Edwaard Liang To Helm BalletMet

The incoming artistic director of BalletMet Columbus is Edwaard Liang, who’ll bring the experience of an outstanding international performing career and his choreographic talents to Ohio starting this July. The top post has been vacant since Gerard Charles, whose career with BalletMet spanned 26 years, 10 as director, left the company for a ballet master position with the Joffrey last summer. (James Kudelka, as artistic consultant, and the artistic staff have been leading the company in the interim.)

The Taiwan-born, California-raised Liang spent eight years with New York City Ballet before joining the Broadway cast of Fosse, and then Nederlands Dans Theater under Jirí Kylián. Named a “25 to Watch” in 2006 as a then-budding dancemaker, Liang has made or set ballets on New York City Ballet, The Joffrey Ballet, and San Francisco Ballet, among others. He made his first full-length ballet, Romeo and Juliet, for Tulsa Ballet last February, and recently set his Distant Cries on Svetlana Zakharova and Andrei Merkuriev of The Bolshoi.

BalletMet’s current season, which continues this month, includes the premiere of Kudelka’s Rite of Spring. And Liang has an upcoming premiere of his own—Murmuration, for Houston Ballet—before he gets to work in Columbus.

For more on Liang, see our “Choreography in Focus.”