Carla Körbes

Photo: Patrick Fraser.

Born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Carla Körbes began ballet training with local teachers at age five. At age 11, she began studying at Ballet Vera Bublitz. In 1996, Peter Boal, former New York City Ballet (NYCB) principal dancer, danced with her as a guest artist of the school and encouraged her to come to New York to study at the School of American Ballet (SAB). For the 1997-1998 academic year, her tuition was paid for by Alexandra Danilova.

In 1999, Körbes won the Mae. L. Wien Award and was made an apprentice with NYCB. She joined the company as a corps de ballet member in 2000 and was the Janice Levin Dancer Honoree for 2001-2002. She was promoted to soloist in 2005 and, later that year, joined Pacific Northwest Ballet as a soloist. She was promoted to principal dancer there in 2006.

Körbes’s repertory included numerous ballets by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Christopher Wheeldon, William Forsythe, Alexei Ratmansky, Twyla Tharp, Nacho Duato, Jirí Kylián, and Mark Morris. Körbes has performed in most of ballet’s classical works, including Swan Lake, Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia, and Don Quixote.

Körbes last performed with Pacific Northwest Ballet on June 7, 2015. That same year, she joined the L.A. Dance Project as associate director and started teaching at The Colburn School in Los Angeles. In 2017, she relocated to Bloomington, Indiana, to take the position of professor of music in ballet at the prestigious Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Körbes left her position at Indiana University in June 2023 and relocated to Ridgefield, Connecticut.