Biography

• BA, history, University of New Mexico 
• MEd, dance, Temple Univesity
• Graduate Certificate, women's studies, Temple University
• PhD, dance, Temple University

Laura Katz Rizzo is a ballet choreographer, scholar and pedagogue.  She has received certification in the Vaganova method of classical ballet pedagogy, which she studied under John White and Margarita de Saá, as well as being an ABT certified teacher who has successfully completed the ABT Teacher Training Intensive in levels Primary through 7 and Partnering of the American Ballet Theater National Training Curriculum. She began her ballet training under Hortensia Fonseca at the Maryland Youth Ballet, later studying with Maria and Marjorie Tallchief, Melissa Hayden and Allegra Kent at the Chicago City Ballet, Helgi Thommason, Christopher Boatwright and Larissa Sklyanskaya at the San Francisco Ballet, and Ben Stevenson and Rosemary Miles at the Houston Ballet. As a student, she performed with The Joffrey Ballet and New York City Ballet. She has performed professionally with several classical ballet companies, including Ballet South, the Russian Ballet Theatre of Delaware, the Santa Fe Opera Company, and The Ballet Theatre of New Mexico, and several contemporary and baroque dance companies, including Dance Theatre X, Opus I Contemporary and Sprezzatura Dance Ensemble. Her repertoire includes principal roles in The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, Les Patineurs, Firebird, Swan Lake, Cinderella, Dark Elegies, Raymonda, Paquita, and many other classical and contemporary ballets.

She has trained in archive and oral history work through the Legacy Oral History Project, and written articles, book reviews and teaching guides for dance publications and institutions such as Dance Chronicle, Playbill Magazine, Critical Correspondence: Movement Research Journal and The Brooklyn Academy of Music.  She has participated in interviews and panels on dance for The National Museum of Women in the Arts and WRTI Radio, and presented papers, choreographic work and taught master classes at some of the following institutions: The University of Pennsylvania, The University of Chicago, Sarah Lawrence College, The University of the Arts, The University of Utah, Franklin and Marshall College, Muhlenberg College and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
 
Rizzo has taught at Mount Holyoke College, Bryn Mawr College, Drexel University, the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet, the Dance Theatre of the Southwest and Ballet Theater of New Mexico. 

Works and Publications

Book

Dancing the Fairytale: Performing and Producing The Sleeping Beauty. Temple University Press, 2015.

“African Dance and Classical Ballet: A Dialogue across Genre” 
Critical Correspondence: Movement Research Journal
New York: Movement Research

Book Review, “Vaganova’s Vision and the Development of Neoclassical Russian Ballet Training”
Dance Chronicle
Taylor and Francis: London and New York

Book Review, “Embodied History: The Cultural Revelations of Dancing Bodies in Their Times”
Dance Chronicle, January 2009
Taylor and Francis: London and New York

Generation BAM Study Guide for “Les Noces and Petrushka” 
Brooklyn Academy of Music, November 2005
Brooklyn, New York

“The Pennsylvania Ballet’s Nutcracker Turns 35”
Playbill Magazine, November 2003
New York, New York 

Media

Vimeo: Laura Katz Rizzo