Now celebrating its 21st anniversary season, Ballet Memphis is a creative resource to the nation as a maker and interpreter of the South’s cultural legacy through dance, production and training. Artistic Director Dorothy Gunther Pugh founded the company in 1986 as Memphis Concert Ballet with two professional dancers and a budget of $75,000. Today, Ballet Memphis employs 16 professional dancers and has a $3.2 million budget. The company performs at the historic Orpheum Theatre in downtown Memphis, as well as at nontraditional venues throughout the city. Ballet Memphis has performed in Paris, New York, Houston and Quebec. The company also performed as part of the Inside/Out Series at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Mass., and to full houses at the prestigious Joyce Theater in New York for a week in April 2007. Identified by the Ford Foundation as a “national treasure,†Ballet Memphis recently was awarded a grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to explore possible initiatives for redefining midsize ballet companies in the nation. Ballet Memphis also was awarded $100,000 from The Assisi Foundation of Memphis to use toward artistic production for the 2007-2008 season.
