Katlyn Addison: We Are Here

Katlyn Addison was born in Ontario, Canada. At ten, she began her professional ballet training at the National Ballet School of Canada. She continued training at Quinte Ballet School of Canada, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet and the Houston Ballet Ben Stevenson Academy.

In 2021, Addison made history when she became the first black female Principal Artist in Ballet West’s 58-year history. That same year, she was awarded the Performing Arts Fellowship Award by the Utah Division of Fine Arts & Museums.

Addison has danced classical, neoclassical and contemporary works, including adaptations from John Cranko’s Romeo & Juliet and Onegin; Adam Sklute’s Swan Lake, Ben Stevenson’s Dracula, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadere; and many other ballets. She has also performed in several world premieres, including Christopher Bruce’s Grinning in Your Face; Stanton Welch’s Medieval Babes; Val Caniparoli’s The Lottery and Dances for Lou; Nicolo Fonte’s Rite of Spring and Carmina Burana and Africa Guzman’s Sweet and Bitter.

Addison has also pursued finding her choreographic voice in several works, including creating new ballets for the Utah Arts Festival (Unnamed), the Ballet West Academy and the University of Utah Dance Department (Saint-George, The Composer, Frenchmen, and Creator). In early 2022, Kansas City Ballet premiered Katlyn’s new work, Sanctuary, and in December of 2022, her work, The Cuban Cavalier, premiered with the Gateway Chamber Orchestra. In May 2023, she created a work for Bayou Ballet (Poem). Her work for Ballet Jorgen, which also premiered in May 2023 (There Were TWO), is currently touring Canada.

Addison has danced and acted in Miu Miu Woman’s Tales, a short film that premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival and appeared on the Prada Miu Miu website. She was also featured in an episode of “Let’s Talk Utah,” produced by the Utah Office of Tourism in the fall of 2021, and in an episode of the Conversations in Dance podcast in February 2024.

She is involved in many passion projects and is dedicated to using her platform to give back to her community and to help raise the voices of other minority artists. Addison has volunteered her time for The Redlining Project, an initiative drawing attention to injustices created by redlining voter districts and Ballet West’s I CAN DO Program Curly ME, which supports young girls of colour and Morning Star Middle School and Ridgewood Elementary School, both in Ontario, Canada. She also serves on the board of directors for the Utah Black Artist Collective.

• Link