Press

" 'In Dreams'... is distinctive, touching, and ambiguous."
Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times
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"Steven McMahon's The Wizard of Oz: There's No Place Like Home is something to celebrate"

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Ballet Memphis’s annual thematic programming includes the AbunDANCE and Connections series as well as the FUSE partnership across other artistic disciplines. The acclaimed AbunDANCE series, which just finished its fourth installment, celebrates new ways to look at the world around us. In past seasons, AbunDANCE has taken fans on a journey through religion, art, and music. In the 2010/2011 season, AbunDANCE celebrated the influential roles women play in society with four works inspired by or created by women in a season titled Where the Girls Are 2. The Connections series, which includes the company’s annual gala event Connections: Food, pairs the art of dance with the essential elements of life that surround us, support us and engage us in everyday life. From architecture to fashion to the earth and sky, and of course food, Ballet Memphis shows the world how these integral parts of life are intrinsically artistic expressions as well.

In addition to its mixed repertory programs, Ballet Memphis also presents story ballets, often retold and choreographed anew with reflections of modern-day themes. Most recently, the company staged Sleeping Beauty, choreographed by company member Travis Bradley as well as a new Wizard of Oz and Cinderella, choreographed by Steven McMahon, a company member as well as the company’s choreographic associate. The company’s original and majestic Nutcracker has been performed in part on university campuses and regional theatres across the southeast as well as to a full orchestra in Spokane, Washington. In the 2010/2011 season, McMahon’s version of Romeo & Juliet closed out the company’s mainstage shows.

Choreographers who have created works on Ballet Memphis include Julia Adam (current artistic associate), Trey McIntyre (resident choreographer from 2001-07), Mark Godden, Dana Tai Soon Burgess, Jane Comfort, Lila York, Robert Battle, Thaddeus Davis, and Emily Coates and Lacina Coulibaly, both of whom worked with Ballet Memphis as part of dance fusion exploration supported in part by the World Performance Project at Yale University.

The company has performed to critical acclaim in New York at both the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse and the Joyce Theater. Its performances as part of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ “Ballet Across America” programming were heralded in the New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as in national dance media. Ballet Memphis has performed at Houston’s Dance Salad, Spring to Dance in St. Louis, and Canada’s Festival des Arts Saint-Sauveur. With tour support awarded from the National Dance Project (a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts), the company will be presented in eight states in four different regions in the 2011/12 season including: The Duncan Theatre at Palm Beach State College; the Carpenter Center in Long Beach, CA; McKendree University in Lebanon, IL; Hammons Hall in Springfield, MO; and at the inaugural season at the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, IN.

The company has been profiled and reviewed in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, PBS Newshour, Dance magazine, Pointe magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. Ballet Memphis has garnered national attention through “Creating Work That Matters: Memphis Choreographs to the Soul of a City,” part of The Ford Foundation’s The Business of the Arts monograph series, and What Works: A Dance of Relevance by Jocelyn Dong, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business Social Innovation Review, Winter 2004.

Ballet Memphis is housed in a national architectural award-winning facility in suburban Memphis. The company performs at the state-of-the-art Playhouse on the Square, the historic Orpheum Theatre and at other nontraditional venues around Memphis. The company also performs for and presents teaching artist sessions to more than 15,000 students annually. The Ballet Memphis School trains more than 700 students annually, with almost 40 percent on merit- or need-based scholarships. Performance and choreographic experience is provided through the Junior Company of Ballet Memphis. A stand-alone Pilates Centre in suburban Memphis, as well as classes at the company’s studios, serves more than 300 clients annually. The combined programs of Ballet Memphis–professional company, school and Pilates Centre–serve more than 75,000 people annually.

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Biography

Pugh is a Fellow and the only Memphian in the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). She has received the Gordon Holl Outstanding Arts Administrator’s Award and the Women of Achievement Award for Initiative. In 2007, she received a fellowship to Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business to study at the Center for Non-Profit Innovation. In 2009, she helped spearhead an arts initiative by the Greater Memphis Chamber called “Investing in Inspiration.” She also serves on the board of the Greater Memphis Chamber.

Under Dorothy’s direction and leadership, Ballet Memphis has received numerous accolades including a $1 million New Directions/New Donors for the Arts grant from the Ford Foundation, a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a network of national and local thinking partners to explore the future of mid-sized American ballet companies, and a National Dance Project production grant in support of a new work by dancetheater choreographer Jane Comfort and Grammy-winning composer and musician Kirk Whalum.

Dorothy is a native Memphian and began her ballet training with Edith Royal of Orlando, Fla., and later studied with Louise Rooke and Memphis Concert Ballet. After graduating cum laude from Vanderbilt University, she studied with Raymond Clay and Donna Carver and performed with Dance Concert Theatre. She completed teacher-training courses at the Royal Academy of Dance in London and with noted New York ballet master David Howard. She retired from the stage 1991. She is married to Robert L. Pugh, a former associate professor in the psychiatry department at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. He currently is in private practice. They have two grown daughters.

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Repertory

Coming soon...

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