Victor Barbee

Victor Barbee was born in Raleigh, North Carolina and received his ballet training at the North Carolina School of the Arts and the School of American Ballet. He joined the American Ballet Theatre in April 1975. Barbee was promoted to soloist in 1979 and to Principal Dancer in 1984. He became Assistant to the Artistic Staff in 1994, Ballet Master in 1997, and Associate Artistic Director in 2001, a position he held until becoming Associate Artistic Director of The Washington Ballet in 2016.

Barbee’s repertoire with American Ballet Theatre included more than 100 ballets. He performed Principal roles in numerous major classical ballets including Swan Lake, La Bayadere, Le Corsaire, Coppelia, Don Quixote, La Fille Mal Gardee, The Merry Widow, La Sylphide, Raymonda, Anastasia, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Manon. He also created roles for numerous choreographers, including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Agnes DeMille, Antony Tudor, Twyla Tharp, Alexei Ratmansky, John Neumeier, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, and David Parsons, among many others.

Barbee made his musical comedy debut on Broadway in Woman of the Year,  playing the role of Alexi Petrikov, opposite Raquel Welch and co-starred with Bernadette Peters in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song and Dance. He also guest-starred in the television series Hart to Hart and Laverne and Shirley, and appeared in the films The Turning Point and Dancers.