Ballez Creator Katy Pyle is a genderqueer trans dancer and choreographer who began Ballez in 2011 to explore their complicated relationship to the cishetero patriarchal form of ballet, and to make space for their own, and their communities’, presence within it.

Having studied ballet since age 3, Pyle became a professional apprentice at 13; left home at 14 to study full-time in the conservatory at North Carolina School of the Arts, and, at 16,  was told by teachers “you would have had a great career if you had been born a boy…” After leaving the ballet program, Pyle began studying choreography for the first time. After graduating from NCSA’s high school program in ’99, Pyle attended Hollins University, became a Drag King and studied myriad experimental and post-modern dance forms. Pyle graduated summa cum laude in 2002 from Hollins University with a BA in Multimedia Performance Art.

Pyle then moved to New York City and danced in the works of Ivy Baldwin, Faye Driscoll, John Jasperse, Xavier Le Roy, Karinne Keithley Syers, Jennifer Monson, Stina Nyberg, Anna Sperber, Katie Workum, and Young Jean Lee, among many others. Simultaneously, Pyle created work alongside collaborators Eleanor Hullihan, Rebecca Brooks and Jules Skloot. Evening length works: “Salute to Ex-Best Friends,”asubtout (Pyle & Eleanor Hullihan), Galapagos, 2005; “The Lady Centaur Show,” asubtout, PS 122, 2007; “THE WAY: You Make Me Feel,” Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, 2010; and “COVERS,” The Bushwick Starr, 2012.

In 2011, Pyle founded the Ballez to insert the herstory and lineage of lesbian, queer and transgender people into the ballet canon through the creation of large-scale story ballets, open classes, and public engagement. Major works include “The Firebird, a Ballez,” at Danspace Project in Spring (with a reprise that Fall) 2013, “Variations on Virtuosity, a Gala with the Stars of the Ballez” at American Realness at Abrons Arts Center in January 2015, and “Sleeping Beauty & the Beast,” at La Mama in Spring 2016, “Slavic Goddesses,” at the Kitchen, January 26-28, 2017- 6 solos for Ballez dancers, as a collaborative project with artist Paulina Olowska, "Giselle of Loneliness," at The Joyce, June 10, 2021, and most recently, "Travesty Doll Play Ballez, after Coppélia," at Chelsea Factory May 24-26, 2024, which premiered alongside TRAVESTY, a documentary on All Arts/WNET by Courtney Powell about the process of creating the show.

Ballez Class began at Brooklyn Arts Exchange in 2011, and Pyle has since brought the class to Gibney Dance, University of Iowa, Rambert Ballet School (London), Slippery Rock University, Stolt Scenkonst and MDT (Stockholm), Swarthmore, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, SCDT (Northampton), Princeton, Yale, Movement Research, Tisch/New York University, and Sarah Lawrence College. Pyle has set Ballez work on students through Guest Artist Residencies at Mason Gross, Marymount Manhattan, Bowdoin College, Whitman College, Eugene Lang and Beloit College.

Pyle currently teaches undergraduate dancers at Eugene Lang College at The New School, Marymount Manhattan College, and professional dancers at Gibney Dance, 890 Broadway.

Pyle has garnered support for the company from the NYSCA, Hodder Fund, United Artists, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Jerome Foundation, Mertz Gilmore, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and over 1000 individual donors. Pyle was a 2013-2015 Artist in Residence at BAX, and has received residencies through Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Mount Tremper Arts, Rockbridge Artist’s Exchange, the Bushwick Starr, the Dragon’s Egg, Abrons Arts Center, and La Mama, ETC.

Photo by Julie Mack