I work for a ballet company and we are approaching the 25th anniversary of our artistic director, who is female. We are wanting to celebrate and recognize her as one of few female artistic directors. I am searching for any statistics on this topic. Thanks.

I'm not aware of such a piece of research, so you may have to compile a list yourself, but our readers can help you.

You might want to define what you mean by a "ballet company". That is minimum size, recognition etc. For instance, I assume you do not want to include companies attached to dance schools, but you might want to include local, professional companies.

To start with, there's England's Royal Ballet (AD: Monica Mason) and the Paris Opera Ballet (Director of Dance: Brigitte Lefevre).

Here are some links to lists of dance companies:

Amy Reusch's Dance Links

The Open Directory Project

My 2 cents worth:

Karen Brown - Oakland Ballet
Lauren Jonas - Diablo Ballet
Dinna Bjørn - Finnish National Ballet

Past and present? It's true that the definition of ballet company is important too.

There was also Maina Gielgud (Australian Ballet), Violette Verdy (Paris Opera), Virginia Williams and then Anna Marie Holmes too (Boston Ballet), Jane Herman (was she artistic director briefly? at ABT), Marcia Haydee (Stuttgart Ballet), Marian Sarstadt (NDT I), Maguy Marin (Lyon Opera Ballet), Pat Wilde (Pittsburgh Ballet), Maria Tallchief (Chicago City Ballet), Valerie Wilder and Lynn Wallis (National Ballet of Canada)

And lest we forget, Julia Moon (Universal Ballet), Francia Russell (Pacific Northwest co-director), Victoria Morgan (Cincinnati Ballet)

Of course, you open it up to contemporary modern, and then there are a lot of them, but classical ballet has fewer women directors.

<small>[ 15 April 2004, 02:07 PM: Message edited by: mehunt ]</small>

Oh yeah, and how could I forget? Alicia Alonso (Ballet NAcional de Cuba).

Also Toni Pimble (Eugene Ballet), and Carla Fracci, then later ElizabetH Terrabust (La Scala), and Mary Day (Washington Ballet).

Here in the UK and going back a bit there was Ninette de Valois (RB); Marie Rambert (Ballet Rambert); Beryl Grey (Festival Ballet a.k.a. ENB)and Galina Samsova of Scottish Ballet.

What about the very talented Francia Russell?

Francia Russell from Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle Washington, but you already knew that!

Current
Madeleine Onne - Royal Swedish Ballet

Past
Maina Gielgud - Royal Danish Ballet
Jane Hermann, Lucia Chase - ABT

There was a woman who briefly was head of the Houston Ballet prior to Ben Stevenson. I believe she was Russian, but I'm not positive.

Kate

That was Nina Popova, their founding Artistic Director. Immediately prior to Stevenson's tenure, the interim AD was James Clouser.

<small>[ 15 April 2004, 12:27 PM: Message edited by: salzberg ]</small>

Rebecca Harkness, Harkness Ballet, Celia Franca National Ballet of Canada and Alicia Markova Metropolitan Opera Ballet.

<small>[ 15 April 2004, 01:13 PM: Message edited by: Lucy ]</small>

Suzanne Farrell

Marie Hale

Ruth Page