About GBC
The Gainesville Ballet Company is dedicated to promoting the appreciation, study, and performance of dance as an art form to as wide and diverse an audience as possible in the Gainesville and larger Northeast Georgia community.
Our faculty, choreographers, and board of directors are committed to providing dance training and performance opportunities to dancers ranging in age from three years old to Brenau University dance majors and adult beginners. We take great pride in offering our dancers a world-class dance education and a positive, nurturing environment where they can grow as dancers and as young people.
The History
The Gainesville Ballet Company is a non-profit organization comprised of middle/high school dance students, select Brenau University dance majors and professional dancers. In addition to providing a training ground for aspiring dancers, the Company annually presents well-known performances such as The Nutcracker and a Storybook Ballet. The Company's "Dance Discovery" program provides community outreach, including an introduction to ballet classes for underprivileged children, ballet lectures/demonstrations for various groups, and school matinees of the Nutcracker and the Storybook Ballet, with corresponding coloring contests. The contest winners from local elementary schools win free tickets to the ballet. Diane Callahan founded the Gainesville Ballet Company in 1974 to provide additional performing opportunities for her talented Gainesville School of Ballet (founded in 1969) students.
For 50 years, the Gainesville Ballet Company and Brenau University have partnered to provide Northeast Georgia with access to professional quality ballet performances and instruction. In conjunction with the tremendous efforts of dedicated volunteers, individuals, small businesses, and corporations, this partnership has allowed the ballet to reach more than 5,000 children and 2,000 adults from 22 counties across Georgia and beyond. The Board of Directors, staff, and faculty are honored to bring a quality dance program to Northeast Georgia.
The Legacy
Ms. Callahan's dance heritage reflects a rich and varied history. In addition to her predominantly Vaganova-based training, she also trained in the Cecchetti and Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) systems. She began studying dance with the co-founders of the Atlanta Ballet, Dorothy Alexander and Merrilee Smith. She subsequently studied with the famous ballerina Alexandra Danilova. Other famous Russian teachers include Michael Panaieff, Maria Bekefi, and Paul Petroff. Ms. Callahan’s RAD training came at the hands of David Blair and Rosemary Valaire; while the Cecchetti influence results from her training with Michael Brigante and Carmelita Maracci. During her professional career, she worked with the famous choreographers George Balanchine, Eugene Loring, and Robert Barnett. During her last two years in high school, Ms. Callahan was hired to dance at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles in the ballets Giselle and Coppelia starring the illustrious Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso and her equally-famous partners Igor Youskevitch and Andre Eglevsky.
After graduation, Ms. Callahan joined Alicia’s company, Ballet Nacional de Cuba, and toured Mexico, Germany, Poland, Latvia, and the USSR, performing on both the Mariinsky Theatre and Bolshoi stages. She then returned to the USA and joined the San Francisco Ballet as a soloist . Finally coming back to Atlanta, she became a principal dancer with the Atlanta Ballet for ten years. While with the Atlanta Ballet, she trained under Robert Barnett, former Atlanta Ballet artistic director and New York City Ballet soloist. Ms. Callahan was a faculty member at Brenau University, where she was instrumental in establishing its dance degree program. She also served on the Dance Advisory Panel of the Georgia Council for the Arts. The training and experience available to Ms. Callahan’s students enabled many of them to build a life in dance as performers, instructors and arts administrators. Former students and company members have been principals and soloists with the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Atlanta Ballet, Eliot Feld Ballet, Louisville Ballet, have starred on Broadway, and danced with many regional companies throughout the country.
