Atlanta Ballet

Atlanta Ballet is the longest continuously performing ballet company in the United States and the State Ballet of Georgia. Dorothy Alexander founded it in 1929 as the Dorothy Alexander Concert Group; by the 1940s it was the Atlanta Civic Ballet, the first regional ballet company in the country, and in 1946 it became the first to help fund a symphony, giving a season's proceeds to the Atlanta Youth Symphony, which grew into the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In the 1950s Robert Barnett arrived from New York City Ballet as principal dancer and associate director, with George Balanchine's own permission to stage his work.