Co-Founders & Directors
Xuan Cheng, Artistic Director
As a ballerina, teacher, director, and dance world visionary, Xuan Cheng shares the immense joy and beauty of dance, instilling peoples’ lives with a transportive sense of magic and grace. With performances that are full of “musicality, technical skill, attention to detail, intelligence and heart,” (Dance International Magazine ) Cheng “embraces a theatrical sensuality and attack, with a crisp, technical precision,” (The Dance Current) and has an “innate ability to make simple theatrical devices heartbreaking.” (Dance International Magazine) Mesmerizing onstage, Cheng celebrates twenty years as a professional dancer, closing out her decade-long tenure as Principal Dancer for the Oregon Ballet Theatre with a final performance in February 2023, and joining the Hong Kong Ballet as Ballet Mistress and Principal Dancer.
From Chenzhou, China, Cheng’s early and intensely rigorous training shaped her as an artist, facilitating an extraordinary level of physical and mental discipline, but also fluidity and freedom in her dancing that is nothing less than exquisite. Celebrated for her passion in starring roles with the Oregon Ballet Theatre including Cinderella, Juliet, Giselle, Alice, the Sugar Plum Fairy, Scheherazade, Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, and Odette/Odile in both Christopher Stowell’s and Kevin Irving’s Swan Lake, Cheng was the first Chinese dancer to ever dance the full-length role of Teresina in August Bournonville’s Napoli in 2018. Additional honors include the Gold Medal in China’s Tao Li Bei World Dance Competition (2006); placing as a finalist in the 8th New York International Ballet Competition (2005); and the Silver Medal in the 3rd Shanghai International Ballet Competition (2004). Cheng is a former Principal Dancer of La La La Human Steps (for which she performed in 20 countries across Europe, Asia, and North America), former Principal Dancer with Guangzhou Ballet of China, and former Soloist with Les Grands Ballet Canadiens. Cheng studied at the Xinghai Conservatory of Music and Dance and the GuangZhou Arts School, having been selected and mentored by prima ballerina Dan Dan Zhang. In addition to co-founding and directing OIBA with her husband, Ye Li, Cheng has also taught at the Oregon Ballet Theatre School since 2013. For more information, visit xuanchengballet.com.
Ye Li, Executive Director & Choreographer
Known for his astonishing technique and sensitive musicality, award-winning choreographer Ye Li presents dynamic, meaningful performance with exquisite detail. Li is Executive Director of the Oregon International Ballet Academy where his works The One and Black and White premiered. His lush and gripping work has won multiple prizes in the Palm Desert Choreography Festival: The Daylight Within won second prize in 2022, and You Will Return won second prize in 2019. The latter piece made its international debut at The Achievement Exhibition of the 12th “TaoLi Cup” National Dancing Education Performance of China in 2019.
A multi-award-winning performer, Li soloed with Oregon Ballet Theatre for four years, performing lead roles in Giselle, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet, La bayadere, La sylphide, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker. Before moving to Oregon, he danced as a soloist with the GuangZhou Ballet of China for 11 years, and as a company member of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens for two years. His illustrious career includes work with a wide range of world class choreographers including Ohad Naharin, Jirí Kylián, Mats Ek, Mauro Bigonzetti, Jean-Christophe Maillot, and Christian Spuck. William Forsythe, Nacho Duato, Christopher Stowell, and Nicolo Fonte.
In addition to his work as Executive Director and Choreographer for the Oregon International Ballet Academy (OIBA) which he co-founded in 2015 with his wife Xuan Cheng, Li is the newly appointed Rehearsal Director of OBT2, Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Junior company (since 2021) and has served as a guest dance instructor at GuangZhou Arts school. Ye Li was born in An Shan, Liaoning Province of China. For more information, visit yelidance.com.
Instructors
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Grace Armstrong
TEACHER
Grace Armstrong is from Shoreline, Washington where she began training with Olympic Ballet School. In 2014 and 2015 she competed in the Youth America Grand Prix and was awarded Top 12 in the semi-finals. Grace participated in many intensives throughout her training, in 2019 she was chosen to attend a Forsyth intensive in Madrid. In Spring 2020, she graduated from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music with a Bachelor of Science in Ballet with an Outside Field in Arts Management. While at IU, Grace was an instructor with Indiana University’s Pre-College Ballet Program from 2017-2020. After graduation, she joined Oregon Ballet Theatre 2.
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Jessica Lind
TEACHER
Jessica Lind is from San Jose, California, where she began training at Dance Theatre International. Following one year at San Francisco Ballet School, she joined OBT’s Professional Division (2011), became an apprentice (2013), and was promoted to company artist (2016). Her favorite OBT performances and roles include William Forsythe’s In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, George Balanchine’s Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Nicolo Fonte’s Left Unsaid, Trey McIntyre’s Robust American Love, Purple Girl in Nacho Duato’s Jardí Tancat, Dew Drop in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker®, and Princess Florine in Christopher Stowell’s The Sleeping Beauty. Lind was promoted to soloist in 2019, and Principal in 2022.
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Olivia Ornelas
TEACHER
Olivia Ornelas danced professionally with the Oregon Ballet Theater for six years and during that time, she performed in several ballets by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Christopher Stowell, Helen Pickett, Kent Stowell and Nicolo Fonte. In addition to OIBA, she has taught ballet for the Sultanov Russian Ballet Academy, Anya Klimiva-Preston Ballroom Academy, Rose City Rhythmic and Performing Arts Collaborative and Generation Skate 808 Figure Skating club. From Gilbert, AZ, Ornelas grew up studying ballet as well as contemporary, modern, character dancing, flamenco and Pilates.
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Ophélia Martin-Weber
TEACHER
Beginning her ballet training at age 11, Ophélia Martin-Weber studied a variety of ballet styles such as Classical, Balanchine, and RAD, including some Vaganova. Over the years she was also exposed to contemporary, improv, jazz, tap, broadway, Gyrotonics® and Gyrokinesis®, and several modern techniques. After joining PDX Contemporary Ballet as an apprentice mid-season in 2019, she continued her training at Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet Training Program where she was introduced to beginning pedagogy classes and graduated in 2021. Later that year, she briefly moved to Iowa to be an apprentice at Ballet Des Moines and was an assistant/choreographer for the younger students’ dances in the company’s Nutcracker production. Since returning home to Portland in 2022, Martin-Weber has been teaching and will be starting school in the fall. She’s grateful to be working here at Oregon International Ballet Academy with students of a wide range of ages and levels to improve their technique and provide guidance that values growth, encouragement, and creativity.
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Alison Roper
TEACHER
Alison Roper joined Oregon Ballet Theatre in 1996 and was promoted into the corps in 1997. Honored by Dance Magazine in 2002 as one of “25 to Watch,” in 2007 she was promoted to principal dancer. Her repertoire includes principal roles in works by George Balanchine, Christopher Wheeldon, Jerome Robbins, Sir Frederick Ashton, Kent Stowell, Peter Martins, Nacho Duato, Paul Taylor and Bebe Miller. She has originated leading roles in ballets by James Kudelka, Trey McIntyre, Yuri Possokhov, James Canfield, Christopher Stowell and Nicolo Fonte, among others. Roper spent her summers performing with the Trey McIntyre Project from 2005-2007 and has since worked as a repetiteur and ballet mistress for that company. During the 2010 season she danced with Morphoses; The Christopher Wheeldon company. From Portland, Maine, Roper began her ballet training at age five, receiving training from The Portland School of Ballet, Boston Ballet School and the School of Oregon Ballet Theatre.
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Lisa Kipp
GUEST TEACHER
Lisa Kipp has danced with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pacific Ballet Theatre, Ballet Oregon, Ballet of Los Angeles, Ballet Chicago, and James Sewell Dance, and also performed in the touring company of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. Kipp danced principal roles in George Balanchine’s Rubies, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, Square Dance, Concerto Barocco, and Apollo, and appeared as the Cowgirl in Agnes De Mille’s Rodeo. Prior to joining OBT in 2004, she was the Ballet Department Head for the school of Spectrum Dance Theater in Seattle, as well as the company’s Rehearsal Director. Kipp has been the ballet master for OBT for 9 years, and the company’s rehearsal director for 2 years. As a ballet master, she has assisted James Kudelka, Lar Lubovitch, Lola DeAvila, Nicolo Fonte, Francia Russell, Bart Cook, Christine Redpath, Christopher Stowell, Yuri Possokhov, and Helgi Tomasson. She has staged George Balanchine’s Rubies, Square Dance, and Who Cares? for OBT, and is responsible for the corps de ballet in OBT’s classical repertoire.
PR Representation and Communications Support
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