Luke Ingham, soloist:

Men Without Hats, “The Safety Dance”
“Not my most favorite song of all time, but it does make me want to get up and dance…”

Gaetano Amico, corps de ballet:

Talking Heads, “Take Me To The River”
“Makes me want to dance.”

Dave Brubeck, The Golden Horn

Luke Willis, corps de ballet:

Justice, “D.A.N.C.E”
“A GREAT dance song.”

Whitney Houston, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”
“I’ve been listening to a remix of this A LOT since her passing, and will probably use it for my annual dance-off with my mom and two younger siblings”

Sasha De Sola, soloist:

“My summer guilty pleasure songs :)”

Icona Pop, “I Love It”

Tegan and Sara, “Closer”

Dores André, soloist:

It turns out Dores has whole playlists jam-packed with the songs that get her on the dancefloor — this is a tiny selection…

David Bowie, “Modern Love”

Janelle Monáe, “Tightrope [feat. Big Boi]“ 

Steven Morse, corps de ballet:

“These are equally my favorite workout/dance jams!”

Yolanda Be Cool Vrs DCup, “We No Speak Americano”

The Technotronics, “Pump up the Jam”

Myles Thatcher, corps de ballet:

Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Come On Eileen
“Such a great one!”

…and you can listen to the whole playlist on Spotify:

Tell us: what tracks would you add to this playlist?

Mrs. Jeannik Méquet Littlefield and SF Ballet Artistic Director & Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson on the occasion of the opening night of Tomasson’s Swan Lake, February 21, 2009. © Karina Marie Diaz

San Francisco Ballet lost a wonderful friend and supporter with the passing of Jeannik Méquet Littlefield on May 24. “Mrs. Littlefield’s generosity was instrumental in the artistic growth and vitality of San Francisco Ballet” said John S. Osterweis, Chair of San Francisco Ballet’s Board of Trustees. “We are deeply appreciative of her longstanding commitment to San Francisco Ballet.”

“I am very grateful for Jeannik’s support of the Ballet. She funded a number of new productions by a wide range of choreographers, most recently Christopher Wheeldon’s Cinderella. On a personal note, I greatly appreciated her decision to sponsor my new production of Swan Lake in 2009. Given her generosity to the arts in the Bay Area, it is only fitting that San Francisco Ballet will dedicate our performance on July 28 at the Stern Grove Festival to her memory,” said Artistic Director & Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson.

Mrs. Littlefield was born in Paris and attended the International School in Geneva, Switzerland, where her father worked as a translator for the League of Nations. She attended the Sorbonne before completing her education in the United States, earning an undergraduate degree from Wells College in New York and a graduate degree from Mills College. Fluent in French, German, Russian and English, she began studying for a Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1943, she joined the war effort as a translator and moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the French Air Mission. There she met Edmund Wattis Littlefield. The two married the following year. Mr. Littlefield went on to head the Utah Construction Co. (later Utah International Inc.), the family firm that had helped build the Hoover Dam. In 1976, in the largest commercial merger at that time, the company was acquired by General Electric.

Mrs. Littlefield’s philanthropy supported a wide range of causes including the San Francisco Opera, the San Francisco Symphony, Mills College, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Wells College, St. Francis Hospital, the San Francisco Food Bank, and the California Academy of Sciences, to name just a few. In 2005, she was named a Great Benefactor of SF Ballet and the SF Ballet School for her lifetime contributions to the organization.

Mrs. Littlefield understood the importance of building the Company’s repertory with new productions and new works and how they help SF Ballet engage new audiences and attract the finest artists to the Company. Her gifts for new productions were instrumental in the creation of Mark Morris’ Sylvia, Helgi Tomasson’s Swan Lake, and Cinderella by Christopher Wheeldon.

A memorial service will be held on Wednesday, July 31st, at 11am at St. Dominic Church, 2390 Bush Street, San Francisco.

Jeannik Méquet Littlefield was a beloved philanthropist who left a remarkable legacy, locally and beyond. She will be greatly missed.

Not only is it the oldest ballet school in the United States — celebrating its 80th anniversary this year — but it’s also where the next generation of ballet stars are trained. Need proof? Over half of the Company members of SF Ballet — 40 in total this year — are SFB School alumni. Here are just a few in action:

Clara Blanco, Soloist

Clara (pictured above in Val Caniparoli’s Ibsen’s House) came to the San Francisco Ballet School after beginning her training in her native Spain. She joined the Company in 2001, performed with Birmingham Royal Ballet for one year in 2006, and returned to SF Ballet in 2007, where she was promoted to soloist in 2012.

Daniel Deivison-Oliveira, Soloist

Daniel came to the SFB School from Brazil, joining the Company as a member of the corps de ballet in 2005 and achieving promotion to soloist six years later.

Jennifer Stahl, Soloist

Jennifer (pictured rehearsing Yuri Possokhov’s Rite of Spring with Carlos Quenedit) progressed from the SF Ballet School to Company apprentice (2005), corps de ballet member (2006) and then soloist this year!

Kimberly Braylock, Corps de Ballet

NYC-born Kimberly graduated from the SFB School to Company apprentice in 2009, and then the corps de ballet a year later.

Shannon Marie Rugani, Corps de Ballet

Bay Area native Shannon received all of her ballet training at the SF Ballet School, becoming an SFB apprentice and then joining the company as a corps de ballet member in 2005.

 Anthony Spaulding, Soloist

Anthony’s journey after training at the SF Ballet School saw him named as apprentice in 2004, progressing to member of the corps de ballet in 2006, then being promoted to soloist in 2008.

Myles Thatcher, Corps de Ballet

Atlanta-born SFB School alumnus Myles (pictured in Christopher Wheeldon’s Ghosts with Dores André) joined the corps de ballet in 2010 after becoming an SF Ballet apprentice a year earlier.  He’s also a choreographer who’s created several works for the School Trainees — his latest, Stone and Steel, will be performed at Student Showcase this week!

Kristina Lind, Corps de Ballet

Born in San Jose, Kristina studied in the School’s Trainee Program prior to joining the Company in 2009.  ”My years in the SFB School Trainee Program were the most intensely-rewarding years of training I had,” she says. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without that experience.”

The New York Times caught up with Alexandra to learn more about how she met her husband, Riley. Check out their story via the Times, below, along with the photo snapped here in our studios by our own Director of IT, Murray Bognovitz:

 Alexandra McCullagh, Riley Newman

A Scientist and the Value of Meddling

Murray Bognovitz

By ROSALIE R. RADOMSKY

Alexandra Buck McCullagh and Riley Sutthoff Newman were married Saturday at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. The Rev. Jude A. Harmon, an Episcopal priest and a minor canon at the cathedral, performed the ceremony.

The bride, 25, is a dancer in the corps de ballet of the San Francisco Ballet. She is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in performing arts through a program for dance professionals offered by St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif.

She is a daughter of Nanci Buck McCullagh and George P. McCullagh of San Rafael, Calif.

The groom, 30, works in San Francisco as the director of data science at Airbnb, a Web site for short-term home and apartment rentals around the world. He graduated with degrees in international studies and economics from the University of Washington. He also received a Master of Philosophy in economics from the University of Cambridge.

He is a son of Lisa Prince Newman and John S. Newman, also of San Rafael.

Mr. Newman said that he saw Ms. McCullagh for the first time in 2000 when he was a senior in high school and accompanied his parents to a performance of “The Nutcracker” at the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael. His sister, Maria, and Ms. McCullagh were students at the Marin Ballet school and were in the production. Year after year he dutifully returned to see “The Nutcracker.”

“She was always dancing the lead roles and was incredibly athletic,” he said of Ms. McCullagh. “She’s an incredible jumper. She would leap across the stage and she had the biggest smile.”

In the winter of 2006, while Mr. Newman was at Cambridge, his parents spotted Ms. McCullagh in the corps de ballet when they went to see the San Francisco Ballet. They then spoke to her when she came out to see her parents afterward. “You should fly home and bring this girl roses after every one of her shows until she goes out with you,” Mr. Newman remembered his father telling him on Skype. His father also told him he was convinced he had met his son’s future wife. Mr. Newman laughed it off.

In the summer of 2008, a year after Mr. Newman graduated from Cambridge and was living in San Francisco, his mother, by then on the board of the Marin Ballet school, invited him and Ms. McCullagh to a school benefit. She showed up with a boyfriend, another dancer, whom his father furtively invited for a drink at the bar to give his son some time to talk with Ms. McCullagh.

Mr. Newman became Ms. McCullagh’s friend on Facebook, but that was it. In spring of 2010, when he and his mother were on the way to see the San Francisco Ballet one evening, they saw Ms. McCullagh on the street rushing to a performance. With his mother’s encouragement, he caught up with her at a stoplight. “She was nice and smiling, her perfect smile,” he said, and the next day he was surprised to find a Facebook message from her. He then asked her out.

A couple of days later, they had dinner at an Italian restaurant in North Beach.

“It felt like I was meeting an old friend,” she said, adding with a laugh, “for a ballet dancer to end up with a data scientist at a tech company, sometimes it requires a little bit of meddling.” 

In anticipation of next week’s showcase performances, we thought we’d share a few fun facts we bet you didn’t know about SF Ballet School…

FACT: There are currently 40 SFBS alumni in San Francisco Ballet. That’s 55% of the entire Company!

August Bournonville’s La Sylphide (copyright Erik Tomasson)

FACT: Of the 40 School alums, 7 dancers hold the rank of soloist; 23 dancers graduated from the Trainee program.

Myles Thatcher's Spinae (copyright Erik Tomasson)

FACT: All of the Company ballet masters trained at SF Ballet School!

Choreography by George Balanchine (c) The George Balanchine Trust (copyright Erik Tomasson)

FACT: You can literally travel all over the world, and bump into an SFBS alumni!  Professional placements include: Dutch National Ballet; Royal New Zealand Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Vienna Opera Ballet, Hamburg Ballet, Alberta Ballet, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet, Houston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Washington Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet,  Atlanta Ballet, Ballet West, Ballet Met, North Carolina Dance Theater, Ballet Austin, Smuin Ballet, Ballet San Jose, Milwaukee Ballet, and Kansas City Ballet.

Myles Thatcher's Spinae (copyright Erik Tomasson)

FACT: School alums have attended colleges across the US, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

There you have it! We hope you’ll come celebrate the School’s achievements with us next week, at the 20th Annual Student Showcase!

Get ready NYC: we’re coming to New York’s Lincoln Center at the David H. Koch Theater from October 16 to 27, 2013!

From October 16-20, we’ll be presenting a variety of mixed-bill programs, with works by Edwaard Liang, Serge Lifar, Wayne McGregor, Mark Morris, Alexei Ratmansky, Helgi Tomasson, Yuri Possokhov, and Christopher Wheeldon.

From October 23-27, we’re unveiling the New York premiere of Wheeldon’s lavish new full-length ballet Cinderella — which completely sold out during its run here in San Francisco!

That line-up in full:

David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, New York
October 16-27, 2013

Program A—October 16 & 19, 8 pm

Trio* (Tomasson)
Ghosts* (Wheeldon)
Borderlands* (McGregor)

Program B—October 19, 2 pm

Trio (Tomasson)
Ghosts (Wheeldon)
Suite en Blanc (Lifar)

Program C—October 17 & 18, 8 pm

From Foreign Lands* (Ratmansky)
Beaux* (Morris)
Classical Symphony* (Possokhov)
Symphonic Dances* (Liang)

Program D—October 20, 2 pm

Suite en Blanc (Lifar)
From Foreign Lands (Ratmansky)
Symphonic Dances (Liang)

Cinderella—October 23, 24, 25 & 26 at 8 pm; October 26 & 27 at 2 pm

Cinderella* (Wheeldon)

*New York Premiere

How to buy your tickets:

Two special pre-sale offers are available online, at Audience Rewards and beginning May 30, at Travelzoo. Tickets will be available to the general public starting June 10 by visiting our website or calling 212.496.0600.

Will you come to see us in NYC? Tell us in the comments!