Helen Pickett

Photo: Juan Carlos Osma.

Choreographer Helen Pickett, a native of San Diego, California, has created over 60 ballets for stage and film in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.

Emma Bovary, which premiered in 2023 with the National Ballet of Canada, made The Top 10 Best Dance Performances in Toronto. The Crucible, Pickett’s full-length for Scottish Ballet, toured to the Kennedy Center and Spoleto Festival USA in 2023 to national acclaim. The Crucible premiered at Edinburgh International Festival in 2019 and won two awards, UK Theatre Critics Award and the Herald Angel Award. Pickett’s dance film, Warehouse Variations (After Hours), won the Best of Boston. From 2020-2021, Pickett choreographed 12 dances for film, including The Air Before Me, which won the Audience Choice Award for Screen Dance International Festival, and Hurley Burley, which was nominated for an Emmy Award.

While resident choreographer for Atlanta Ballet (2012- 2017), she was named Best Choreographer in 2014, and won Best Choreographer and Best Dance Production for her full length, Camino Real in 2015. In 2016, Pickett received an Honorary Doctorate from University of North Carolina School of the Arts, from then Dean of Dance and current Artistic Director of American Ballet Theatre Susan Jaffe.

Since 2005, Pickett has choreographed work for Boston Ballet, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Ballet West, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Semper Oper/Dresden Ballet, Vienna State Opera, Scottish Ballet, Philadelphia Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Alberta Ballet, Tulsa Ballet, Charlotte Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, Washington Ballet, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, Louisville Ballet, Ballet X, Smuin Ballet, Oklahoma City Ballet, Sacramento Ballet, Washington Ballet, West Australian Ballet, Ballet Rhode Island, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Vail Dance Festival, American Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Kansas City Ballet, and Cincinnati Ballet. In addition, she choreographed for the Chicago Lyric Opera, Les Troyens, and, in London, an evening length, multi-media musical, Voices of the Amazon.

Pickett’s 12 dance films were choreographed and rehearsed on Zoom. Home Studies, a five-film series, was later translated to the stage for a premiere at Jacob’s Pillow in August 2021. Three films from her series The Shakespeare Cycle,were featured on PBS. The film The Air Before Me, created with director Shaun Clarke, made four Official Selection lists around the world and won the Audience Choice Award for Screen Dance International Festival. For the films, Pickett worked with dancers from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Boston Ballet, Charlotte Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Kansas City Ballet, Les Grands Ballet Canadians de Montreal, and Royal Swedish Ballet.  In August 2020, Scottish Ballet premiered Trace, a duet created for film, in “My Light Shines On: An Evening with Scottish Ballet” for the Edinburgh International Festival.

In April 2021, Pickett founded the Female Choreographer’s Big Round Table, a Zoom meeting place for female choreographers to build community and forge avenues for more equitable work environments. To date, 150 female choreographers have joined the Roundtable.

In 2020, Pickett created a YouTube talk show. The one-on-one conversations would become “Creative Vitality Jam Sessions.” Pickett created CVJS to not only highlight extraordinary dance and theater artists but also to support and build an inclusive, equitable dance community across 83 sessions.

Pickett danced with William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt 1987-1998. She was involved in 20 original productions in her time with Ballet Frankfurt. During her last season with Ballet Frankfurt, Pickett simultaneously performed with The Wooster Group (director, Elizabeth Le Compte) in the OBIE award winning House/Lights and North Atlantic. From 2005-2012, Pickett reprised the speaking role Agnes in William Forsythe’s Impressing the Czar as a guest artist with The Royal Ballet of Flanders. Impressing the Czar received the Laurence Olivier Award in 2009, and the Prix de la Critique award for outstanding performance of the year in 2012. From 2013-2017, Pickett performed Agnes with Dresden Semper Oper Ballet.

Pickett collaborated, as an actress and choreographer, with the installation video artists and filmmakers Eve Sussman, Toni Dove, and Laurie Simmons. Pickett, a founding member of Eve Sussman’s The Rufus Corporation, played the Queen in 89 Seconds at Alcazar, which premiered at the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She also acted in Sussman’s feature length film, The Rape of the Sabine Women. She choreographed the bubble dance and played Sally Rand in Toni Dove’s video installation and film, Spectropia. Pickett choreographed the dance sequences for Laurie Simmons’ The Music of Regret, which premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Pickett was the co-director, along with Milton Meyers, of the Jacob’s Pillow Contemporary Summer Dance School Program in 2021. She created a choreographic intensive for college age choreographers entitled Choreographic Essentials, which she has taught in universities around the country. She has taught Forsythe Improvisation Technologies throughout the United States. In addition, Pickett is a mentor to young choreographers and undergraduate and MFA students throughout the United States. She was Distinguished Visiting Artist at University of North Carolina School of the Arts from 2016-2020.

In 2011, Pickett earned a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Hollins University. For her Master’s Thesis she collaborated with Christopher Janney, sound and light architect, and Kathleen Breen Combes and John Lam from Boston Ballet.

Pickett received a Fellowship Initiative Grant from New York Choreographic Institute (2006). Dance Magazine named Pickett one of “25 to Watch” (2007).  Jacob’s Pillow awarded her a Choreographic Residency (2008). Pickett was one of the first choreographers to receive the Jerome Robbins Foundation’s New Essential Works Grant.

In 2006, Dance Europe published Pickett’s article, “Considering Cezanne.” In 2019, The American Stroke Association published the ode to her parents entitled, “A Tribute to Love.”