teacher stories
Ballez Founder Katy Pyle Is Creating Space for Students to Reclaim Ballet on Their Own Terms
Olivia Manno
For Ballez founder Katy Pyle, the pun came first and the epiphany second. “In 2011, I was having a conversation with a group of other queer, female-assigned contemporary dancers,” Pyle remembers, “and the consensus was that we all missed ballet, but we would never go back into that world. I realized how messed up it was that we felt no agency within the situation, and I decided that I wanted to have power over ballet—not the other way around.”