Contemporary
Intensive

Choreographer, Helen Pickett, native of San Diego, CA, has created over 60 ballets, for stage and film, in the U.S., U.K., Europe and Australia.

Lady Macbeth, Helen’s newest full-length narrative, premiered in April 2025 with the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam. Lady Macbeth received 4 and 5 start reviews. One critic wrote, “An intense and vibrant evening that left the audience visibly impressed…Truly memorable.” ^ To Be One, a one-act, for Boston Ballet and Crime and Punishment, a full-length narrative, for American Ballet, premiered in 2024. Emma Bovary, which premiered in 2023, with the National Ballet of Canada, made The Top 10 Best Dance Performances in Toronto. Critics wrote, “Emma Bovary is a masterpiece…”+ and “Pickett is genius when it comes to articulating emotion through gesture.”* The Crucible, Helen’s full length for Scottish Ballet, toured Scotland in 2025, and to the Kennedy Center and Spoleto Festival USA in 2023 to great acclaim. The Crucible premiered at Edinburgh International Festival in 2019, and won two awards, UK Theatre Critics Award and the Herald Angel Award. Helen’s newest dance film, Warehouse Variations (After Hours), won the Best of Boston. She choreographed 12 dances for film, during 2020/21, including The Air Before Me, which won the Audience Choice Award for Screen Dance International Festival, and Hurley Burley, which was nominated for an Emmy Award. While resident choreographer for Atlanta Ballet, 2012 – 2017, she was named Best Choreographer in 2014, and in 2015, Helen won Best Choreographer and Best Dance Production for her full length, Camino Real. In 2016, Helen received an Honorary Doctorate from University of North Carolina School of the Arts, from Dean of Dance, Susan Jaffe.

Between 2022-2023, she worked with West Australian Ballet, Ballet Rhode Island, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Vail Dance Festival, American Ballet Theatre, Boston Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Kansas City Ballet and Cincinnati Ballet. From 2005-2020, Helen choreographed work for: Boston Ballet (6), Royal Ballet of Flanders, Ballet West (2), Dance Theatre of Harlem, Semper Oper/Dresden Ballet, Vienna State Opera, Scottish Ballet (3), Philadelphia Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre(2), Alberta Ballet, Tulsa Ballet, Charlotte Ballet (2), Atlanta Ballet (4), Washington Ballet, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet (2), Louisville Ballet (2), Ballet X, Smuin Ballet (2), Oklahoma City Ballet (2), Sacramento Ballet, and Washington Ballet. In addition, she choreographed for the Chicago Lyric Opera, Les Troyens, and, in London, an evening length, multi-media musical, Voices of the Amazon.

Helen’s 12 dance films were choreographed and rehearsed on Zoom. Home Studies, a five-film series, was later translated to the stage for a premiere at Jacob’s Pillow in August 2021. Three films from her series, The Shakespeare Cycle, were featured on PBS. The film, The Air Before Me, created with director, Shaun Clarke, made four Official Selection lists around the world and won the Audience Choice Award for Screen Dance International Festival. For the films, Helen worked with dancers from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Boston Ballet, Charlotte Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Kansas City Ballet, Les Grands Ballet Canadians de Montreal and Royal Swedish Ballet.  In August 2020, Scottish Ballet premiered, Trace, a duet created for film, in My Light Shines On: An Evening with Scottish Ballet for the Edinburgh International Festival.

In April 2021, Helen founded the Female Choreographer’s Big Round Table, a zoom meeting place for female choreographers to build community and forge avenues for more equitable work environments. To date, 150 female choreographers have joined the Roundtable!

In 2020, Helen created a YouTube talk show. The one-on-one conversations would become Creative Vitality Jam Sessions. Helen created CVJS to not only highlight extraordinary dance and theater artists but also to support and build an inclusive, equitable dance community. 83 sessions.

Helen danced with William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt, 1987-1998. She was involved in 20 original productions in her time with Ballet Frankfurt. During her last season with Ballet Frankfurt, Helen simultaneously performed with The Wooster Group, director, Elizabeth Le Compte, in the OBIE award winning House/Lights and North Atlantic. From 2005-2012, Helen reprised the speaking role, Agnes, as a guest artist with The Royal Ballet of Flanders, in William Forsythe’s Impressing the Czar. In 2009, Impressing the Czar received the Laurence Olivier Award, and in 2012, the Prix de la Critique award for outstanding performance of the year. From 2013-2017, Helen performed Agnes with Dresden Semper Oper Ballet.

Helen collaborated, as an actress and choreographer, with the installation video artists and filmmakers: Eve Sussman, Toni Dove and Laurie Simmons. Helen, a founding member of Eve Sussman’s, The Rufus Corporation, played the Queen in 89 Seconds at Alcazar, which premiered at the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and also acted in Sussman’s feature length film, The Rape of the Sabine Women. She choreographed the bubble dance and played Sally Rand in Toni Dove’s video installation and film, Spectropia.  Helen choreographed the dance sequences, for Laurie Simmons’, The Music of Regret, which premiered at Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Helen was the co-director, along with Milton Meyers, of the Jacob’s Pillow Contemporary Summer Dance School Program in 2021. She created a choreographic intensive for college age choreographers entitled, Choreographic Essentials, which she has taught in universities around the country. She has taught Forsythe Improvisation Technologies throughout the United States. In addition, Helen is a mentor to young choreographers, under graduate and MFA students throughout the United States. She was Distinguished Visiting Artist at University of North Carolina School of the Arts from 2016-2020.

In 2011, Helen earned a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Hollins University. For her Master’s Thesis she collaborated with Christopher Janney, sound and light architect, and Kathleen Breen Combes and John Lam, from Boston Ballet.

Helen received a Fellowship Initiative Grant from New York Choreographic Institute, 2006. Dance Magazine named Helen one of 25 to Watch, 2007.  Jacob’s Pillow awarded her a Choreographic Residency, 2008. Helen was one of the first choreographers to receive the Jerome Robbins Foundation’s New Essential Works Grant.

In 2006, Dance Europe published Helen’s article, Considering Cezanne. In 2019, The American Stroke Association published the ode to her parents entitled, A Tribute to Love.

Helen is represented by Tobias Round, The Round Company Ltd.