Ballet dancers are bonkers flexible — they have to be to do the splits in midair or lift one leg higher and higher while making it look effortless.
Aspen Ballet Santa Fe artistic director Tom Mossbrucker and executive director Jean-Philippe Malaty — both former dancers — now exercise a different kind of flexibility as they run a dance organization that produces and presents performances in two cities and has dance schools in each. Success requires business acumen, artistic vision, and staying super organized.
The pair have been working together for almost 30 years, and they’re the type of colleagues who finish each other’s sentences. The ballet company they helped build in Aspen in 1996 grew from a troupe of seven dancers into a company that danced 40 original works, toured Europe, and performed in New York and Los Angeles before shuttering in 2020.
13 Tongues draws inspiration from the stories told by the choreographer’s mother about legendary street artist and storyteller Thirteen Tongues.
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s annual Nutcracker features students from the Santa Fe ballet school and guest artists from professional companies around the nation. (Scene from the 2022 production)