Artistic Staff - Oregon Ballet Theatre

Photo by Jingzi Zhao

Dani Rowe | Artistic Director

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.

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Photo by Brian Simcoe

Lisa Kipp | Executive Rehearsal Director

Lisa Kipp began studying ballet in Olympia, Washington and finished her training at Pacific Northwest Ballet School.

She danced with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pacific Ballet Theatre, Ballet Oregon, Ballet of Los Angeles, Ballet Chicago, and James Sewell Dance, and also performed in the touring company of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. Kipp danced principal roles in George Balanchine’s Rubies, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, Square Dance, Concerto Barocco, and Apollo, and appeared as the Cowgirl in Agnes De Mille’s Rodeo. Prior to joining OBT in 2004, she was the Ballet Department Head for the school of Spectrum Dance Theater in Seattle, as well as the company’s Rehearsal Director.

Kipp was OBT’s Ballet Mistress beginning in 2004 before being promoted to the company’s rehearsal director, and senior rehearsal director in 2022. As a ballet master, she has assisted James Kudelka, Lar Lubovitch, Lola DeAvila, Nicolo Fonte, Francia Russell, Bart Cook, Christine Redpath, Christopher Stowell, Yuri Possokhov, and Helgi Tomasson. She has staged George Balanchine’s Rubies, Square Dance, and Who Cares? for OBT, and is responsible for the corps de ballet in OBT’s classical repertoire.

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Jane Green | Artistic Manager

Jane comes to Oregon Ballet Theatre with over 30 years of experience in Production and Stage Management with major ballet companies and within the performing arts. Originally from Seattle, Jane graduated from the University of Washington, then went on to work with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet, Texas Ballet Theatre, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, and, most recently, 18 years as the Production Stage Manager for San Francisco Ballet. Many years of touring experience around the world has fed Jane’s passion to travel to even more remote and interesting areas of the world, including the Amazon and Madagascar.

Photo by Isaac Aoki

Steven Houser | Rehearsal Assistant

Steven Houser began his ballet training at the age of 6 in his hometown of Portland, OR, and spent summers studying at San Francisco Ballet School, Pacific Northwest Ballet School, and the School of Oregon Ballet Theatre. Steven joined Oregon Ballet Theatre as an apprentice in 2004, was made a full company member in 2005, and was promoted to soloist in 2007. In 2011 he joined Grand Rapids Ballet where he danced for a further 11 seasons. During his career he performed featured roles in works by George Balanchine, Christopher Stowell, Kent Stowell, Paul Taylor, Helgi Tomasson, Yuri Possokhov, Peter Martins, Julia Adam, Nicolo Fonte, Val Caniparoli, James Kudelka, Christopher Wheeldon, Penny Saunders, Dani Rowe, Olivier Wevers, Annabelle Lopez-Ochoa, Brain Enos, David Parsons, Gerald Arpino, and William Forsythe. In 2017 he was made a Ballet Master with Grand Rapids Ballet, and was responsible for works by Val Caniparoli, Penny Saunders, Christopher Stowell, Dani Rowe, and Brian Enos. Since retiring from performing in 2022, he has worked as a rehearsal assistant, teacher, and stager throughout the United States.

Jamie Lynne Simons | Stage Manager

Raised in the Pacific Northwest, Jamie received a BFA in Applied Theatre Arts from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Their career has varied from large stage opera to black box puppetry, from Las Vegas style shows with pyrotechnics, dancers in feather backpacks, magic, and aerial artists – to, now in the Covid era, also calling remote live-stream and hybrid productions. With nearly five years on Carnival Cruise Lines, Jamie went as far west as Melbourne, Australia and as far east as St. Petersburg, Russia. Tour: Hundred Days (production stage manager). Other local credits: Jefferson Dancers, Portland Opera, Portland Center Stage at the Armory, Artists Repertory Theatre, Third Rail Repertory, Portland Playhouse, Profile Theatre, Chamber Music Northwest, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Third Angle New Music, and Oregon Health & Science University. Jamie is both a member of the American Guild of Musical Artists and Actors’ Equity Association.