Dani Rowe

From 2001-2015, Dani Rowe, born in Shepparton, Australia, was a Principal Dancer with the Australian Ballet and Houston Ballet and danced with the prestigious Nederlands Dans Theater. She originated roles in creations by Paul Lightfoot/Sol Leon, Christopher Wheeldon, Wayne McGregor, Alexander Ekman, Crystal Pite, and Medhi Walerski and worked with choreographers Mats Ek, Jiří Kylián, Hans van Manen, Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Bruce. Rowe has also performed in works by Kenneth McMillan, Jerome Robbins, George Balanchine, Mark Morris, and Nacho Duato as well as the title roles in Giselle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Kitri in Don Quixote and Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker.

After retiring as a dancer in 2015, Rowe turned to choreography. She has created works for San Francisco Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater’s SWITCH program, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Co.Lab Dance (featuring dancers from American Ballet Theatre), Milwaukee Ballet, Ballet Idaho, Grand Rapids Ballet, SFDanceworks, Dance Aspen, Barak Ballet, Diablo Ballet, Oakland Ballet, and Berkeley Ballet Theater. She has been dubbed a “choreographic storyteller” (Toba Singer, Culture Vulture), and her work “merits much praise” (Allan Ulrich, San Francisco Chronicle).

Her choreographic style has been described as “using a myriad of intricate hand and arm gestures that built on each other like the blocks in a Jenga game, along with a rich, flowing, contemporary ballet movement aesthetic” (Steve Sucato, culturedGR) and “impressing with the clarity of its intentions and the easy use of a multi-lingual vocabulary” (Rita Felciano, Danceview Times).

In addition to her work as a choreographer, from 2018-2019, Rowe served as the Associate Artistic Director of SFDanceworks, a contemporary repertory company in San Francisco, California, acting as the intermediary between the Artistic Director and dancers.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Rowe explored filmmaking as a new and lasting way to reach audiences. Her highly regarded creations include Wooden Dimes for San Francisco Ballet, The Animals for Ballet Idaho, and The Misfits for Louisville Ballet. She also collaborated with filmmakers Garen Scribner and Alexander Reneff-Olson on Shelter, I Am Spartacus, and Wilis in Corps-en-tine for the Australian Ballet, which was voted “one of the best things to come out of quarantine” by Vogue.