BBT's Artistic Vision from 1982

In the early years of BBT, Co-Artistic Director Robbie Nichols articulated an artistic vision for the school which informs and inspires the organization’s vision for our 40th Anniversary and beyond.

Ballet is more than just an art form. In the right circumstances it becomes a forum and a catalyst for all forms of art and the entire creative community. Ballet is, of necessity, an art which involves collaboration; thus it serves as a natural point of intersection between the many creative worlds. BBT aspires to that high position to be: Forum for the Arts.

BBT performances will evolve to be exciting events where the public can witness the finest in contemporary music, choreography, art and poetry; and where the ideas and problems that absorb us every day are treated with the humanity, perspective and recognition of beauty that characterize the best art.

We will carry the respected and ancient traditions of ballet forward into the future. It is one thing to be avant-garde in a form which is, in itself, avant-garde; it is quite another to take a powerful artistic tradition 400 years old and aim it toward the future. This will be the artistic quest of the Berkeley Ballet Theater.