The Christmas Ballet

Julia Adam was born in Canada and began her early dance training in her hometown of Ottawa, Ontario. At the age of thirteen, she continued her studies at the National Ballet School in Toronto, graduating in 1983.  Julia then spent five years honing her skills with the National Ballet of Canada before joining San Francisco Ballet in 1988, where she completed her illustrious dancing career. As a principal dancer, she gained  recognition for her lyricism, musicality, and broad theatrical range, performing a wide array of roles under the direction of Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson. Julia retired from the stage in the spring of 2002. Upon  retiring, Julia turned her focus to choreography, a passion she had cultivated throughout her dancing career. Her first ballet, The Medium is the Message, created for San Francisco Ballet’s Choreographic Workshop  in 1993, received acclaim for its wit and distinctive movement style. This success was followed by many other works and led to commissions from various companies and earned an Isadora Duncan Award for  Choreography. In collaboration with composer Matthew Pierce, Julia created Night for San Francisco Ballet’s 2000 Discovery Program, which was met with critical and popular acclaim. The ballet toured  internationally, performing at venues such as the Paris Opera’s Palais Garnier, The Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden, and City Center in New York. Julia and Pierce continued their collaboration with  Crossing for The Joffrey Ballet in 2001 and Reverence for Cincinnati Ballet in 2002. The success of Night led to further commissions by San Francisco Ballet, including Angelo (2002) and Imaginal Disc (2003),  another collaboration with Pierce. In 2008, she created a rose by any other name for San Francisco Ballet’s New Works Festival, celebrating their 75th anniversary. In 2009, Julia choreographed her first full length ballet, The Nutcracker, for Marin Ballet, and subsequently created full-length works for Diablo Ballet and Ballet Memphis. With over 100 works to her name, Julia has choreographed for numerous prestigious  companies, including San Francisco Ballet, Houston Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, and The Joffrey Ballet. She has also created and staged ten works for Ballet Memphis, where she served as Artistic  Associate from 2010 to 2013. In 2012 Amy Seiwert invited Julia to choreograph for Imagery creating a deeper peer connection that started during their year’s work together at Margaret Jenkins CHIME program.

In 2014, Julia co-founded Julia Adam Dance with her partner and husband, Aaron Lucich, a project that reflects their shared passions for art, community, food, and the natural world. She was named Performance  Director and Resident Choreographer at Marin Ballet in 2022 where she continues to teach and choreograph for the students. Julia continues to choreograph across the country, earning critical acclaim while also teaching and mentoring the next generation of dancers.

Val Caniparoli’s versatility has made him one of the most sought-after American choreographers internationally. He is most closely associated with San Francisco Ballet, his artistic home for more than 50 years, where he also served as Resident Choreographer and Ballet Master. Caniparoli has contributed to the repertoires of more than 60 companies, including Joffrey Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Scottish Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Smuin Ballet, Boston Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet, Alberta Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Northern Ballet Theatre, Pennsylvania Ballet, Alberta Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Ballet West (resident choreographer 1993-97), Washington Ballet, Israel Ballet, Richmond Ballet, Louisville Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Singapore Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, State Theatre Ballet of South Africa, and Tulsa Ballet (resident choreographer 2001-06). He has also choreographed for the Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, and The Metropolitan Opera and several occasions with the San Francisco Symphony. Choreography for the esteemed American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.), include A Christmas Carol, A Doll’s House, A Little Night Music, Arcadia, and the creation, with Carey Perloff, of a new movement-theater piece, Tosca Cafe. One of his most popular ballets, Lambarena, was nominated for the Prix Benois de la Danse in 1997 for Best Choreography and was also featured on Sesame Street. In 2015, Caniparoli co-choreographed, with Helgi Tomasson, a commercial for the 50th Anniversary Super Bowl with dancers from San Francisco Ballet.

Caniparoli’s full evening-length ballets include Lady of the Camellias, five different productions of The Nutcracker for Royal New Zealand Ballet, Louisville Ballet, Grand Rapids Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet and Tulsa Ballet (co-created with Ma Cong), Jekyll & Hyde for Finnish National Ballet and Val Caniparoli’s, A Cinderella Story choreographed to music of Richard Rodgers for Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

Born in Renton, Washington, Caniparoli opted for a professional dance career after studying music and theatre at Washington State University. He received a Ford Foundation Scholarship to attend San Francisco Ballet School. He performed with San Francisco Opera Ballet before joining San Francisco Ballet in 1973, where he continues to perform as a Principal Character Dancer

Nicole Haskins, originally from Venice Beach, California, is a choreographer, coach, and mentor residing in the Bay Area. Her love of ballet and enthusiasm for choreography emerged during her training at the Westside School of Ballet in Santa Monica under the direction of Yvonne Mounsey and Rosemary Valaire. After a two-decade career as a professional ballet dancer with Sacramento Ballet, Washington Ballet, Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, Kansas City Ballet, and Smuin Contemporary Ballet,

Haskins retired from the stage to pass on her love for ballet and knowledge to the next generation of dancers. After a season as the resident choreographer for Mid-Columbia Ballet, Haskins was recruited to build, develop, and run Ballet Idaho’s Trainee Program as their inaugural Trainee Program Director. Through the program, she was able to help pre-professional dancers successfully transition from student to professional dancers by teaching them the tools and knowledge necessary to thrive within any professional company. She now takes her decades of knowledge and experience to provide dancers the tools, knowledge, and support necessary to thrive at any professional company through Keep Dancers Dancing.

Alongside these accomplishments, Haskins’ also developed a thriving choreographic career, with commissioned performed across the country including Sacramento Ballet, Richmond Ballet, Smuin Contemporary Ballet, Dayton Ballet, and Oregon Ballet Theater. Most recently she co-choreographed Sacramento Ballet’s brand-new production of The Nutcracker in collaboration with Colby Damon and Julia Feldmen, Haskins works have been presented at the Los Angles Dance Invitational, the McCallum Theater’s Dancing Under The Stars Choreographic Competition, and well as numerous Regional Dance America Festivals.

In 2017, she was one of the winners of Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Choreography XX competition, in 2010 she participated in the New York Choreographic Institute affiliated with the New York City Ballet, in 2011 received the Institute’s Fellowship Grant, and in 2017 she received the Institute’s Commission Initiative.

Former Smuin artist Ben Needham-Wood is an Emmy Award-winning choreographer and filmmaker based in San Francisco, CA. His works have been performed at festivals, concerts, and galas across the U.S. and Canada by companies such as Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, Dance Aspen, Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami, and the Kansas City, Louisville, and Smuin Contemporary Ballets. Ben is the first appointed Artistic Fellow of Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, and recently founded his own company, Redirecting Dance. 

Amy Seiwert enjoyed a nineteen-year performing career dancing with Smuin, Los Angeles Chamber, and Sacramento Ballets. As a dancer with Smuin, she became involved with the “Protégé Program,” where Michael Smuin was her mentor. She retired as a dancer from Smuin in 2008. That same year, Celia Fushille named her Choreographer in Residence, a position she held for a decade. She is the recipient of numerous choreographic awards, including a “Goldie” award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2010, which described Seiwert as the Bay Area’s most original dance thinker, “taking what some consider a dead language and using it with a 21st-century lingo to tell us something about who we are.” 

In 2017 Seiwert’s first full-evening work, “Wandering,” set to Schubert’s Winterreise, was commissioned by the Joyce Theater in New York. The NEA and Kennedy Center have also supported Seiwert’s works. A former Artist in Residence at ODC Theater, she has also served on the Artist Faculty for Jacob’s Pillow’s Contemporary Ballet program. Her creations are in the repertory of Smuin, ODC/Dance, BalletX, Ballet Austin, and AXIS Dance, as well as Washington, Atlanta, Oakland, Kansas City, Colorado, Louisville, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, American Repertory, and Milwaukee Ballets.

“In 1994, Michael Smuin set out to “infuse ballet with the rhythm, speed, and syncopation of American popular culture.”

In 1994, Michael Smuin set out to “infuse ballet with the rhythm, speed, and syncopation of American popular culture,” and Smuin Contemporary Ballet (née Smuin Ballets/SF, or more recently, Smuin Ballet) was born. Michael Smuin’s vision lives on following his sudden passing in 2007, and the Company continues to push the boundaries of contemporary ballet within a distinctly modern style, combining classical ballet training, technique, and artistry with uncommon physicality and expression.

Company Founder Michael Smuin was born on October 13, 1938, in Missoula, Montana. Smuin studied tap dancing as a child and became instantly enamoured with ballet when his mother took him to see the Ballet Russe on tour at the University of Montana. At the age of 15, Smuin moved to Salt Lake City to study dance on scholarship at the University of Utah. A few years later, San Francisco Ballet director Lew Christensen recruited Smuin for San Francisco Ballet, where he danced for six years. Smuin took a leave of absence from the company in 1962 to relocate to New York, where he performed in Bob Fosse’s Little Me on Broadway. During this time, Smuin created a nightclub act with his then-wife and fellow dancer Paula Tracy. Their “well-disguised ballet,” as Smuin would call it, toured widely and was billed alongside such entertainers as Louis Armstrong, Peggy Lee, and Frank Sinatra. The act later appeared on television on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Hollywood Palace, and Bell Telephone Hour, among others. Smuin joined American Ballet Theatre in 1965, where he choreographed Pulcinella Variations, The Catherine Wheel, Eternal Idol and several other pieces for the company before returning to San Francisco in 1973. During his years in New York he also worked with Leonard Bernstein, choreographing Candide.

Smuin spent 12 years as a choreographer and co-director of San Francisco Ballet, a period that coincided with his direction of Sophisticated Ladies on Broadway. Smuin served as Artistic Director of San Francisco Ballet until 1985, and was instrumental in raising the company’s profile in the international arts community. His ventures included serving as co-chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel (1979-1981), staging a performance at the White House, and presenting his Romeo and Juliet and his Emmy Award-winning feature A Song for Dead Warriors for PBS’s Dance in America program. In 1988, Smuin received both a Tony and a Drama Desk Award for his choreography for Anything Goes.

Outside of ballet and Broadway, Smuin choreographed several Francis Ford Coppola films, some of which include Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. His choreography can also be seen in such films as A Walk in the Clouds, The Joy Luck Club, The Fantastiks, and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (Special Edition).

Michael Smuin’s ballets are currently in the repertories of major dance companies around the country. Since founding Smuin Contemporary American Ballet in 1994, he created 40 new works for his company alone. His creations range from classical, as seen in his acclaimed September 11th tribute, Stabat Mater (2002), and Carmina Burana (1997), to the innovative Bluegrass/Slyde with its revolving-pole set, to one-act story ballets like Pinocchio (1999) and  Zorro (2003). Many of Smuin’s ballet’s boast a touch of Broadway flair, such as the wildly popular Dancin’ With Gershwin (2001) and Fly Me to the Moon (2004).

Smuin passed away suddenly on April 23, 2007, surrounded by his dancers while teaching company class. His vision, style, and energy remain with the Company to this day.

Originally from London, Rex Wheeler is a multi-faceted drag performer, actor, producer and choreographer. Having trained in the UK at the Royal Ballet School and Elmhurst, Rex danced with the Slovak National Ballet, Sacramento Ballet and Smuin Contemporary Ballet before becoming a working choreographer here in the US. Rex simultaneously embarked on a career in drag, creating his alter-ego Lady Camden and became the runner up of Season 14 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. He has since performed all over the world, starring in solo shows, performing in world tours, producing music as well as continuing to choreograph and produce shows here in San Francisco. Rex recently starred in a new documentary, “Lady Like,” directed by Luke Willis which has been featured in many film festivals around the world, and continues to perform, choreograph, and produce performances and events throughout the year as both Rex and Lady Camden.

Photo by Maximillian Tortoriello