interview

American Ballet Theatre returned to Los Angeles on December 15, 2025, for its annual Holiday Benefit at the Beverly Hilton, welcoming dancers, artists, and longtime supporters for an evening of performance and celebration. Guests including Sterling K. Brown and Ryan Michelle Bathé filled the International Ballroom alongside ABT leadership and principal dancers, creating an atmosphere that felt both lively and personal, with the audience seated unusually close to the performers.

Guests watched as principal dancers performed excerpts from Les Sylphides, The Winter’s Tale, Grand Pas Classique, Midnight Pas de Deux, and a beloved selection from The Nutcracker. The intimacy of the ballroom shifted the dynamic of the performance, with Artistic Director Susan Jaffe noting, “This is a very intimate setting, and we have a lot of principal dancers doing small dances for a smaller stage,” adding that she hoped “everyone has a wonderful experience for the holidays.”

Throughout the evening, the purpose behind the gathering remained front and center. Executive Director Barry Hughson addressed the room by underscoring the urgency of sustaining the arts at this moment. Referencing honoree Stewart R. Smith’s remarks, Hughson said, “As Stewart stated, the arts are not a construct. They are part of our collective humanity. In this moment, in this world, our humanity cannot be taken for granted. It must be continued.” He emphasized that the arts “must exist” and “must be protected.”

Smith, who received the Melville Straus Leadership Achievement Award, expanded on that idea in a speech that resonated deeply with the audience. Describing the physical response art can provoke, he said, “Maybe your heart races a little bit. Or maybe you feel a tear form in the corner of your eye just a little bit. I know this happens to me.” He continued, “I think this emotional response emerges because the beauty and the creativity has tapped into something deep within us. It’s a unique spark that is essential. It is the essence of the human spirit.” Acknowledging the pressures facing the arts, from financial strain to the pace of a high-tech world, Smith was resolute. “The arts must survive and they must thrive. And that’s why I’m all in on this. I cannot imagine a world without such beauty and creativity, and I don’t think you can either.”

Smith also expressed pride in ABT’s growing presence on the West Coast. “I’m proud that American Ballet Theatre is making Southern California its second home,” he said, thanking the audience for gathering to celebrate the company. He reminded guests that ABT’s designation by Congress as America’s National Ballet makes it both a national and local treasure. “It belongs to all of us,” he said, “after all, it’s within all of us.”

That idea, that dance belongs to everyone, echoed beyond the stage. Among the guests was Kailey, a professional dancer on wheels, who spoke about her lifelong relationship with dance and how it has evolved. “I danced on my feet all of my life until I became disabled,” she shared, explaining that she was diagnosed with a progressive connective tissue disorder in 2020 during the pandemic. In the earliest days of that transition, she recalled dancing alone on the floor of her house, “just trying to hold onto what I had.” What followed, however, was a feeling of expansion. “Once I was on wheels, the movement became completely infinite,” she said. While she explained that the adjustment was far more difficult mentally than it was physically, she described the physical experience as joyful and expansive. “Physically it’s been so much fun because you’re constantly exploring movement and technique and dance in a new way.” She emphasized the importance of community in that process, adding, “We have to tune into our community and adapt together, and I dance more now than I did before I became disabled.”

Through social media, Kailey connected with Chelsea Hill, founder of The Rollettes Foundation and one of the most visible wheelchair dancers working today. Hill became both a mentor and a sister figure, guiding her into a broader community centered on collaboration, and shared movement. She and Chelsea represented the United States in the opening ceremony of the paralympics in Paris, and together with The Rollettes, the group continues to perform in Los Angeles and beyond, most recently dancing for Lady Gaga. “We danced for Gaga and it was unreal,” Kailey said. “We’re still riding the wave of it.”

That sense of dance as something lived and carried forward was echoed elsewhere in the room. Courtney Mays, a wardrobe stylist who works primarily with athletes, most recently for the WNBA, reflected on how ballet has remained a constant in her life. “I’ve been a huge fan of the ballet all my life,” she said. “I like that I get to be in both sport and art, and that I get to support women who are finally getting the recognition and getting to shine.”

Personal histories continued to thread throughout the evening. Dancer Tori Evans shared that nights like this make her feel nostalgic for ballet and theater, crediting her mother, a former dancer, for insisting she attend class from a young age. “I started at three or four,” she said, explaining that while ballet did not come easily at first, something shifted around junior high. “It suddenly clicked around age twelve.”

Leadership at ABT shared similar origin stories. Jaffe reflected on beginning dance at age seven and having what she described as a prophetic dream around age eight that she would become a star. She moved to New York at eighteen, became a principal dancer in 1980 before retiring in 2000. “Nobody in my family was a dancer,” she said. “I was very strong-minded.” She laughed as she recalled the certainty she felt even as a child, later realizing that the children’s book Angelina Ballerina mirrored her own story. “I was reading it to kids and thought, wait a minute,this sounds familiar” she said. Jaffe also remembered announcing to her mother at age ten that she was going to start drinking coffee and become a dancer with Baryshnikov. “She let me drink coffee,and I danced with Baryshnikov” she added, smiling. Hughson, meanwhile, recalled studying dance as a young boy after following his sister to class. “She quit, and I fell in love with dance,” he said. Though an injury ended his performing career in his twenties, his devotion to the art never waned. 

By the end of the night, the Holiday Benefit felt less like a formal occasion and more like a gathering shaped by shared belief. Between the closeness of the performances and the personal stories exchanged throughout the room, the American Ballet Theatre’s return to Los Angeles served as a reminder of how deeply art lives inside people, and why it continues to matter.