Bridget Breiner is an award-winning choreographer whose innovative works have blended ballet and opera, European and American sensibilities, and classical and contemporary dance vocabulary. Her most notable work draws on fairy tales, artwork, history and theater, and transforms them into multimedia experiences that expand the conventions of ballet.
She grew up in Columbus, Ohio, where she received her early dance training at the BalletMet Dance Academy. She completed her training at the Heinz-Bosl-Stiftung in Munich and subsequently joined the Bavarian State Ballet in 1992 under the direction of Konstanze Vernon. In 1996 she joined the Stuttgart Ballet under the direction of Reid Anderson and quickly became one of the company's most celebrated dancers, being promoted to Principal in 2001. From 2006 to 2008 she danced with the Semperoper Ballet in Dresden under the direction of Aaron Watkin, and was a regular guest artist with the Stuttgart Ballet until 2011.
Since her choreographic debut in 2005, Bridget Breiner has created works for the Stuttgart Ballet, Latvian National Ballet, Kevin O´Day-Ballet Mannheim, Ballet Augsburg, and the Salzburg State Theatre.
In 2012, she was appointed artistic director of the newly formed ballet company Ballett im Revier of the Musiktheater im Revier, Gelsenkirchen, a company of 14 international dancers. Her first full-length story ballet for the company—Soot, a retelling of the Cinderella tale (Ruß - Eine Geschichte von Aschenputtel)— received Germany's most prestigious theatre award "Der FAUST” for "Best Choreography" in 2013. She followed this success with new choreography for On the Town, Swan Lake, and The Tragedies of Othello. Another dance-opera collaboration, Charlotte Salomon: Death and the Painter (Der Tod und die Malerin) with commissioned score by composer Michelle DiBucci, received wide critical acclaim and again brought her the “FAUST” award in 2015.
In 2016, Bridget Breiner was invited to the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, one of Europe's oldest theatre festivals. Her creation there—Prospero’s Island (Prosperos Insel)—a retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, was immediately taken into the company's repertoire. In 2017, she created her first full-length symphonic ballet, The Vital Unrest, including Camille Saint-Saëns’ Third Symphony and a new commissioned work by Latvian composer Georgs Pelecis. She then worked in 2018 on two adaptations of classics of ballet: The Firebird, for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, and Romeo and Juliet for her own company Ballet im Revier in Gelsenkirchen.
In 2019, she became the artistic director and principal choreographer of Staatsballett Karlsruhe. In her time with the company she has created many ballets, including the full-lengths Twelfth Night, Maria Stuart, and The Girl and the Nutcracker. As of the season 2024-25 she will be heading up the company Ballett am Rhein in Düsseldorf/Duisburg, as prinicpal choreographer in a co-directorship with Raphaël Coumes-Marquet.
Her dance repertoire includes dramatic and classical leading roles in the repertoire of John Cranko (Romeo and Juliet, Onegin, Swan Lake) and John Neumeier (Lady of the Camellias, A Street Car Named Desire), as well as intensive work in the neo-classical/contemporary repertoire of Jerome Robbins, Glen Tetley, William Forsythe, George Balanchine, Jiří Kylián and Hans van Manen. Her dramatic stage presence has inspired a wide range of leading choreographers to create roles for her, including Christian Spuck, Douglas Lee, Kevin O'Day, Mauro Bigonzetti, Cathy Marston and David Dawson.
