Florida Dance Workshop Competitors

Miami City Ballet is an American ballet company based in Miami Beach, Florida, and led by artistic director Gonzalo Garcia. MCB was founded in 1985 by Miami philanthropist Toby Lerner Ansin with former New York City Ballet principal dancer Edward Villella as founding artistic director. The company flourishes today as one of the world's most respected ballet companies. MCB features an international ensemble of 50 dancers hailing from the United States, Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, China, Switzerland, France, Japan, and Germany. The company has an active repertoire of 88 ballets and performs over 100 times annually including a home season in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, FL. North American appearances include the Kennedy Center, the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and New York City Center; while theaters and festivals in Europe, Central America, South America, and Israel have hosted the company. Among the Company’s notable achievements have been critically-acclaimed performances in Paris and New York City, and the nationally televised PBS special Great Performances. The company operates an elite ballet training academy, the Miami City Ballet School. Approximately 375 students attend the academy during the school year, with 200 accepted to the annual Summer Intensive. In 2012, Lourdes Lopez was chosen as artistic director. Lopez was born in Havana, Cuba and raised in Miami. She was a principal dancer for New York City Ballet for 24 years under George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. After retiring from the stage, she went on to become the executive director of The George Balanchine Foundation and co-founded the innovative dance company Morphoses. In 2014, she was appointed to the board of the Ford Foundation. Find out more about Miami City Ballet at www.miamicityballet.org.

As a top 20 professional ballet organization, Orlando Ballet’s mission is to entertain, educate, and enrich through the highest quality of dance to audiences, professionals, and students from around the world. Offering an annual season of full-length ballets, new works, and non-traditional programs at our performance home, Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, Steinmetz Hall, we include a mix of both classical and contemporary ballet. In addition, our community outreach programs impact tens of thousands of children each year while the Orlando Ballet School, continually ranked Youth America Grand Prix Semi-Finals Outstanding School, serves more than 1,200 students at three locations in and around the city.

The Sarasota Ballet is the Gulf Coast of Florida’s only professional ballet company. In 1987, The Sarasota Ballet was founded by Jean Allenby–Weidner as a presenting organization with the goal of becoming a full resident ballet company, which was achieved in 1990 with the appointment of the first Artistic Director. However it wasn’t until January 2007 that her dream was fully realized, when The Sarasota Ballet announced the appointment of the new Director, Iain Webb. Mr. Webb’s background, experience and close personal relationships with some of the biggest names in dance world have taken The Sarasota Ballet to a higher level of national and international recognition. Together with his wife Margaret Barbieri, Assistant Director and former principal of The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Mr. Webb has introduced one hundred and sixty-three new ballets into the repertoire, including ballets by Sir Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Dame Ninette de Valois, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Antony Tudor, Sir Matthew Bourne, Christopher Wheeldon, Sir David Bintley, Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, Will Tuckett, and Johan Kobborg. Many of these ballets have rarely been seen in America, and never before in Sarasota.