cinquemani, playing the role of Kitri, is dazzling and charismatic, and her partner Kenta Shimizu is strong and solid in the role of Basilio. Other standout performances included Allyssa Bross, Bianca Bulle, Kate Highstrete and Erik Thordal-Christensen. Directors Neary and Christensen choreograph the piece with precision and grace, lifting both soloists and the corps to a high level of achievement. While Los Angeles Ballet still has work to do in attracting both money and talent to its company, it has wisely stuck to the basics of building a company from the ground up, carefully grooming its performers and engaging an audience for the future. It is already well on its way to fulfilling the mission of creating a world-class ballet company. READ ARTICLE AT SOURCE

Guests came from the worlds of entertainment, finance, healthcare and other industries to a gala at the Bel-Air home of Stephanie Murray in support of Los Angeles Ballet. Home / News / New Item Supporting Los Angeles Ballet October 1, 2009 Company News from the Staff at LAB Guests came from the worlds of entertainment, finance, healthcare and other industries to a gala at the Bel-Air home of Stephanie Murray in support of Los Angeles Ballet. Guests enjoyed dinner in the garden and a performance of "The Evangelist," originally created for Neary and Christensen, and selections from the great choreographer George Balanchine.

On November 5, 2013 Los Angeles Ballet dancers were featured on the Season 5 finale of Face Off, Syfy's special effects make-up competition series. Home / News / New Item Los Angeles Ballet featured on FaceOff Season 5 Finale November 1, 2013 SYFY.com On November 5, 2013 Los Angeles Ballet dancers were featured on the Season 5 finale of Face Off, Syfy's special effects make-up competition series. The final 3 contestants were tasked with creating Swan Lake-inspired looks in which LAB dancers had to perform. See photos of the dancers in the final looks! READ ARTICLE AT SOURCE

Los Angeles Ballet's diverse program forms a robust whole. It's hard enough for dancers trained in different styles of ballet — sometimes in different countries — to form a unified ensemble. Home / News / New Item The new company's diverse dancers form a robust whole in a program of Balanchine and Bournonville. March 17, 2007 Los Angeles Times by Lewis Segal Los Angeles Ballet's diverse program forms a robust whole. It's hard enough for dancers trained in different styles of ballet — sometimes in different countries — to form a unified ensemble. It's harder still to display that unity in the distinctive dance languages of two choreographic masters. Born just four months ago, Los Angeles Ballet passed that test in its first repertory program Thursday at UCLA's Freud Playhouse — maybe not perfectly, maybe not without a pervasive sense of effort, but splendidly enough to make three challenging pieces come alive for a large, enthusiastic audience. Classical Balanchine, contemporary Balanchine and buoyant, Romantic Bournonville all received scrupulous performances in stagings by company artistic directors Colleen Neary (a Balanchine specialist) and Thordal Christensen (an alumnus of Bournonville's Royal Danish Ballet). Whether or not it can survive in our traditionally inhospitable dance landscape, their Los Angeles Ballet is the real thing, a force for many kinds of excellence that deserves the community's attention and support. One could wish that as the company moves from Westwood to Redondo Beach and then to Glendale this month, the dancers might relax into their roles and enjoy their dancing as much as the audience does. It's not a matter of smiles (of which there were plenty Thursday) but of the sense of interpretive freedom within the choreography that only Melissa Barak and a very few others showed opening night. Barak's individual and often spontaneous attacks came in Balanchine's "Concerto Barocco," which always seems to be a showcase for conservative classical purity until you look more closely and see the innovative body-foldings, partnering experiments and other creative wonders that Balanchine devised in 1941 to music by Bach. Mirroring Barak in the outer sections and becoming the work's focus in the central duet, Corina Gill gave a rapt, secure performance, partnered with great nobility by Oleg Gorboulev. Gill and Gorboulev also brought their remarkable ability to deliver a string of choreographic fireworks as one brilliantly sustained phrase to Balanchine's "Agon," an inspired 1957 game of neoclassic one-upmanship played with and against Igor Stravinsky. All fire and ice, whimsical forays into off-balance balance and a modernistic milestone, the choreography can look a lot jauntier than it did Thursday, but Neary's deadpan staging did allow all the non sequiturs to take you by surprise. As with "Concerto Barocco," the company as a whole often managed the complex passages more artfully than the simplest steps, but Lauren Toole endowed both with a serene confidence in her technical control. Sergey Kheylik threw himself into his solo with complete abandon, but neatness definitely counted here, and his wild vivacity proved far more useful in the divertissements from Bournonville's "Napoli." With music by Helsted and Paulli, the celebratory "Napoli" pas de six and tarantella date from 1842, before classical bravura acquired the edge of aggression it gained, for better or worse, in Russia. If "Agon" is consummately spiky and "Concerto Barocco" supremely flowing, this quasi-Italianate showpiece is indomitably fluffy, marked by major shifts in tempo and pressure (to which the company needs greater attention) but always light and genial. On Thursday, exposed balances in extension sometimes proved shaky and terminations not always ideally clean. But it was fascinating to see what elements of Bournonville style attracted the individual soloists and dominated their performances. Guest Rainer Krenstetter of the Berlin Staatsballett had the sparkle, Masahiro Suehara the precision, Gill the sweetness and Toole the calm center. Kheylik, as always, brought invigorating energy to the party. The excerpt also displayed the talents of Peter Snow, Kelly Ann Sloan, Alexandra Blacker, Nancy Richer and Erin RiveraBrennand. Everyone looked yummy in Soren Frandsen's prismatic abstractions of folk costumes and behaved as if an L.A. company dancing a Danish interpretation of Italian folklore was, somehow, natural casting. Taped music accompanied all the pieces on the program. lewis.segal@latimes.com DOWNLOAD PDF

Los Angeles Ballet's Gala 2015 will honor philanthropist Ghada Irani. Home / News / New Item Ghada Irani to be Honored at LAB Gala 2015 January 1, 2015 Company News from the Staff at LAB Los Angeles Ballet's Gala 2015 will honor philanthropist Ghada Irani. In her capacity as a member of the Los Angeles Ballet Board of Directors, Mrs. Irani has been a generous supporter of not only its ballet programs, but also its outreach programs for children, families, low-income seniors, veterans and disabled persons. In addition, she she served as Co-Chair for the Los Angeles Ballet Gala in 2012 and has been a member of the Event Planning Committee for LAB Galas since their inception in 2011. The Los Angeles Ballet Gala 2015 will take place May 7, 2015 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and is chaired by Dina Leeds and Jeanette Trepp. The evening will include cocktails, dining, and a preview performance of master choreographer Jírí Kylián’s Sechs Tänze (Six Dances)

On November 1, 2014, LAB Co-Artistic Director Thordal Christensen announced Julia Cinquemani's promotion from Soloist to Principal Dancer. Home / News / New Item Julia Cinquemani Promoted to Principal Dancer November 1, 2014 Company News from the Staff at LAB On November 1, 2014, LAB Co-Artistic Director Thordal Christensen announced Julia Cinquemani's promotion from Soloist to Principal Dancer. The announcement came minutes after the curtain went down on Julia's debut as Odette/Odile in Los Angeles Ballet's Swan Lake. Julia joined Los Angeles Ballet in 2010 and was promoted to Soloist in March 2013.

Dancing through its first nine seasons, Los Angeles Ballet has bravely tackled one rite of passage after another — not merely the major Balanchine and Bournonville choreographies that are its stylistic birthright but, increasingly, the top-of-the-list, full-length 19th century classics that can leave dancers in any company cruelly exposed. Home / News / New Item L.A. Ballet delivers a classically pure 'Sleeping Beauty' March 30, 2015 Los Angeles Times by Lewis Segal Dancing through its first nine seasons, Los Angeles Ballet has bravely tackled one rite of passage after another — not merely the major Balanchine and Bournonville choreographies that are its stylistic birthright but, increasingly, the top-of-the-list, full-length 19th century classics that can leave dancers in any company cruelly exposed. The latest example: a three-hour “Sleeping Beauty” Sunday afternoon in Royce Hall at UCLA that justified company (and civic) pride both as an index of growth and for sustained achievement. The Royce performance was the final of five performances over the last five weeks. With its tiny morsels of plot and cornucopia of formal dances, “Sleeping Beauty” is a daunting challenge that Marius Petipa, the original choreographer, intended not as a typical Romantic story-ballet but an evocation of a much older theatrical dance tradition. Shared purity of style is essential here, and long before the nominal leading dancers made their first entrances on Sunday, the women who performed short blessing-solos in the first half-hour of the ballet delivered the vibrant yet uninsistent classicism that co-directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary have made into a company signature. What’s more, Christensen and Neary boast backgrounds with the Royal Danish Ballet — long the acknowledged masters of 19th century ballet sign-language — so the vital mime conversations in “Sleeping Beauty” that can look clumsy or even ridiculous when other companies attempt them became utterly natural on Sunday. You try telling people, without speaking, that a baby is going to grow up, be beautiful, dance nicely yet prick her finger on a spindle and die. A lot easier to text it. You might argue that the last act of this version suffers from extensive cuts that leave only classical showpieces, omitting the character and comic specialties that Petipa included for variety. And you might also note that the company’s skimpy male roster definitely needs the guests that have been popping up here and there. A month earlier, at the Valley Performing Arts Center, Luke Schaufuss (son of ballet superstar Peter Schaufuss) danced a raw but powerful Bluebird in the production. And on Sunday, the role of King Florestan gained authority from the great dancing-actor of New York City Ballet, Adam Lüders. Of course, a young company that dances to recorded music in borrowed sets has more to worry about than guests, and, indeed, there were times on Sunday when the slow, canned Tchaikovsky and the cramped Royce Hall stage took their toll. For example, in Act 1 alone the Garland Waltz needed more musical oomph, and Aurora’s solo after the Rose Adagio needed more space in front of the scenery. But that’s about all Julia Cinquemani needed as Aurora. Gifted with a technique that made every high extension seem a major event, she had the unerring balances for the Rose Adagio, the dreamy inaccessibility for the Vision Scene and the radiant star power for the Grand Pas de Deux, all presented with a devastating freshness, as if she might be discovering the role as she danced it. Allyssa Bross displayed many of these same qualities as Aurora on Feb. 28 at the Valley Performing Arts Center, and she ably transferred them to the role of the Lilac Fairy on Sunday, standing up to Neary’s furious Carabosse with dramatic flair. Neary’s special achievement was letting you see how genuinely injured this character felt — deep human emotion clashing with the stylized sweetness surrounding her. Among the men, pride of place incontestably belonged to Kenta Shimizu, the one and only Prince Desire in every company performance. Admittedly he couldn’t do much with his dull, inexpressive I’m-so-lonely choreography in Act 2. But the mime, partnering and sense of urgency in the Vision Scene proved exemplary, and his elegance in the Grand Pas de Deux ideally complemented his Auroras, whether Cinquemani or Bross. Allynne Noelle wasn’t in the cast on Sunday, but at VPAC last month her Lilac Fairy had regal eloquence, and she also danced Aurora during the five-week run. Dustin True made a diligent, low-flying Bluebird opposite Bianca Bulle, who soloed impressively both here and in the first fairy variation of the Prologue. The other fairies and/or jewels included Ashley Millar, Madison McDonough, Chloé Sherman, Elizabeth Claire Walker and Kate Highstrete. Without them, the staging would have lacked credibility as a whole. A “Swan Lake” can thrill you with just a great Prince and Swan Queen, but “Sleeping Beauty” needs classical multitudes — especially sparkling women soloists. Heading toward its 10th season in September, Los Angeles Ballet clearly has them, and they may be sorely tested by the anti-classical modern dance and crossover repertory on their agenda this summer. For a company as ambitious as this one, the rites of passage never stop — and neither does the excitement. David Walker’s scenery for a Boston Ballet production looked ideally sumptuous on the wide stage of Valley Performing Arts Center, but whatever could be accommodated at Royce Hall framed the dancers richly. calendar@latimes.com READ ARTICLE AT SOURCE