Studio Stories: Reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance with Bonnie Mathis - Season 4, Episode 52

Bonnie Mathis was a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre and a soloist with the Harkness Ballet and also performed with many modern companies, namely the Lar Lubovitch Company, the Paul Taylor Company, the Paul Sanasardo Company, the Norman Walker Company, and the Nederlands Dans Theatre. Antony Tudor and Maggie Black where her primary teachers while at the Juilliard School and through her performing career as well as Benjamin Harkarvy and David Howard during her time at the Harkness Ballet.She was part of the dance community of Minneapolis from 1980 to 2005, initially teaching ballet for the Minnesota Dance Theater, the University of Minnesota, and the Northwest Ballet and in 1989 co-creating Ballet Arts Minnesota.The City Children’s Nutcracker was created by Ballet Arts Mn. in 1990 in collaboration with the Minneapolis Park Board. It included dancers from the University of Minnesota and the local dance community as well as guest artists from Dance Theater of Harlem, the Twin Cities Youth Symphony, and choreographers such as Danny Buraczeski and Danny Ezralow. She also created Springboard Dance, a program that gave the advanced dancers at Ballet Arts an opportunity to perform cameo works by local and nationally known choreographers.From 2005-2009 Bonnie joined the Boston Ballet to direct the Boston Ballet II, and facilitated their performances in the Boston area and abroad.In addition to teaching and coaching dancers, she also created ballets for the Juilliard Dance Ensemble, Boston Ballet II, the Boston Lyric Opera, the Boston Conservatory, as well as many self-produced concerts in Minneapolis supported by grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. In 1990 she received a Jerome Foundation Travel-Study grant to observe the San Francisco Ballet training and outreach program in the public schools. Bonnie worked in tandem with Martine van Hamel at the Kaatsbaan International Dance Center in New York State for the initial 15 years of the organization and is presently enjoying the dependable sunshine of the Southwest in Tucson, Arizona.