Associate Artistic Director
Victor Barbee was born in Raleigh, North Carolina and received his ballet training at the North Carolina School of the Arts and the School of American Ballet. He joined the American Ballet Theatre in April 1975. Barbee was promoted to soloist in 1979 and to Principal Dancer in 1984. He became Assistant to the Artistic Staff in 1994, Ballet Master in 1997, and Associate Artistic Director in 2001, a position he held until becoming Associate Artistic Director of The Washington Ballet in 2016. Barbee’s repertoire with American Ballet Theatre included leading roles in major classical ballets including Swan Lake and La Bayadere, and Principal roles in Le Corsaire, Coppelia, Don Quixote, La Fille Mal Gardee, The Merry Widow, Snow Maiden, La Sylphide, Raymonda, Kenneth Macmillan’s Anastasia, Sleeping Beauty, and Manon. He created roles for numerous choreographers, including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Agnes DeMille, Antony Tudor, Twyla Tharp, John Neumeier, Alexei Ratmansky, and David Parsons, among others. Barbee made his musical comedy debut on Broadway in Woman of the Year, and appeared on Broadway in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song and Dance, co-starring with Bernadette Peters. He also appeared in the television series Hart to Hart and Laverne and Shirley, and in the films The Turning Point and Dancers. Barbee is married to Artistic Director Julie Kent.
Photo by XMB Photography.