Claire Kretzschmar

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Claire Kretzschmar is a choreographer, dancer, teacher, podcast host and former soloist with New York City Ballet (NYCB 2010-2022), and this is her first year as Artistic Director of Ballet Hartford. She trained at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and the School of American Ballet prior to joining NYCB as an apprentice in 2010. At NYCB, she performed several featured roles in works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Alexei Ratmansky, Justin Peck, and Kyle Abraham, and she rose to become a soloist dancer in 2018. As a choreographer, her ballets include Rachmaninoff Variations and Rhapsodie for the New York Choreographic Institute, A Ceremony of Carols and Venus for Ballet Hartford, and most recently, the new full-length narrative ballet, Raffaella. Ms. Kretzschmar also co-hosts NYCB’s podcast, “The Rosin Box” and is a co-founder of Arthouse2B, a Catholic arts organization in NYC that seeks to restore culture by restoring the heart of the artist. She has a bachelor’s degree in Communications from Fordham University and is the recipient of the 2017 Janice Levin Award and the 2015 Martin E. Segal Award for rising artists.