Visting Artists
Barry Hughson will join the school in the Spring to choreograph a version of Benjamin Britten's Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra. His choreography will be performed by BSA dancers during the first two weeks of May.
Barry Hughson, a Connecticut native, joined Boston Ballet as Executive Director in June 2009 with over 17 years of arts management experience and a background rooted in the art of dance. At Boston Ballet, Hughson and Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen manage the fourth largest ballet company in the U.S., with a $25 million dollar annual budget, 750 employees, a world-class professional ballet company and Boston Ballet School, the world’s largest ballet school.
Prior to his appointment in Boston, Hughson was Executive Director of Atlanta Ballet, where he successfully engineered the move to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, completed the sale of the Ballet’s real estate resulting in the elimination of the Company’s debt, resolved a dispute with the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra, and developed the $14.8 million “Choreographing Our Future” campaign. To date, it is the most successful fundraising campaign in Atlanta Ballet’s 80-year history.
Hughson’s experience includes a distinguished career in arts administration which began at the historic Warner Theatre in Torrington, CT. There, Hughson created the Warner’s acclaimed Centre for Arts Education, and led a successful $12.5 million campaign to restore the Warner Theatre’s art deco building. He went on to become the first Executive Director of Complexions Contemporary Ballet in New York City before serving as Executive Director of American Repertory Ballet and The Princeton Ballet School in Princeton, NJ.
As an arts advocate, consultant, and educator, Hughson has worked extensively, including teaching and speaking engagements in the US, Europe and South America. Most recently, Hughson was a featured speaker at Harvard Business School’s acclaimed Social Enterprise Conference, and represented the United States on the jury of the Russia’s prestigious Benois de la Danse.
Additionally, Hughson has a background as a dancer and choreographer who has performed the works of George Balanchine, Nils Christie, Choo San Goh and Antony Tudor as an artist of The Washington (DC) Ballet. He was the only American male dancer awarded a prize at the 1990 New York International Ballet Competition. Hughson received his childhood training from Sharon Dante and Donna Bonasera at the Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts and the Connecticut Dance Theatre.
Hughson currently resides in the South End of Boston with his wife, Ashley, and their two children, Aila and Tyler.
