Johanna Butow trained with Irma Grant Millard in Lancaster, PA. Butow became an apprentice to Joffrey II at age 15 and joined the company at age 19. In 1993, she left the Joffrey Ballet to join ABT, where she danced for eight years. At ABT Butow has performed most of the major full-length classical ballets including Giselle, La Bayadere, Romeo and Juliet, Coppelia, and La Sylphide, as well as repertory ballets including Antony Tudor’s Echoing of Trumpets, Gala Performance and Lilac Garden, Clark Tippet’s Bruch Violin Concerto, Kevin McKenzie’s Transcendental Etudes, Agnes DeMille’s Fall River Legend, Petipa’s Paquita, Fokine’s Les Sylphides, Lar Lubovitch’s A Brahms Symphony, and James Kudelka’s Cruel World. She danced featured roles in The Merry Widow, Swan Lake, Rodeo, Leaves Are Fading, The Elements and How Near Heaven.