Kat Wildish grew up in Tampa, Florida, but she shot from the beach to the balletic big time at the age of 15, when she toured the southern United States as a member of Ballet Gala, on stage with such

superstars as Rudolf Nureyev, Margot Fonteyn, Cynthia Gregory, and Fernando Bujones. She received further training—on a two-year full scholarship from the Ford Foundation—at the nation’s premier dance academy, the School of American Ballet.

 

Kat is one of those rare ballerinas who has appeared with both  New York City Ballet  and American

Ballet Theatre. She performed with NYCB in 1981, dancing works by legendary choreographer and founder George Balanchine, who hand-picked her to perform in one of his last works, Adagio Lamentoso. In ABT (1986), then under artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov, she performed in more traditional ballets. Kat has also been a guest artist with such companies as  Zurich Ballet, Metropolitan Opera Ballet,  The Eglevsky Ballet (then directed by  Edward Villella),  Bernhard Ballet, Connecticut Ballet, Fokine Ballet, the American Dance Machine, Dances Patrelle, and Louisville Ballet.

 

Kat participated in American Ballet Theatre’s project of establishing uniform countrywide standards of instruction and she is now an ABT® Certified Teacher of Primary through Level 7 (the highest) of the ABT® National Training Curriculum. She has also trained and mentored other teachers, notably for the Dance Educators of America and as a member of the U.S. Faculty of Education of the United Kingdom’s Royal Academy of Dance.

 

Kat was scholarship director and manager at Steps, a longtime teacher at the Broadway Dance Center, and currently serves on the faculty of the Alvin Ailey Extension Program, where she produces the “Performing in NY Showcases” three times per year, which include stagings of classical repertoire for her own students and performances by other groups in a variety of genres. She teaches privately coaches dancers for major ballet competitions, and gives a number of elite workshops nationwide and around the world: in Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and Italy.