Val Caniparoli Choreographer

Val Caniparoli has been called a choreographer of uncommon ability and rare dramatic vision. A member of San Francisco Ballet since 1973, he has had a multi-faceted career which includes choreography, dance, music, and theatre. Caniparoli has staged and created numerous ballets for San Francisco Ballet since 1982, contributing dynamic works to the repertory of America's first professional ballet company.

Val has been praised for the inventiveness of his eclectic and unusual selection of music and for the implicit theatricality in his movement. Over the years, his ballets have earned him national and international praise from critics and audiences alike. His works are performed by several companies including Ballet West, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Ballet Florida, Singapore Dance Theatre, Atlanta Ballet, Oakland Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Richmond Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet and Israel Ballet, among others. In 1994 he had a major success with his full-length ballet, Lady of the Camellias, a co-production of Ballet West and Ballet Florida. In 2001 he choreographed The Nutcracker for Cincinnati Ballet will all new sets and costume designs by noted children's book illustrator and author Alain Vaës.

Since 1981 Val Caniparoli has been the recipient of 10 grants for choreography from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1991 he was awarded his first artist fellowship from the California Arts Council. In 1994, he received the Choo-San Goh Award from the Choo-San Goh and H. Robert Magee Foundation for his ballet Lambarena created for San Francisco Ballet, and in 1997 he received the same award for his ballet Open Veins, which he created for Atlanta Ballet. That same year, Lambarena was nominated for the Benois de la Danse Award from the International Dance Association at a gala at the National Theatre of Warsaw, Poland, where dancers from Pacific Northwest Ballet performed excerpts from the ballet. Dance Bay Area has acknowledged his contributions to the local dance community by honouring him with an award for Sustained Achievement and an award for Outstanding Choreography for his ballet Aubade, and most recently, the 2001 Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Choreography for Death of a Moth. Over the years he has been resident choreographer for San Francisco Ballet, Ballet West, and presently for Tulsa Ballet.

Val has choreographed two very successful dances for the San Francisco Symphony Pops series, both performed by San Francisco Ballet principal dancers Evelyn Cisneros and Stephen Legate. In 1995 he created the pas de deux Embraceable You to music by George Gershwin, and in 1996 he choreographed an amusing dance set to Bernard Herman's music from the movie “Psycho”. He choreographed Capriccio, for San Francisco Opera’s 1990 season, which he later reproduced for New York's Metropolitan Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera. He also choreographed Andrea Chenier for the Chicago company.

Born in Renton, Washington, Caniparoli opted for a professional dance career after studying music and theatre at Washington State University. In 1972, at the age of nineteen, he received a Ford Foundation Scholarship to attend San Francisco Ballet School. He performed with San Francisco Opera Ballet before joining San Francisco Ballet in 1973.

His theatrical training gives him a particular flair for character roles, such as Lord Capulet in Tomasson's Romeo & Juliet, Jacob Schmidt in Tomasson's Nanna's Lied, Drosselmeyer in Christensen/Tomasson's Nutcracker, the Rich Boy in Christensen's Filling Station, Widow Simone in Sir Frederick Ashton's La Fille mal gardèe and Madge in Bournonville/Tomasson's La Sylphide.

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