Biography

Choreographer, Emma Bovary

Helen Pickett was born in San Diego, CA and has created over 60 ballets in the US, UK and Europe.

Her full-length ballet, The Crucible, won the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award and the Herald Angels Award in the UK and will be performed at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the Spoleto Festival USA in South Carolina and in Nashville in 2023. In 2020/21, Helen choreographed 12 dance films, including The Air Before Me, which won the Audience Choice Award at Screen Dance International, and Hurley Burley, which was nominated for an Emmy Award. While Resident Choreographer for Atlanta Ballet from 2012 to 2017, she was named Best Choreographer in 2014 and 2015. Upcoming commissions include two new full-length narrative works for American Ballet Theatre and Het Nationale Ballet as well as two one-act works for Boston Ballet and West Australian Ballet.

She was co-director of the Jacob’s Pillow Contemporary Summer Dance Program in 2021, leading a think tank workshop, Choreographic Essentials. Helen is producer of a popular YouTube talk show, Creative Vitality Jam Sessions, and founded the Female Choreographer’s Big Round Table, a digital discussion panel featuring 160 women in the roster.

As a dancer, Helen performed with Frankfurt Ballet under the direction of William Forsythe from 1987 to 1998 and from 1998 to 2003, she worked as an actress with Wooster Group in New York City.

She has a Master of Fine Arts from Hollins University and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.