Michele Ceballos Michot
Born from a Colombian father Alvaro Ceballos Alboleda, and North American
mother, Jacqueline Michot Doma, Michèle Ceballos Michot, spent her
formative years in Bogota, Colombia, where she started dance at the age of six.
Dance carried her through life’s challenges as a child and into adulthood.
Later becoming a professional dancer in Europe, South America and the United
States, Michele encountered many situations where she saw dancers rejected
from dance studies because of body type, stereotyped because of nationality or
gender, or unable to study dance or attend dance performances because of
money. In 1990 she felt it was time to start her own company, which would
open dance up to all forms of expression, to all sorts of dancers, no matter what
age, shape, gender, economic or technical level, and to the community.
Michèle Ceballos Michot – Founding Director of Opendance, is an accomplished dancer, choreographer,artistic director, educator, visual and performance artist. Her dance performance history includes numerous international ballet companies and danceproductions. Ceballos danced professionally in Colombia, England, Germany, Russia, and throughout South America and the United States. Born in New York, Ceballos began studying ballet at the age of six in Bogotá, Colombia under the exiled dancer Vladimir Volski of the Bolshoi Ballet. A recipient of several scholarships, Ceballos continued her studies 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 with Gabriella Taub Darvash, David Howard, Finis Jung, Yurgen Snieder and Alexander Mintz.
Ceballos 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, Ceballos was the first Colombian Ballerina to represent Colombia at the International Ballet competition in Varna, Bulgaria, and to be invited to dance with Alicia Alonso, Director of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. In 1983, Ceballos was a founding member of the Bogotá based Kameliz Danza Contemporanea.
In 1990, Ceballos founded Opendance, a non-profit, multi-cultural, multi-gender, intergenerational, dance company, and dance arts and educational outreach company, based in Phoenix, Arizona. Opendance is listed on the Artist Roster of the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Opendance and Ceballos were nominated in 2006 and 2007 for the Governors Arts Awards and for the Arts and Business Council award, and received the Creighton School District Partner Award in 2006.
In 1994, Ceballos was introduced to Guillermo Gomez Pena, founding director of La Pocha Nostra, a San Francisco based international performance troupe, and collaborated in a project titled The Temple of Confessions. This began an ongoing collaboration, which messed Ceballos’ passion for dance, the arts and performance with issues about woman, human rights and identity. La Pocha’s performance and installation work, which explores cross-cultural issues and North/South relations, has been presented at over 300 venues and festivals around the world. Identity whether cultural or personal has always been of interest to Ceballos, who is also known professionally as Michelle Ceballos, Michel Cote and Michèle Ceballos Michot.
opendance@msn.com Tel: 602-685-0347 Fax: 602-956-6092
