Professional Workshop: Kylián & Forsythe

July 20 - 24, 2026
Salt Lake City, Utah

Open to Pre-Professional Dancers (Ages 16-20)
& Professional Dancers
Acceptance by audition or special invitation

The Professional Workshop at Ballet West Academy offers advanced dancers, ages 16 and above, the opportunity to dive deep into the work of contemporary masters, Jiří Kylián and William Forsythe. Each day will begin with a ballet technique class, led by the Principal Faculty of the Ballet West Academy and Artistic Staff of Ballet West, followed by two, 2-hour rehearsals focused on the choreography and nuances of these choreographer’s greatest works.

This five-day intensive, July 20-24 from 10am-4:15pm, will immerse participants in process with current répétiteurs and choreographers who have brought these work to life. We are proud to welcome, former Artistic Director of Nederlands Dans Theater and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Glenn Edgerton, as well as recognized expert on the repertory, technique, and improvisational methods of Forsythe’s work, Thomas McManus. Learn the inspiration, the story, and style that has set these works apart for decades on the largest stages across the world.

For the first time, Ballet West Academy will also offer a professional track, available to dancers currently or previously employed within the past two years by a professional dance company. Proof of employment will waive audition fee for professional dancers. Advanced, pre-professional dancers are invited to submit a video audition for consideration. No in-person auditions will be held for this intensive.

Join this repertoire-focused intensive to preview the contemporary repertoire performed by professional ballet companies worldwide. Pre-professionals are encouraged to consider the Professional Workshop as an add-on to the 5-Week Summer Intensive in Downtown Salt Lake City.

2026 Choreographers & Répétiteurs

  • The world-renowned choreographer Jiří Kylián (Czechoslovakia, 1947) has been artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theater for nearly a quarter century.

    He started his dance career at the age of nine, at the School of the National Ballet in Prague. In 1962 he was accepted as a student at the Prague Conservatory. He left Prague when he received a scholarship for the Royal Ballet School in London in 1967.  After this, he left to join the Stuttgart Ballett led by John Cranko. Kylián made his debut as a choreographer here with Paradox for the Noverre Gesellschaft. After having made three ballets for Nederlands Dans Theater (Viewers, Stoolgame and La Cathédrale Engloutie), he became artistic director of the company in 1975. In 1978 he put Nederlands Dans Theater on the international map with Sinfonietta. That same year, together with Carel Birnie, he founded Nederlands Dans Theater II, which served as a bridge between school and professional company life and was meant to give young dancers the opportunity to develop their skills and talents and to function as a breeding ground for young talent. He also initiated Nederlands Dans Theater III in 1991, the company for older dancers, above forty years of age. This three dimensional structure was unique in the world of dance. After an extraordinary record of service, Kylián handed over the artistic leadership in 1999, but remained associated to the dance company as house choreographer until December 2009.

    Jiří Kylián has created nearly 100 works of which many are performed all over the world. Kylián has not only made works for Nederlands Dans Theater, but also for the Stuttgart Ballet, the Paris Opéra Ballet, Bayerisches Staatsoper Münich, Swedish television and the Tokyo Ballet. Kylián has worked with many creative personalities of international stature – composers: Arne Nordheim (”Ariadne” 1979), Toru Takemitsu (”Dream Time” 1983) – designers: Walter Nobbe (”Sinfonietta” 1978), Bill Katz (”Symphony of Psalms” 1978), John Macfarlane (“Forgotten Land” 1980), Michael Simon (”Stepping Stones” 1991), Atsushi Kitagawara (”One of a Kind” 1998), Susumu Shingu (”Toss of a Dice” 2005), Yoshiki Hishinuma (‘’Zugvögel’’ 2009).

    To this day, Kylián’s masterpieces are frequently performed by numerous dance companies and schools around the world.

  • Thomas McManus is a professional dancer, choreographer, educator, and recognized expert on the repertory, technique, and improvisational methods of renowned choreographer William Forsythe. 

    After dancing with American Ballet Theater 2, Finis Jhung’s Chamber Ballet USA, and Ann Marie DeAngelo and Dancers, McManus joined Ballet Frankfurt under William Forsythe’s direction. McManus danced in new works created by Forsythe and became entrusted with setting Forsythe’s repertory on major companies around the world. He currently brings this work to USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance B.F.A. students.

    McManus has worked with accomplished choreographers such as Stephen Petronio, Twyla Tharp, Amanda Miller, Mark Haim, Daniel Larrieu, Susan Marshall, Philip Grosser, Sara Rudner, Jan Fabre, Kathryn Posin, William Soleu, Ohad Naharin, Helgi Tomasson, Gale Katchadurian, Peter Sparling, Ann Marie DeAngelo, Saeko Ichino, Saburo Teshigawara, and Paul Selwyn Norton, among others. McManus holds an M.F.A. in Dance from Hollins University, Roanoke.

  • Glenn Edgerton has had an international career as a dancer, teacher, and director. His sixteen-year dancing career was with The Joffrey Ballet and The Netherlands Dance Theater. At The Joffrey Ballet, he performed leading roles, classical and contemporary for 11 years under the mentorship of Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino. He danced principal roles in the classics of John Cranko and Sir Fredrick Ashton along with innovative choreographers like Twyla Tharp, Jiří Kylián, William Forsythe, Paul Taylor and Laura Dean. In 1989, Edgerton joined the acclaimed Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), where he was immersed in the diverse repertory of master choreographers and emerging choreographers for five years. After retiring from performing, he became the Executive Artistic Director of NDT 1, mentored by Jiří Kylián, leading the company for a decade and presenting the works of Jiří Kylián, Hans van Manen, William Forsythe, Ohad Naharin, Mats Ek, Nacho Duato, Jorma Elo, Johan Inger, Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, among many others. From 2006 to 2008, he directed the Colburn Dance Institute at the Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, CA while teaching at UCLA, Loyola Marymount and CalArts. Edgerton joined Hubbard Street Dance Chicago as Associate Artistic Director in 2008. From 2009-2020 served as Hubbard Street’s Artistic Director bringing the company to perform worldwide while fostering the next generation of dancers and choreographers. Many of those dancers turned choreographers are leading the dance field today, like Alejandro
    Cerrudo, Rena Butler, Robyn Mineko Williams, Penny Saunders, Emilie Leriche, Alice Klock and Florian Lochner (FLOCK) among others. In 2017, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the Arts Degree from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA (CalArts). As of the fall of 2020, Glenn joined the faculty as an Instructor at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma teaching ballet and choreographing with an emphasis on the prolific repertory of Jiří Kylián and Gerald Arpino. Other responsibilities at OU have been directing the OU Summer Intensive and Oklahoma Festival Ballet. Edgerton set the work, Sinfonietta by Jiří Kylián for American Ballet Theater in the fall of 2022 along with teaching for ABT. During the summer of 2025 Glenn was chosen to choreograph for the National Choreographic Initiative at UCIrvine. Edgerton continues on faculty at OU as an Associate Professor teaching, mentoring and choreographing.

  • William Forsythe has been active in the field of choreography for over 45 years. His work is acknowledged for reorienting the practice of ballet from its identification with classical repertoire to a dynamic 21st century art form. Forsythe’s deep interest in the fundamental principles of organization has led him to produce a wide range of projects including installations, films, and web-based knowledge creation.

    Raised in New York and initially trained in Florida with Nolan Dingman and Christa Long, Forsythe danced with the Joffrey Ballet and later the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was appointed Resident Choreographer in 1976. Over the next seven years, he created new works for the Stuttgart ensemble and other ballet companies worldwide. In 1984, he began a 20-year tenure as director of the Ballet Frankfurt, where he created works such as Artifact (1984), Impressing the Czar (1988), Limb’s Theorem (1990), The Loss of Small Detail (1991), Eidos:Telos (1995), Kammer/Kammer (2000) and Decreation (2003).

    After the closure of the Ballet Frankfurt in 2004, Forsythe established a new, more independent ensemble, The Forsythe Company, which he directed from 2005 to 2015. Works produced by this ensemble include Three Atmospheric Studies (2005), Human Writes (2005), Heterotopia (2006), I don’t believe in outer space (2008) and Sider (2011). Forsythe’s most recent works were developed and performed exclusively by The Forsythe Company, while his earlier pieces are prominently featured in the repertoire of virtually every major ballet company in the world.

    Forsythe’s installation work has been presented in visual arts contexts for the last 25 years. Choreographic Objects, as he calls these works, have been presented in numerous museums and exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial (New York, 1997), the Louvre Museum (2006), the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, 2009), Tate Modern (London, 2009), MoMA (New York 2010) and the Venice Biennale (2005, 2009, 2012, 2014), the Biennale of Sydney (2016), and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (2018).

    In collaboration with media specialists and educators, Forsythe has developed new approaches to dance documentation, research, and education. His 1994 computer application Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye, developed with the ZKM / Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, is used as a teaching tool by professional companies, dance conservatories, universities, postgraduate architecture programs, and secondary schools worldwide.

    In 2002, Forsythe was chosen as one of the founding Dance Mentors for The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Forsythe is an Honorary Fellow at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London and holds an Honorary Doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York. He has received the Golden Lion award from the Venice Binnale for lifetime achievement.

Artistic Leadership & Academy Faculty

  • Adam Sklute

    ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, BALLET WEST

  • Evelyn Cisneros-Legate

    DIRECTOR, BALLET WEST ACADEMY

  • Katherine Lawrence

    PRINCIPAL, BALLET CENTRE & TROLLEY CORNERS CAMPUSES

  • Catherine Batcheller

    PRINCIPAL FACULTY AND ARTISTIC ENGAGEMENT COORDINATOR

  • Stacey Mahan

    PRINCIPAL FACULTY AND ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CURRICULUM

  • Bridget Payne

    PRINCIPAL FACULTY AND COSTUME COORDINATOR

  • Kristina Windom

    TRAINEE MANAGER

  • Jeff Rogers

    PRINCIPAL FACULTY AND DIRECTOR OF ACADEMY MEN’S PROGRAM

  • Michael Waldrop

    FULL-TIME FACULTY & CONTEMPORARY PROGRAM MANAGER

Learn about our faculty

Summer Intensive Pricing

2026 Pre-Professional Tuition

$700

  • July 20 - 24, 2026

  • To secure enrollment, a deposit of $250.00 must be made within two weeks of acceptance. Deposits are non-refundable under any circumstance.

FINANCIAL AID

  • Please note the number of accepted applicants surpasses the number of places available for programs and housing. Registration is on a first-come, first-serve basis.

  • Full tuition payments is due by May 1, 2026.  If we do not receive a drop request, your card on file will be charged and late fees will be processed after Friday, May 1, 2026.

  • All students registered to attend Ballet West Academy’s Salt Lake City Summer Intensive are required to complete a Physician’s Statement of Good Health and all Liability Waivers. Forms will be emailed with acceptance letters.

  • COVID-19 protocol will align with state and county mandates.

  • In acknowledgement of those who serve our county, Ballet West Academy is thrilled to announce a military discount for our 2026 Summer Programs, including Summer Camps and Summer Intensives. 

    • 10% discount on the cost of tuition to dependents of active duty US military personnel, National Guard, and Reservists.  

    • 50% discount to Gold Star families.  

    • In order to access the Military Discount, please send a copy of a DEERS card or most recent LES as proof of military status to academy@balletwest.org. This discount does not apply to the cost of the non-refundable deposit amount and is not applicable to housing expenses for summer programs. 

2026 Professional Tuition

$500

  • July 20 - 24, 2026

  • Currently or previously employed within the past two years by a professional dance company.

  • To secure enrollment, a deposit of $250.00 must be made within two weeks of acceptance. Deposits are non-refundable under any circumstance.

How To Audition

To be considered for the Ballet West Academy Professional Workshop: Kylián & Forsythe, pre-professional dancers (ages 16-20) currently enrolled in a training program, must submit a video audition.

Audition fee will waived for professional dancers with proof of employment. Contract must be from the past two years with a full season contract, exceeding 18 weeks per year. Video submission for professionals should only include performance footage from professional engagement.

The video, in total, should not exceed seven minutes and should contain:

  • Adagio, pirouette en dehor and en dedan, petit allegro, and grand allegro.

    Pointe work is not mandatory, but highly recommended.

  • A solo, filmed in the studio or on stage, that showcases contemporary elements including use of plié, clarity in pathways, floor work, and expansiveness in movement.

  • Improvisation section should not exceed two minutes in length.

  • Video submission for professionals should only include performance footage from professional engagement.

SUBMIT A VIDEO AUDITION
SUBMIT PROOF OF EMPLOYMENT

Thank you to our summer intensive sponsors: