For months, the Royal Danish Ballet, one of the world’s premier dance troupes, has been in turmoil. Accusations of abuse have shaken its 253-year-old school. Then, last week, the company said its star artistic director, Nikolaj Hübbe, was abruptly resigning after 16 years.
Now the Royal Danish Ballet hopes to turn the page on those troubles. The company announced on Thursday that Amy Watson, a California-born dancer who joined the troupe in 2000, would serve as its next artistic director.
“This theater gave me a second homeland and a wonderful career that I could have never dreamed of,” said Watson, 43. “I want to serve in the highest capacity for the theater and to give back.”
Watson, whose tenure begins on Friday, succeeds Hübbe, 57, a Copenhagen native who has been a fixture at the troupe for years. He started training at its school when he was 10 and was a principal dancer by age 20. He later was an acclaimed principal dancer at New York City Ballet for 16 years.
Since 2008, Hübbe has run the company, famous for its rich choreographic legacy rooted in the repertory of the 19th-century Danish master August Bournonville. Hübbe oversaw new productions of classics like “Swan Lake” and “Giselle,” and expanded the company’s range, bringing in works by living choreographers, including Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky, Yuri Possokhov and Wayne McGregor. He also worked to attract new audiences with more casual and intimate offerings.
During his tenure, the company faced difficulties, including budget cuts, union fights and allegations of drug abuse in the company. Last year, the organization began an inquiry into conditions at its school amid reports that children had experienced psychological and physical abuse. Some former students said they had developed eating disorders after being told at a young age that they were too heavy to dance.
In June, the board of the Royal Theater, which oversees the Ballet, released the results of the inquiry, finding that “former pupils have in several cases been exposed to an unacceptably harsh teaching environment.” The board said the school “has been characterized by a culture of silence.”
The board and the theater’s leadership team, including Hübbe, apologized. Hübbe said in a statement at the time that he had been reprimanded by the board for “not having sufficiently taken responsibility for the teaching environment at the Ballet School.”
Hübbe, who had previously announced that he would step down as artistic director in 2026, went on medical leave in May. Watson took over on an interim basis in August. Last week, the company said Hübbe had informed the board that he wanted to leave in November, two years before his contract expired. He has reached a severance agreement with the company.
Hübbe did not respond to requests for comment.
Watson said that her leadership style would be different from her predecessor’s.
“I’m very inspired by the team mentality,” she said. “I want to surround myself with a lot of people who are challenging me on a daily basis and I’m learning and growing from them.”
She said she would put an emphasis on preserving the company’s Bournonville roots and commissioning new works, by choreographers like Kyle Abraham and Emma Portner.
“I really want to get those two into the house as soon as possible,” she said.
Lars Barfoed, chair of the board of the Royal Theater, said Watson would help the company build on its artistic success.
“We have a good company and excellent dancers,” he said. “We would like to see her develop our traditions and to help us maintain our position as one of the best ballet companies into the world.”
The post After Turmoil, Royal Danish Ballet Taps Veteran Dancer as Leader appeared first on New York Times.
