Lauren Lovette


Lauren Lovette is an American ballet dancer and choreographer who is currently a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet.

Early life and education

Lovette was born in Thousand Oaks, California, and started her ballet education at the age of eleven. She went on to study at the Cary Ballet Conservatory in North Carolina, followed by the School of American Ballet.

Career

Lovette became an apprentice with the New York City Ballet in 2009. She was invited to join the company's corps de ballet in 2010 and promoted to soloist in 2013. In 2015, she was promoted to her current rank of principal.
She has danced an extensive repertoire at New York City Ballet, including existing and new works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Peter Martins, Justin Peck, Alexei Ratmansky, and Christopher Wheeldon. She also performed for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as part of the 2014 Kennedy Center Honors celebrating Patricia McBride.
Lovette emerged as a choreographer in her own right in 2016 with her work For Clara, commissioned by New York City Ballet. She has gone on to create two more pieces for the company, Not Our Fate and The Shaded Line, in addition to others for American Ballet Theatre's Studio Company and Damian Woetzel's Vail Dance Festival. She additionally served as the Artist-in-Residence for the Vail Dance Festival in 2019. Her collaborators have included musician Kate Davis, poet Andrea Gibson, and fashion designers Zac Posen, Narciso Rodriguez, and Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim of Oscar de la Renta/MONSE.
In response to her choreography, The New York Times proclaimed in 2019 that, "There's urgency to Ms. Lovette’s desire to turn ballet inside out. In essence, she has crossed a line from prettiness to power."

Selected works

Lovette's work as a choreographer includes: