Long before there was a Miami City Ballet, Eddie Villella – he hadn’t yet graduated to “Edward” – had been recognized as the greatest male ballet dancer ever produced in America.  And his primacy hasn’t been challenged in the thirty-three years since his dancing career came to a premature end.

Villella showed that a tough brash kid out of Maritime College could turn into a major artist, and in doing so, changed the way men danced in America as well as the way male dancers were perceived.

Since 1986, he has focused his talent, his intelligence, and his energy on creating and maintaining a world-famous ballet company in South Florida.

In recognition of his achievements, President Clinton presented Mr. Villella with the 1997 National Medal of Arts.  Also in 1997, he was named a Kennedy Center Honoree, and was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.

Edward Villella was born in Bayside, New York in 1936.  He entered the School of American Ballet at age ten but interrupted his dance training to complete academic studies.  A graduate of the New York Maritime Academy, he obtained a B.S. in marine transportation, lettered in baseball, and was a championship boxer.

He returned to SAB following graduation in 1955, and in 1957 was invited to join the New York City Ballet, where he was quickly promoted to Soloist (1958), and then to Principal Dancer (1960).  Mr. Villella was the original male lead in many important ballets in the New York City Ballet repertoire, among them Tarantella, the “Rubies” section of Jewels, Symphony in Three Movements, Dances at a Gathering, Watermill, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Oberon) Perhaps his most famous role was in the 1960 revival of Balanchine’s 1929 masterpiece, Prodigal Son.

Mr. Villella was the first American male dancer to perform with the Royal Danish Ballet, and the only American ever to be asked to dance an encore at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.  He danced for President Kennedy’s inauguration and for Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Ford.  He was producer/director for the PBS series “Dance in America” for one and a-half years, and in 1975 won an Emmy Award for his CBS television production of “Harlequinade”.  He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the School of American Ballet. The University of Pittsburgh Press reissued Villella’s 1992 autobiography, Prodigal Son: Dancing for Balanchine in a World of Pain and Magic, written with Larry Kaplan, in March 1998.

He is married to Linda Villella, the Director of Miami City Ballet School.

Pamela Gardiner has been arts management executive for the past twenty-five years, her working partnership with Artistic Director Edward Villella began in 1984 at the Madison Festival of the Lakes, where Villella served as Artistic Director and she served as Executive Director.  Prior to that, she served as Assistant Dean of Student Academic Affairs in the College of Letters and Science at University of Wisconsin-Madison and as an Assistant Trust Officer at the Cleveland Trust Company.

Gardiner holds a B.A. degree in English Literature from University of Wisconsin-Madison; an M.A. degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University; and a J.D. degree from Case Western Reserve University.  Since 1993, she has served on the Board of Directors of the Performing Arts Foundation of Greater Miami.  She is a member of the Florida, Wisconsin, and Ohio Bars and of the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section of the Florida Bar Association.

Mr. Cole holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Minnesota and a a Bachelor of Arts degree from Auburn University.   Cole began his corporate career in New York working at E.F. Hutton, Barclays Bank and Wang Laboratories.  He then returned to his artistic roots working as a Stage Manager on the Broadway production of Cats, the national tour of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the Off-Broadway productions of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged, Picasso at the Lapin Agile and many others.   Cole joined Miami City Ballet in 1998 as Production Director and assumed the role of General Manager in 2006.  He currently sits on the City of Miami Beach's Collins Park Cultural Center Oversight Committee and is a board member of the Collins Park Neighborhood Association.

Crista Villella practically grew up at Miami City Ballet. She trained at Miami City Ballet School, and was Marie in the Company's first production of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker™. Villella returned to MCB after graduating with a BFA in theater from NYU, and now works closely with the dancers rehearsing and preparing them for performances. She has served as the Ballet Mistress on many ballets including In the Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs, "THE FOX-TROT: Dancing in the Dark", and Liturgy, and she's the Children's Ballet Mistress for George Balanchine's The Nutcracker™. During the 2007-2008 Season, Crista worked closely with Twyla Tharp as the Ballet Mistress on the World Premiere of NIGHTSPOT.

Gary Sheldon was recently appointed principal conductor for Miami City Ballet beginning in the 2010-2011 season. He comes to Florida from San Francisco where he conducted for the San Francisco Ballet in numerous performances from 2004-2009, including the company's tour to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. (Giselle) and tour to China last fall (mixed rep). He is also currently artistic director for the Lancaster Festival in Ohio and principal conductor for the Festival at Sandpoint in Idaho.

From 1982 - 2002, Gary Sheldon conducted for Ballet Met in Columbus, Ohio in over 500 performances of many works from the standard repertory and several premieres, including Cole and Butterfly, his own compositions based on the music of Cole Porter and Giacomo Puccini. Sheldon has conducted pas de deux for many of the great artists of our time, including Cynthia Gregory and Alexander Godunov, Ethan Stieffel and Susan Jaffe, Fernando Bujones and Marianna Tcherkassky and David Nixon and Yoko Ichino.

Maestro Sheldon is a native of Bay Shore, New York and a graduate of the Juilliard School. He is former music director of the Marin Symphony in California and he was a prizewinner in two prestigious conducting competitions: the BBC/Rupert in London and the Stokowski Competition in New York. He is excited to be moving to Florida this fall with his wife Janet and 3-year old twins Ruby and Jacob.

John Hall joined Miami City Ballet in 1995 and is responsible for coordinating all Lighting and Scenic Design elements for the Company. Some of his Lighting Design highlights since joining MCB include Slaughter on 10th Avenue, Giselle, Coppélia, Edward Villella's The Neighborhood Ballroom, and Twyla Tharp/Elvis Costello's NIGHTSPOT. Hall and his wife Shannon have two sons, John and William.