Sarah Van Patten

Who is Sarah Van Patten?

Sarah Van Patten is a principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet. She trained at Boston Ballet and began performing at age 8 in their annual performance of The Nutcracker. By age 10, Sarah was studying with Jacqueline Cronsberg and performing classical ballet repertoire with the Massachusetts Youth Ballet. Sarah attended school at Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart and spent her summers studying with Jean-Pierre Bonnefeux, Violette Verdy, and Patricia McBride at the Chautauqua Institution.

In 2000 at age 15, she joined the Royal Danish Ballet as an apprentice, where John Neumeier cast her as Juliet in his Romeo & Juliet. Soon after, she was promoted to the rank of corps dancer, one of the youngest corps dancer ever invited to the Royal Danish Ballet in its 200-year history. During her corps year, she re-created her role in Romeo & Juliet and originated a soloist role in Peter Martins’ Hallelujah Junction. Sarah joined San Francisco Ballet as a soloist dancer in 2002 and was promoted to the rank of principal dancer in 2007.

Sarah’s featured roles while at San Francisco Ballet include Helgi Tomasson's Nutcracker, Nanna’s Lied, Romeo & Juliet, Swan Lake, and The Sleeping Beauty; George Balanchine's The Four Temperaments, Apollo, Divertimento No. 15 and Serenade; Jerome Robbins' Rodeo, Dybbuk and Afternoon of a Faun; Mark Morris' Sylvia and Christopher Wheeldon's Carousel.