Colorado Ballet can handle the weight.
That’s not a metaphor, said artistic director Gil Boggs, who’s marking his 20th year leading the state’s top dance company. In fact, it’s the product of disciplined, balanced steps — one after the other. Boggs has been busy this year with, among other things, redesigning parts of Colorado Ballet’s Denver headquarters, including combining two smaller studios into a big one because they were spilling out of their former spaces.
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“We have to put some beams down in the basement to support all that, so it’s going to take a little bit,” Boggs said of the building at 1075 Santa Fe Drive, where the company moved 12 years ago. “But it’s a good project.”
Colorado Ballet is known for its classical performances at the historic Ellie Caulkins Opera House at the Denver Performing Arts Complex, where its annually sold-out “Nutcracker” shows take place. But the company offers nearly 60 different performances across five shows each year, reaching 100,000 people.
And like other performing arts groups, from Opera Colorado to the Denver Center Theatre Company, the ballet must balance audience favorites and more challenging pieces to stay relevant, Boggs said. While that’s been a constant concern, Boggs’s wide-armed approach has worked well. He’s seen a consistent uptick in audiences, programming and revenue that finds the nonprofit remarkably more limber than when he started the job on March 31, 2006.
His wins include growing the 65-year-old company’s annual budget from $6.2 million to $15.5 million, and reaching 40,000 people each year through educational and outreach programs at 300 schools and organizations, the company said. Under his leadership, the ballet has also increased the number of dancers from 27 to 40 and mounted 19 world premieres.
“His kindness and humbleness are remarkable in a leader of his stature,” said Colorado Ballet trustee Merry Logan.
Colorado Ballet can be seen next at the Vail Dance Festival, where it will perform in the Aug. 9 “Colorado Dances” program along with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. Robinson and her world-touring ensemble are a close partner of the ballet over the last two decades, and one that just unveiled its own $25 million renovation and addition at its Denver headquarters.
Colorado Ballet continues to try new things. Ahead of its 2026-2027 artistic season, which runs from October through April with titles such as “Don Quixote” and “The Wizard of Oz,” it announced free and pay-what-you-can programs for tickets. One is for schools and nonprofits, and another sets aside one performance of each show for patrons to choose their own price.
That welcoming stance is a product of years of hard work and focus, Boggs’s dancers say. He’s steered the ship not only through the recession of 2007-2009, when the company nearly folded, but also through COVID in 2020 and 2021, when most artistic companies couldn’t even perform.
“In his position, he must be many things at once: a director, a conductor, a navigator, a businessman, a gardener nurturing talent, and even an inventive adventurer,” said Maria Mosina, a dancer turned Ballet Master with Colorado Ballet. “Above all, Gil is a visionary. He understands the deeper meaning of everything that happens within the company.”
Growing up in Atlanta, Boggs began his dance career with the Atlanta Ballet, and joined American Ballet Theatre in New York in 1982. There, he was promoted to soloist dancer in 1984, and principal dancer in 1991. He stayed there for 17 years, but also danced with top outfits such as the Twyla Tharp Dance Company, Baryshnikov and Company, Nureyev and Friends, and worked with choreographers such as Agnes de Mille, Sir Kenneth MacMillan and Merce Cunningham.
But when Boggs was recruited to lead Colorado Ballet, he was working in the golf industry in New York.
“They have movement of the body in common. You know, form and technique,” he said. “Some days you don’t hit that pirouette, or that golf shot, but repetition helps.”
The job instantly rekindled his love of dance and brought him close to tears in those first days, he said, overwhelmed by “the beauty of it all.” He got to work improving sets and adding staff and dancers. But it was a battle.
“When I first got here, someone said, ‘You know, this company owes a lot of money. How are you going to fix it?’” he recalled. “And my response was ‘quality.’ If it’s there, people will come, and they will recognize it.”
During the recession, Boggs was forced to cut the company’s budget by a few million dollars, he said, and was urged to get rid of the live orchestra. He experimented with different productions, some bringing in a mere $250,000 for a performance run, which is not exactly enough to hang a pair of ballet shoes on, he said. Productions needed to be selling more like $800,000 to $900,000 worth of tickets to shore up the company, and the landmark “Nutcracker” alone makes more than $3 million in an average year.
“The shows we started doing catapulted us in a repertory direction,” he said, referring to classics that have become part of Colorado Ballet’s bread and butter. “We expanded from four to five productions a year, and did a tour with (Denver dance companies) Wonderbound and Cleo Parker Robinson Dance in 2018.”
Collaboration is key in Denver’s nonprofit artistic scene, and Boggs sees other companies as complementary, not competition. They have shared instructors and programs, and their academies — Colorado Ballet’s has 1,200 students alone — have become valuable recruitment pools for Colorado’s next generation of professional dancers.
But he takes nothing for granted about the company’s growth.
“If you’re a struggling organization, you don’t take as many risks with your programming,” he said. “But we’re in a financial position where we can. And if it doesn’t work out? So be it.”
If you go
“Colorado Dances,” with Colorado Ballet and Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. 6 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 9, at Vilar Performing Arts Center, as part of Vail Dance Festival. 68 Avondale Lane in Beaver Creek. Tickets: $71.50-$115.50. Visit vaildance.org/event/colorado-dances for more.
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