Colorado Ballet
| Colorado Ballet | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| General information | |
| Name | Colorado Ballet |
| Previous names | Colorado Concert Ballet |
| Year founded | 1961 |
| Founders | Freidann Parker and Lillian Covillo |
| Principal venue | Ellie Caulkins Opera House |
| Website | coloradoballet.org |
| Artistic staff | |
| Artistic Director | Gil Boggs |
| Ballet Mistress | Sandra Brown and Lorita Travaglia |
| Music Director | Adam Flatt |
| Other | |
| Orchestra | Colorado Ballet Orchestra |
| Official school | Colorado Ballet Academy |
| Associated schools | Colorado Ballet Academy |
Colorado Ballet encompasses a 30 member professional performing ballet company, a studio company for advanced dance students, an Academy, and an education and outreach department. Based in downtown Denver, Colorado, Colorado Ballet serves more than 100,000 patrons each year.
The professional company performs primarily at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in the Denver Performing Arts Complex and one show each year at the Robert and Judi Newman Center for Performing Arts at the University of Denver. Colorado Ballet performs classical ballets and contemporary works. The Colorado Ballet Orchestra performs with the Company at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, either at three or four productions a year.
With an annual operating budget exceeding $7.3 million, the company employs more than 150 people on either a full-time or part-time basis during the year.
Colorado Ballet received the 2009 Colorado Masterpieces Award. As part of the award, Colorado Ballet toured Colorado in the 2009–2010 season as a part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius initiative, funded by the Colorado Council on the Arts.
During the 2010-2011, Colorado Ballet celebrated its 50th anniversary.
In 2013, Colorado Ballet purchased a building in Denver's Art District on Santa Fe. The company moved to its new location in August 2014.
In 1961, Lillian Covillo and Freidann Parker established Colorado Concert Ballet to showcase talented students they had been teaching at their ballet school. Their first production, The Nutcracker, played to sold-out houses in Denver's Bonfils Theatre. By 1978, Colorado Concert Ballet employed 16 men and women, and had achieved full professional status. The board increased the annual budget to $100,000 and refined the company’s name. In doing so, Colorado Ballet was born. In 1987 Parker and Covillo conducted a nationwide search, at their own expense, for a new artistic director. With their choice of Martin Fredmann, they changed the course of Colorado Ballet.
In the late 1980s, a lagging economy in Denver forced Colorado Ballet to look at an emerging national trend among dance companies and as a result entered into an alliance with Tampa Ballet. Through shared expenses, the alliance enabled the companies to develop an excellent artistic product with reduced financial risk. By 1990, Colorado Ballet achieved greater financial stability and community recognition, so the alliance was discontinued to better enable future growth of the Denver company. The decision reestablished Colorado Ballet as a resident company.
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