Alisa Finney – Director
Alisa launched the Melbourne Ballet Company in 2007 with a vision to create a world-class ballet company to support and showcase the extensive talent of the Australian classical dance industry, and also to offer a vehicle for emerging and established artists to thrive and develop collectively. As Director of this emerging performing organisation, Alisa drew on her experience in marketing and business management, as well as considerable expertise in ballet training and dance administration – in order to create an exciting and vibrant new artistic platform. A graduate of the Australian Ballet Schools Teachers Training Program and Principal of the Gay Wightman School of Ballet, Alisa sits on several dance boards earning great respect within the industry for her ability to maintain the momentum of a professional company both high in artistic integrity and demonstrably able to produce new work that continues to be exciting and relevant to audiences. With the Company now in its ninth year of operation, and after many successful performance seasons nationally and internationally, Alisa looks forward to the Melbourne Ballet Company’s continued success in 2016.
Simon Hoy – Tour Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer
Simon has been Resident Choreographer of MBC since his return from New York in 2007 and from 2011 Artistic Director of the Company on tour. Accepted at age 16 into the Australian Ballet School by then Director Gaylene Stock AM, Simon graduated in 1997 with the Advanced Diploma in Dance. A professional dancer since 1998, he first worked in Europe as soloist undertaking principal roles with Ballet Graz in Austria, Ballet Mainz in Germany, Schaufuss Ballet in Denmark and Carolina Ballet (USA), before joining Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet in New York. Simon has toured and guested throughout the United States, Europe and Asia and benefited from working with many outstanding teachers and choreographers, including Wilhelm Burmann, Adam Luders, Johnny Eliason, Hans Van Manen, Nils Christe, Peter Schaufuss, Darrell Tolone, Peter Brauer, Martin Schlapfer, Donald Mahler, and Robert Weiss. He also performed works by George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, and John Cranko. Simon also played a leading role in the renaissance of the Melbourne Ballet Company as its Tour Director and Resident Choreographer, and has so far created 17 new works for the Company including: Above Water, Tuscany, In Paradisum, In One Day, Submerged, Drenched, Stuck In Perpetual Motion, … and more recently Placement, Infinite Space, Motion Transcend, On Air, Dark Before Daylight, Phrased Without Words, Horizon Variation, Divenire, Lucidity, Agape, Arche. He also choreographed Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas for the Victorian College of the Arts, under the musical direction of Richard Gill. In recent years he has worked internationally with Quorum Ballet in Lisbon, and directed the Rosenberg Ball in St Gallen, Switzerland. As MBC’s Tour Director since 2011 he has also travelled extensively throughout Australia and New Zealand with the Company.
