Melissa Barak Heralds a Revolutionary Era in Classical Dance Becoming the New Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Ballet

by Ashley Griffin

Melissa Barak has been a force of nature since she first burst on the classical dance scene in the ‘90’s. But Barak took an unusual trajectory to unique stardom, not simply breaking down walls but walking through them as if they weren’t there in the first place. Other classical artists might analogize themselves to the White (or Black) Swan(s), the passionate Kitri, or even the vulnerable Giselle. Barak is the Firebird.

Drawn to dance from an early age, Barak trained in Los Angeles at the Westside School of Ballet under the tutelage of original Balanchine dancer Yvonne Mounsey. Intrigued by the Balanchine style, she became a student at the famed School of American Ballet in NYC and became a member of the New York City Ballet in the late ‘90’s. By all accounts, she had made it – and all that was left was to push through the promotional ranks from Corps to Soloist, to Principal. At least, that’s what most dancers dreamed of. But Barak had something different in mind.

Barak loved choreographing just as much as she loved dancing. As a child, she would gather other children and try to put on her own ballets. When she joined SAB, she became a part of one of (if not the) first student choreographer programs where she choreographed on her fellow students and caught the eye of NYCB Artistic Director Peter Martins. She started choreographing for NYCB almost as soon as she started dancing with them – invited into their choreographer development program and being asked to choreograph for the SAB student workshop. She found out that she would be choreographing for the actual company when Martins made a public announcement at the gala. She hadn’t been told ahead of time. She was commissioned to choreograph for NYCB’s prestigious Diamond Project making her, at the time, the youngest choreographer to create an original work on the company.

By 2002 she was one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch”. In addition to, as a dancer, originating roles in new ballets by Christopher Wheeldon, Elliot Feld, and Robert Garland (among others), she created new works (as a choreographer) for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Richmond Ballet, Dayton Ballet, American Repertory Ballet, Sacramento Ballet, and others, as well as on such dance luminaries as Sara Mearns, Tiler Peck, Justin Peck, Benjamin Millepied and Robert Fairchild. She was awarded the Mae L. Wein and Choo San Goh award for Outstanding Choreography and was the inaugural recipient of the Virginia B. Toulmin Fellowship for Women Choreographers through Center for Ballet and the Arts and NYU. She went on to dance with Christopher Wheeldon’s company Morphoses and the Los Angeles Ballet before starting her own, tremendously successful company, Barak Ballet.

And now, she is the first solo artistic director to lead the Los Angeles Ballet.

Founded in 2004 by Thordal Christensen, Colleen Neary, and Julie Whittaker (and not to be confused with the original Los Angeles Ballet of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s founded by John Clifford), the Los Angeles Ballet is the city’s only resident professional classical ballet company.  The company tours throughout LA County, regularly appearing at venues such as the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, Royce Hall, and the Broad Stage.

For a long time, Barak was just about the only name that would come to mind when listing female classical choreographers. It’s now, fortunately, becoming more common (if slowly so). And the numbers are even worse for female Artistic Directors of classical companies. If you do a google search of “Female Artistic Directors, Ballet” the top hit is the New York Times article “Do Men Still Rule Ballet? Let Us Count the Ways”.

There are now more female artistic directors than ever before (though that’s not to say the numbers are great by any means), but it’s interesting to note how many of them were appointed during the pandemic, or just before – a clear response to the wake of the numerous #MeToo scandals coming to light in the ballet world, especially in the U.S. In 2022 Susan Jaffe became ABT’s Artistic Director. That Same year Tamara Rojo became the first female artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet (after serving as the artistic director for the English National Ballet). Julie Kent became the artistic director of the Washington Ballet in 2016, and Wendy Whelan became the Associate Artistic Director of the New York City Ballet following Peter Martins’ stepping down after the #MeToo scandal that rocked the company. The most comprehensive list of female artistic directors in Ballet I could find comes from ABalletEducation.com.

The article has no publication date listed, but based on the inclusion of Julie Kent, but not Susan Jaffe (or Monica Mason, who left her position as Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet in 2012), I would imagine it came out sometime between 2016 and 2021. There are a grand total of twelve names on the list, some of whom are the artistic directors of companies they started on their own - they were not named to the position by an outside board. (Shondaland says in a 2022 article that of 179 artistic directors of major international ballet companies, 59 are women, just 33 percent (according to the Dance Data Project). In the U.S. there are only 15 women in artistic director roles, contrasted with 36 men (71 percent).

The article points out that one (among many) reasons women are less likely to be named Artistic Directors is that, most often, Artistic Directors are chosen from well-known choreographers (or dancers who became choreographers), not artists who have only worked as dancers. There are very few female choreographers in the classical ballet world. This brings us back to Barak.

The Los Angeles Ballet has yet to reach the heights or prestige of the top U.S. ballet companies. Barak wants to change that. Her goals include expanding the repertoire, hiring more dancers (who are consistently hired throughout the year), and offering bigger commissions. She cares very much for her dancers, and the environment a company creates. She’s quoted in a Shondaland article as saying:

“I saw things that were going against the company’s best interests in the leadership and in the way that people were treated…I saw things that could be done differently and better.”  She goes on to say that, “As a director, you need to know how to program a ballet, but you also need to understand your dancers and what makes people tick and enables people to trust you,” adding that she’s already gotten some physical and body-conditioning therapists to assist the dancers not just to handle current injuries but to prime their bodies for the future, as well as prioritizing mental well-being.

Barak doesn’t like to dwell on the gender parity issue, instead preferring for her work to speak for itself. And speak for itself it does. Her work has been called, “ Beautiful, Brave, Bold”, and “The Vanguard of…Dance”.

Barak and I actually grew up at the same dance school in Los Angeles. She was older than me, and I remember going to see their annual gala when I was a tiny little thing. It was Barak’s final performance with the school before she headed off to study at SAB. She didn’t seem like a student, but already a seasoned pro. My mom bought me a pair of her signed pointe shoes in the lobby, and I still have them somewhere. She was only a teenager, and yet it seemed a foregone conclusion that she would be a force to be reckoned with in the dance world. Not long after I remember articles being posted on the walls of the school talking about her tremendous (and fast) burst on the scene as a choreographer. She was the first female classical choreographer I’d ever heard of. Barak has been an inspiration to me almost my whole life, as I know she is for many others.

Check out her work, and then go support the Los Angeles Ballet. Under Barak’s direction, it seems only a matter of time before L.A. finally gets their own world-class dance company – something we’ve been waiting for for a long time.

Watch my interview with Melissa Barak here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdbTg9WHYOM

Los Angeles Ballet: https://www.losangelesballet.org