About Katy

Ballez Artistic Director Katy Pyle is a genderqueer lesbian choreographer who created Ballez in 2011 to explore their complex relationship to the cis hetero patriarchal form of ballet, and to create possibilities of representation and inclusion for marginalized queer dancers within that form.

Pyle studied ballet since age 3, became an apprentice with Austin Contemporary Ballet at 13, and then left home at 14 to study full-time in the ballet conservatory program at North Carolina School of the Arts, graduating in ’99. Pyle then attended Hollins University and discovered a vast world of performance possibilities, graduating from Hollins University with a BA in Multimedia Performance Art in ’02.

In 2002, Pyle moved to New York City and danced in the companies of Ivy Baldwin, Faye Driscoll, John Jasperse, Xavier Le Roy, Karinne Keithley, Jennifer Monson, Anna Sperber, Katie Workum, and Young Jean Lee. Simultaneously, Pyle created her own work alongside notable collaborators Eleanor Hullihan, Rebecca Brooks and Jules Skloot. Pyle created evening length works: “Salute to Ex-Best Friends,”asubtout (Pyle & Eleanor Hullihan), Galapagos, 2005; “The Lady Centaur Show,” asubtout, PS 122, 2007; “THE WAY: You Make Me Feel,” Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, 2010; and “COVERS,” The Bushwick Starr, 2012

In 2011, Pyle founded the Ballez to return to ballet, and to insert the herstory and lineage of lesbian, queer and transgender people into the ballet canon, through the creation of large-scale story ballets, open classes, and public engagement. Major works, including: “The Firebird, a Ballez,” Danspace Project (2013), “Variations on Virtuosity” American Realness (2015), “Sleeping Beauty & the Beast,” La Mama (2016), and “Slavic Goddesses,” at the Kitchen with Paulina Olowska (January 2017). Pyle has brought Ballez to Yale, Princeton, Sarah Lawrence, NYU, Whitman College, Bowdoin College, Beloit College, and the New School, where they are a faculty member. Ballez has been featured in the NY Times, Dance Magazine, & Teen Vogue, among other publications.