Julie Kent

Julie Kent, Artistic Director of TWB since July 2016, was the longest serving ballerina in American Ballet Theatre’s 77 year history. She began her dance training with Hortensia Fonseca at the Academy of the Maryland Youth Ballet in Bethesda, MD and attended summer sessions at American Ballet Theatre II and the School of American Ballet before joining American Ballet Theatre as an apprentice in 1985. In that same year, Kent won first place in the regional finals of the National Society of Arts and Letters at the Kennedy Center. In 1986, she was the only American to win a medal at the Prix de Lausanne International Ballet Competition, and she became a member of ABT's corps de ballet.

She was appointed a Soloist with ABT in 1990 and a Principal Dancer in 1993, the year in which she won the Erik Bruhn Prize in Toronto and was named one of People Magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People.” In April 2000, Kent won the “Prix Benois de la Danse” and is the only American woman ever to have won this prize. In 2012, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Performing Arts from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts as well as a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from Dance Magazine

In August of 2015, after a 30 year performing career, Kent spent one year as Artistic Director of ABT’s Summer Intensive, a comprehensive summer dance program for 1,400 students, before taking the artistic helm of The Washington Ballet in 2016.