About the Dolls

Our Mission:   “To fearlessly create challenging and surprising dance work that brings a sense of discovery to audiences and artists alike.”

Ballet of the Dolls was created in 1986 by esteemed choreographer Myron Johnson. Providing the Twin Cities with its first year-round dance-theater program, the company immediately filled a unique niche in the arts community, offering intimate and innovative professional dance-theater performances that appeal to both dance and theater audiences. Advertised solely by word of mouth, several thousand people attended the first season consisting of five original full-length shows, making the Dolls a permanent fixture in the Twin Cities arts community. Celebrating its 23rd season, Ballet of the Dolls continues to push boundaries by creating challenging original works, operating education and outreach programs, and now by programming and managing the newly renovated Ritz Theater in Northeast Minneapolis.

About the Director:
Myron Johnson is one of this country’s most inventive choreographers, with over 30 years’ experience in dance, theater, and mime performance and production. He studied in Paris under the celebrated mime Marcel Marceau, as well as with Mme. Janine Charat and Ren Bon.

Since founding Ballet of the Dolls in 1986, Johnson has choreographed and mounted over 50 original productions, receiving extraordinary critical and popular acclaim. He has also choreographed and directed at the Guthrie Theater and the Children’s Theater Company.

Ballet of the Dolls “… is an attitude, a thrashing of conventional good taste, a Busby Berkeley on speed.  It’s defiantly anti-high art, dance on its worst behavior, almost daring you to get dirty.”
- Mike Steele, Minneapolis Star Tribune

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