Meet Toby Batley of Southern California Ballet

Today we’d like to introduce you to Toby Batley.

Hi Toby, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started ballet at 14 years old and after 3 years in a vocational ballet boarding school in the north of England I was accepted to the Royal Ballet School in London. After 3 years of training in London and a year of semi professional work in Cannes, in the south of France, I joined Northern Ballet back in the UK. At Northern Ballet I rose through the ranks to become a Principal Dancer and during that time I met my wife Martha Leebolt. Martha grew up in San Diego and trained at Southern California Ballet (then known as Black Mountain Dance). When we retired from professional dance in 2017 we decided to return to Martha’s home town and we took over the direction of the studio she trained at as a child. Since then we have grown the studio in terms of students and its physical size (we just added a 4th studio) and expanded the organizations outreach to include programs for adults with special needs, dance workshops for school children, free tickets to performances for title 1 schools amongst and in the last year a virtual field trip for school kids that reached over 300,000 students!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
As it has for so many, Covid has been the biggest challenge so far! With the restrictions, constantly opening and closing/quarantining and trying to keep everyone safe whilst maintaining classes so that everyone still had access to the important service we provide was very difficult. Finally we are excited to be coming out of this dark period and are happy to again be performing back at the Poway center with our wonderful production of The Nutcracker after 2 years away!

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Southern California Ballet is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Our mission is to provide enrichment, education, outreach, and public entertainment for the community through the art of dance, and to provide performance and artistic opportunities for dedicated young dancers. We value Excellence and Professionalism, Kindness and respect and Inclusivity and Cooperation. We have a (W)holistic training method that cultivates dynamic, thoughtful, and disciplined artist-athletes, focusing on the achievement of personal bests above besting others.

So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Anyone can come and get involved at Southern California Ballet either by taking a dance class, participating in an outreach program, seeing an inspiring performance or donating to help us continue the important work we do for our community

Contact Info:

• Email: info@socalballet.org
• Website: www.southerncaliforniaballet.org
• Instagram: @southerncaliforniaballet
• Facebook: @southerncaliforniaballet