Studio Stories: Reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance with Bonnie Mathis - Season 4, Episode 52

Bonnie Mathis was a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre
and a soloist with the Harkness Ballet and also performed with
many modern companies, namely the Lar Lubovitch Company, the Paul
Taylor Company, the Paul Sanasardo Company, the Norman Walker
Company, and the Nederlands Dans Theatre. Antony Tudor and Maggie
Black where her primary teachers while at the Juilliard School
and through her performing career as well as Benjamin Harkarvy
and David Howard during her time at the Harkness Ballet.


She was part of the dance community of Minneapolis from 1980 to
2005, initially teaching ballet for the Minnesota Dance Theater,
the University of Minnesota, and the Northwest Ballet and in 1989
co-creating Ballet Arts Minnesota.The City Children’s Nutcracker
was created by Ballet Arts Mn. in 1990 in collaboration with the
Minneapolis Park Board. It included dancers from the University
of Minnesota and the local dance community as well as guest
artists from Dance Theater of Harlem, the Twin Cities Youth
Symphony, and choreographers such as Danny Buraczeski and Danny
Ezralow. She also created Springboard Dance, a program that gave
the advanced dancers at Ballet Arts an opportunity to perform
cameo works by local and nationally known choreographers.


From 2005-2009 Bonnie joined the Boston Ballet to direct the
Boston Ballet II, and facilitated their performances in the
Boston area and abroad.


In addition to teaching and coaching dancers, she also created
ballets for the Juilliard Dance Ensemble, Boston Ballet II, the
Boston Lyric Opera, the Boston Conservatory, as well as many
self-produced concerts in Minneapolis supported by grants from
the Minnesota State Arts Board. In 1990 she received a Jerome
Foundation Travel-Study grant to observe the San Francisco Ballet
training and outreach program in the public schools. 


Bonnie worked in tandem with Martine van Hamel at the Kaatsbaan
International Dance Center in New York State for the initial 15
years of the organization and is presently enjoying the
dependable sunshine of the Southwest in Tucson, Arizona.