Silas Farley

CHOREOGRAPHER

Silas Farley is a member of New York City Ballet’s corps de ballet. He began his training when he was 7 years old with Sal and Barbara Messina at King David Christian Conservatory in Charlotte, North Carolina. At the age of 9, he was accepted on scholarship into Charlotte Ballet Academy (then The North Carolina Dance Theatre School of Dance), where his teachers were NYCB alumna Patricia McBride, Kathryn Moriarty, and Mark Diamond. At the age of 14, Mr. Farley attended the summer course at the School of American Ballet (SAB), the official school of NYCB, and was then invited to enroll as a full-time student. A choreographer since age 11, Mr. Farley has created ballets for SAB’s Student Choreography Workshop, SAB’s Winter Ball, SAB’s Summer Choreography Workshop, and for The New York Choreographic Institute. In the summer of 2017, he served as the choreographer for the Practicing Silence workshop at Grace Farms Foundation in New Canaan, CT. In the fall of 2017, Mr. Farley was commissioned by MetLive Arts to create a new site-specific ballet that will premiere in the spring of 2019 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2012, Mr. Farley was one of two advanced SAB students selected by Peter Martins for a student teaching pilot program at SAB. Since 2016, he has taught at SAB, first as a Teaching Fellow and now as a consistent guest teacher. He has guest taught for Charlotte Ballet, Ballet Austin, Ballet SND (Slovak National Ballet), Southern Methodist University, and The Hartt School. In both 2016 and 2017, he conducted masterclasses on the teaching and work of George Balanchine at The Academy of the Performing Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia. Mr. Farley was an inaugural Jerome Robbins Dance Division Fellow at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which included his writing an essay that compared the lives and works of August Bournonville and George Balanchine. He has lectured on ballet for New York City Ballet, The New York Philharmonic, and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. He is the recipient of SAB’s 2012 Mae L. Wien Award and Lincoln Center’s 2015 Martin E. Segal Award. In August 2012, Mr. Farley became an apprentice with NYCB and joined the Company as a member of the corps de ballet in August 2013. Silas has served as Artist in Residence for Ballet Hartford, in which role he regularly teaches the Company, choreographs new works, and advises the Artistic Director and Board