Helen Pickett

Choreographer Helen Pickett, born in San Diego, CA, has created over 60 ballets in the US, UK and Europe. Helen’s upcoming commissions include a short work for Boston Ballet and two full-length narratives for American Ballet Theatre and Het Nationale Ballet. The Crucible, a full-length for Scottish Ballet, won the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award and the Herald Angel Award in the UK and toured to Sadler’s Wells Theatre, The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and Spoleto Festival USA. Helen was Resident Choreographer for Atlanta Ballet from 2012 to 2017, danced with William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt from 1987 to 1998 and performed with Wooster Group under the direction of Elizabeth LeCompte from 1998 to 2003. She collaborated as a choreographer and actress with filmmakers, Eve Sussman, Toni Dove and Laurie Simmons. 

Between 2020 and 2021, Helen created and produced 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, 83 interviews for her YouTube Talk Show Creative Vitality Jam Sessions and founded the Female Choreographer’s Big Round Table, a Zoom discussion panel, with 160 women on the roster. 
 
Helen was Co-Director of the Jacob’s Pillow Contemporary Summer Dance Program and leads her think tank workshop Choreographic Essentials. 
 
She earned a Master of Fine Arts from Hollins University and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The University of North Carolina School of the Arts.