Yvonne Racz Key, Artistic Director
Yvonne has served as Ballet Lubbock’s Artistic Director since 1996. Yvonne Racz Key began her dance training with the Syracuse Ballet Theater in New York and continued her training with Suzanne Aker and Neil Hess after moving to Lubbock. She studied with Lubbock Civic Ballet under the direction of Leonid Lubarsky, former principal dancer with the Kirov Ballet. She regularly attended the Dallas Ballet Academy’s Summer Intensive.
Yvonne attended the University of Utah and performed with Utah Ballet Company under the direction of Conrad Ludlow, former principal dancer of New York City Ballet. While in Utah, she trained under Barbie Hamblin, Bene Arnold, Li-Chou Cheng, Attila Ficzre and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities.
Ms. Racz Key went on to perform with several professional companies: The Maryland Ballet Company, Desrosiers Dance Theatre, Ballet Hispanico of New York, Rebecca Kelly Dance Company, Catanach Ballet Theater and Cirque Du Soleil. Yvonne has been recognized in publications such as Vogue, TIME, Southern Living, Lubbock Magazine, and according to Dance magazine, has “legs and arms as fluid as a Kirov Swan as well as a poignancy that is emotionally wrenching.”
Ms. Racz Key performed in Cirque Du Soleil’s MYSTERE in Las Vegas. She toured South Korea as a guest artist in the International Dance Festival and also taught master classes. She has taught classes at Texas Tech University, Catanach Ballet (Now Urban Ballet Theatre), Lubbock High School, Kinkaid Academy and the New York Institute of Dance Education to name a few.
Ms. Racz Key choreographed the Texas Tech productions of The Bartered Bride and West Side Story, and the premiere productions of Lubbock Moonlight Musicals’ Oklahoma!, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and The Music Man. Her work also includes collaborations with well-known musicians, Doug Smith and Floramay Holliday.
She has taught as an adjunct professor of advanced ballet at Texas Tech University and is a member of the newly founded Flatlands Dance Theatre.
Under Yvonne Racz Key’s direction, the Ballet Lubbock School has grown tenfold including an excellent outreach program in the Lubbock community. Her students are consistently accepted to the nation’s top-ranked summer intensives such as School of American Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, The ROCK School in Philadelphia, The Kirov Academy, Joffrey Ballet School, Chautaqua Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and North Carolina Dance Theatre.
Yvonne Racz Key was the 2006 recipient of the Lubbock Arts Alliance’s Dynamic Force/ACE Award, and was listed in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal as one of Lubbock's 100 most influential persons. She has been most recently awarded the 2011 YWCA’s Woman of Excellence Award in Arts and Culture.
