Louisville Ballet's Nutcracker in Louisville KY

Louisville Ballet

The Louisville Ballet is a ballet school and company based in Louisville, Kentucky and is the official state ballet of The Commonwealth of Kentucky. It is currently led by Artistic and Executive Director Robert Curran. More than 100,000 people attend the company’s productions annually of which most are accompanied by the Louisville Orchestra. The company performs at three venues in the city, The Brown Theatre, The Kentucky Center, and, rarely, The Louisville Palace.

The Louisville Ballet was founded in 1952 and it achieved professional status and admitted its first students in 1975. It is the only regional company with which Mikhail Baryshnikov has performed in repertoire productions (He danced with the company during the 1978–79 and 1979–80 seasons). The Ballet has more than 60 world premieres to its credit with a repertoire of about 150 pieces choreographed by the likes of Sir Frederick Ashton, Erik Bruhn, George Balanchine, Antony Tudor, John Cranko, Jack Carter, Kurt Jooss, Choo San Goh, Jose Limon, Paul Taylor, David Parsons, Eugene Loring, Saeko Ichinohe and Domy Reiter-Soffer, along with Fokine and Bournonville ballets. The Ballet also presents several full length ballets each year including Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Coppelia, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Giselle and Don Quixote. In addition to the regular subscription series, the Louisville Ballet presents The Nutcracker each holiday season in association with the Brown-Forman Corporation.