Kansas City Ballet

The Kansas City Ballet (KCB) is a professional ballet company based in Kansas City, Missouri. The company was founded in 1957 by Russian expatriate Tatiana Dokoudovska. The KCB presents five major performances each season to include an annual production of The Nutcracker. The KCB, its school, and its staff are all housed in, operate from, and rehearse at the Todd Bolender Center for Dance and Creativity, a renovated, seven-studio, office, and rehearsal facility in Kansas City, Missouri, that opened in August 2011. The company performs at and is the resident ballet company at the nearby Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, a performance venue in downtown Kansas City that opened in September 2011.

In 1957, Tatiana Dokoudovska founded the Kansas City Ballet (KCB) at the Carriage House in what is now Overland Park, Kansas. On April 30, 1957, the company gave its premiere performance at the Victoria Theater (renamed the Lyric Theatre) with Dokoudovska serving as its first artistic director. The program included two ballets: Michel Fokine's original Les Sylphides, and Ruse d’Amour, an adaptation by Dokoudovska of Fokine's The Toys. In December 1957, the Kansas City Ballet Company became a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with a board of directors, business manager, and musical director.

In the 1958–1959 season, the company name changed to the Kansas City Civic Ballet.

In 1963, the company moved from the Carriage Club to a location in Kansas City proper on 45th street near the Nelson Atkins Museum.

In 1966, guest artist Nathalie Krassovska came to Kansas City to set Anton Dolin's restaging of Pas de Quatre on the company.

In 1967, Dokoudovska brought Shirley Weaver, a Kansas City native and former dancer with the Metropolitan Opera and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, to the KCB. Weaver danced major roles with KCB, choreographed, served as (honorary) ballet mistress, and taught alongside Dokoudovska at the University of Missouri–Kansas City Conservatory of Music for many years. To commemorate its 10th anniversary, the company performed a program at the Kansas City Music Hall featuring three guest choreographers.

In 1968, the company moved to Treadway Hall on the University of Missouri–Kansas City Campus.

In April 1968, choreographer Zachary Solov began a multi-year collaboration with the KCB, coming to Kansas City to choreograph and stage two world premiere ballets with the KCB: an abstract piece set to Mozart's Symphony No. 40 and a theater ballet based on Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns. The program also included performances by New York City Ballet guest artists Edward Villella and Patricia McBride.