Staff
Janet Rollé, who previously worked for Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment, will now run one of the country’s most prominent ballet companies.
The appointment as CEO and executive director of the American Ballet Theatre has been heralded as a watershed moment in ballet’s mostly white world.
Rollé credits her mother, a Jamaican immigrant, with laying the groundwork for her profession when she was eight years old and enrolled in her first dancing class at the local YMCA.
“Through dance, I learned how to be a professional, the value of discipline and technique, and my love for the creative process,” Rollé said in a release from the American Ballet Theatre. “These lessons have always been at the core of my professional life and work.”
Rollé goes on to remark that being entrusted with continuing the theatre’s heritage and giving back to the art form that has given her so much in her life is a privilege.
She was an assistant producer for Beyoncé’s iconic performance as the first Black woman to headline the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in her most recent work with Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment firm.
She was also recognized for her part in the Emmy Award-nominated film Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé (2019), which chronicles Beyoncé’s Coachella performance as well as the OTR II Tour.
She was also an executive producer for Beyoncé’s award-winning visual album Black Is King, which was released in 2019 to coincide with the live-action adaptation of the Disney classic The Lion King.
