PDT HISTORY

Pasadena Dance Theatre opened its current facility in central Pasadena in 1997, under the artistic leadership of Cynthia Young and Laurence Blake. The facility houses Pasadena Dance Theatre’s Conservatory training program and provides rehearsal space for its professional company. Students trained in its conservatory continue to dance, choreograph and teach professionally around the world.  

PDT’s own professional company thrills audi­ences with its annual pro­duc­tion of The Nut­cracker, as well as full-scale pro­duc­tions of clas­si­cal bal­lets such as A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, Grad­u­a­tion Ball, and La Fille Mal Gardee, and new works like Cyn­thia Young’s Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella. Along with its clas­si­cal reper­toire, PDT presents excit­ing con­tem­po­rary chore­og­ra­phy from estab­lished and emerg­ing chore­o­g­ra­phers.

In its Con­ver­sa­tion With the Chore­o­g­ra­pher series, works by Laurence Blake, Colin Connor, Bill Evans, Jessamyn Lawrence, Dou­glas Nielsen, Antonio Lopez and John Todd  have chal­lenged audi­ences with bold new con­cepts and inno­v­a­tive aes­thet­ics of movement. This contemporary dance series focuses on collaborations between choreographers, dancers, musicians, videographers and a range of other artists.