Santa Barbara Festival Ballet

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SANTA BARBARA FESTIVAL BALLET - STUDIO INFORMATION
Styles: Ballet Youngest Age: 3	Also Offers: Group Classes Summer Camp

About SANTA BARBARA FESTIVAL BALLET

In 1964, Robert and Carol Hanlin, both of whom performed with American Ballet Theatre, left their home in San Mateo, California to open the original Goleta School of Ballet (not to be confused with the current Goleta School of Ballet). After professional performing careers with ABT, San Francisco Ballet, Eugene Loring’s Dance Players in Hollywood, Broadway musicals, film, and television; and having studied with some of the world’s finest teachers including George Balanchine, Muriel Stewart, Anthony Tudor, Margaret Craske, The Christensen Brothers, and more; the Hanlins were very well qualified to open their own school.

They soon recognized the need for additional performing opportunities for their advanced dancers and founded the Goleta Civic Ballet in 1968. By 1970 the Company was collaborating with the Santa Barbara Symphony when then conductor, Ronald Ondrejka invited the company to join the Symphony in excerpts from The Nutcracker for their Tiny Tots Concerts. Soon Peter and the Wolf followed, and then the opportunity to be part of the Symphony’s in-school demonstrations for five years. In 1976 GCB joined the Symphony’s Concerts for Young People, at the Arlington Theatre, reaching some 8,000 children annually! Of course, the largest joint undertaking has been The Nutcracker started in 1975. The Goleta Civic Ballet, now the Santa Barbara Festival Ballet, was incorporated as a not-for-profit company in 1974, and in 1975 joined the Pacific Regional Ballet Association (now known as Regional Dance America.)

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