about the company
our mission
Leigh Purtill Ballet Company was created with one mission: to foster a community of ballet dancers that is reflective of anyone and everyone who wants to participate. Based in La Cañada, California, our goal is to provide the greater Los Angeles community with an encouraging and joyful environment which promotes our position that ballet is an art form that is accessible and achievable for anyone.
Ballet can improve self-esteem, strengthen the body, challenge the mind and inspire a person to achieve things they thought were unattainable. Everyone should have the opportunity to experience ballet in their own way and have fun, as a performer and as an audience member.
"It's my goal to make ballet as inclusive as possible, and that means putting dancers on stage who don't fit the outdated mold of the perfect ballerina, dancers who don't all look alike, sound alike or move alike.”
-Leigh Purtill
LEIGH PURTILL
Artistic Director
Leigh Purtill is a ballet instructor, choreographer and coach. After performing and teaching for ten years in Boston, Connecticut and New York, Leigh moved to LA where she has been teaching all levels of ballet to adults since 2007. On her own and in collaboration with other studios, she has staged over two dozen productions including The Nutcracker, Alice in Wonderland, Coppelia and Sleeping Beauty. She has a passion for nurturing the love of dance in others and strives to include students with a wide variety of experience in her shows.
In January 2017, Leigh realized a lifelong dream, forming a non-profit amateur ballet company for adults of various skill levels and backgrounds. She is the Artistic Director and choreographer for the company’s first full length original ballet, “Sweet Sorrow ™ A Zombie Ballet,” a production she hopes will be an annual tradition for Halloween in much the same way The Nutcracker is for Christmas.
Leigh is committed to the company’s mission that Ballet is for Everyone. Her personal goals, and those of the company, are to encourage people to try ballet who might not otherwise and to bring ballet to an audience that would not normally attend a performance. In these ways, she believes ballet will stay alive and relevant to future generations.
Leigh is also a published young adult novelist and has received degrees in Anthropology and Dance from Mount Holyoke College and a master’s degree in film production from Boston University.
“All of life is stories,” she says. “Whether we tell them with ballet or books, stories connect us all.”
board members
dancers
