Michèle Ceballos Michot

is an accomplished dancer, choreographer, artistic director, educator, visual and performance artist. Her dance performance history includes numerous international ballet companies and dance productions. Born in Manhattan, NYC, on January 18th, 1956, from a Colombian father, Alvaro Ceballos Alboleda, and North American mother, Jacqueline Michot Doma, Michèle Ceballos Michot, spent her formative years in Bogotá, Colombia where she started dance at the age of six under the exiled dancer Vladimir Volski of the Bolshoi Ballet. A recipient of several scholarships, Michèle  studied in New York City at Thalia Mara’s National Academy of Ballet and Theatre Arts, the School of American Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre School the Joffrey Ballet School, and independently with Gabriella Taub Darvash, David Howard, Maggie Black, Finis Jung, Yurgen Snieder and Alexander Mintz. Michèle joined the Royal Ballet School in London at sixteen, where she spent two years studying under the sponsorship of Margot Fonteyn and toured with the Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet. At eighteen she went on to dance with the Deutsch Oper Am Rhine in Dusseldorf, Germany, Ballet Hispanico of New York, Ruth Page’s Chicago Ballet and as a principal dancer with El Ballet Nacional de Colombia. At twenty-seven, Michèle was the first Colombian Ballerina to represent Colombia at the International Ballet competition in Varna, Bulgaria, and was invited to dance with Alicia Alonso, Director of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba.

In 1981 in Bogotá, Colombia, she bore, Natalia Ronceria Ceballos. In 1983,  Michèle was a founding member of the Bogotá based Kameliz Danza Contemporanea. In 1987, In Phoenix, Arizona, she bore Dashiell Cote Ceballos. In 1990, She founded Opendance a non-profit, multi-cultural, multi-gender, intergenerational, dance company, and dance arts and educational outreach company.  In 2012  it was changed to OpendanceAZ. OpendanceAZ is listed on the Artist Roster of the Arizona Commission on the Arts. OpendanceAZ and Michèle were nominated in 2006 and 2007 for the AZ Governors Arts Awards and for the Arts and Business Council award, and received the Creighton School District Partner Award in 2006. OpendanceAZ continues to receive support and recognition for its mission to “open dance” up to all forms of expression, to all sorts of people, dancers and non-dancers, no matter what age, shape, gender, economic or technical level, and to make art accessible and affordable for all.