Katlyn Addison
Katlyn Addison is from Ontario, Canada. She joined Ballet West in 2011 and was promoted to Demi-Soloist in 2014, to Soloist in 2016, and to First Soloist in 2018. In 2016, Katlyn was the first black principal ballerina to perform the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in Willam Christensen’s The Nutcracker, and Katlyn again made history in 2021 when she became Ballet West’s first black female Principal Artist. Also in 2021, Katlyn was awarded the Performing Arts Fellowship Award by the Utah Division of Fine Arts & Museums. Katlyn began her professional ballet training at the age of ten with the National Ballet School of Canada and continued her training with Quinte Ballet School of Canada, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet, and the Houston Ballet Ben Stevenson Academy. She joined Houston Ballet’s corps de ballet in 2007, and in 2008, she was awarded the Sarah Chapin Langham Award at Youth America Grand Prix and was invited to perform at the prestigious YAGP Gala the same year. With Ballet West, Katlyn has danced leading roles in Sklute’s Swan Lake, Balanchine’s Prodigal Son, Stevenson’s Dracula, Fonte’s Carmina Burana, and many others!
Katlyn has also worked to find her choreographic voice. In 2015, Katlyn was chosen to choreograph The Hunt for Ballet West’s Choreographic Festival Program. She was again selected to create new works for the festival in 2018 (Hidden Voices) and in 2021 (Eden). She has created new ballets for the Utah Arts Festival (Unnamed, 2019), the Ballet West Academy, the University of Utah Dance Department (Saint-George, The Composer, Frenchmen, and Creator, 2020), the Kansas City Ballet (Sanctuary, 2022), and Ballet Jorgen (There Were TWO, 2022).
In 2015, Huffington Post named Katlyn as one of the top “26 black female dancers you should know,” and she has regularly been featured in Pointe and Dance Magazine. She danced and acted in Miu Miu’s Woman’s Tales, a short film that premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival and appeared on the Prada Miu Miu website. In 2019, Katlyn performed for attendees of the 68th United Nations Civil Society Conference, dancing the role of Mother Earth in The Way of the Rain – Earth Movements – A Symphony for Ballet with choreography by Emily Adams. Throughout the fall and winter of 2019-2020, Katlyn performed the principal/soloist roles at the Scottish Ballet in Glasgow, Scotland, including Tituba in Helen Pickett’s The Crucible and Snow Queen, choreographed by Christopher Hampson, Artistic Director of Scottish Ballet. In June of 2022, Katlyn was featured in “Reforming the Narrative” at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., where she performed a lead role in a new ballet created by renowned choreographer Donald Byrd.
In early 2022, Katlyn was included as an honoree in Microsoft’s virtual interactive museum, The Legacy Project, and she was also featured in the Utah Black Chamber’s book Black Utah: Stories of a Thriving Community.
Katlyn is involved in many passion projects and is dedicated to using her platform to give back to her community and to help raise the voices of other minority artists. Katlyn has volunteered her time for: the Redlining Project, an initiative drawing attention to injustices created by red lining voter districts; Ballet West’s I CAN DO Program; Curly ME, which supports young girls of color; Morning Star Middle School and Ridgewood Elementary School, both in Ontario, Canada; and she also serves on the board of directors for the Utah Black Artist Collective.