JOSEPH PHILLIPS

Joseph Phillips’ experience as a world-class dancer has enabled him to successfully transition into an instructor and coach with an enormous amount of pedagogic information. He is currently co-directing El Camino Ballet with his wife, Irene, in San Mateo, California. Joseph is also the newly appointed director of Columbia Classical Ballet and is excited to bring a new generation of ballet from coast to coast.

 

As the holder of more gold medals than any other American dancer, Joseph has accredited the title of the “golden boy of ballet.” He was a laureate of Les Etoiles de Ballet 2000 Critic’s Award in both Cannes and Paris in 2009 for being named “Best Young Male Dancer” of the year.

 

His top honors in numerous International Ballet Competitions include the 2002 USA IBC and Prague IBC, the 2002 YAGP Finals, and the 2008 Seoul IBC. He was given the honor of lighting the Olympic Flame in the 2006 and 2014 USA IBC opening ceremonies. Considered the ballet Olympics, he was one of the two members on the selection committee for the 2023 USA IBC, reviewing over 300 applicants, with only 120 accepted.

 

Joseph danced with three of America’s top ballet companies: American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, and Miami City Ballet. During his time, he worked with choreographers like William Forsythe, Alexei Ratmansky, Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, and Edward Villella, among others.

 

In 2013, Joseph became one of a handful of American dancers to become a premier principal dancer in Russia under Mariinsky Theatre’s umbrella, the highest honor a foreign dancer can achieve. Due to this accomplishment, Joseph had the privilege of meeting and dancing for President Vladimir Putin.

 

In 2015, Joseph started regularly becoming a principal guest artist in the Philippines. He is the only foreign artist to work with all three major ballet companies: Ballet Philippines, Philippine Ballet Theatre, and Ballet Manila. While making the Philippines his Asian base and cultivating ballet art, he continued to travel the world as a highly esteemed international guest artist and guest teacher in many masterclasses and international workshops.

During the Covid years, Joseph took on the responsibilities of ballet master, choreographer, and teacher at Ballet Philippines.

 

In 2020, Joseph and former colleague Misty Copeland co-founded an online fundraiser, Swans for Relief, that garnered over 5,000,000 views during the pandemic. CNN International labeled it as one of the “Top 10 Performances to Come Out of The Pandemic”. Their goal to keep the ballet world connected resulted in a film of 32 dancers from 14 countries linked together through Mikhail Fokin’s solo, The Dying Swan, choreographed to Camille Saint-Saëns’s Le Cygne.