Dani Rowe | Photo by Liz Hafalia

Choreographer Dani Rowe was born in Shepparton, Australia and trained at the Australian Ballet School. Rowe has created works for San Francisco Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater’s SWITCH program, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Co.Lab Dance (featuring dancers from American Ballet Theatre), Milwaukee Ballet, Ballet Idaho, Grand Rapids Ballet, SFDanceworks, Dance Aspen, Barak Ballet, Diablo Ballet, Oakland Ballet and Berkeley Ballet Theater.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rowe pivoted to film making. Her creations include Wooden Dimes for San Francisco Ballet, The Animals for Ballet Idaho and The Misfits for Louisville Ballet. She also collaborated with filmmakers Garen Scribner and Alexander Reneff-Olson on Shelter, I Am Spartacus and Wilis in Corps-en-tine for The Australian Ballet, which was voted “one of the best things to come out of quarantine” by Vogue.

Rowe has been dubbed a “choreographic storyteller” (Toba Singer, Culture Vulture) and her work “merits much praise” (Allan Ulrich, SF Chronicle). Her choreographic style has been described as “using a myriad of intricate hand and arm gestures that built on each other like the blocks in a Jenga game, along with a rich, flowing, contemporary ballet movement aesthetic” (Steve Sucato, culturedGR) and “impressing with the clarity of it’s intentions and the easy use of a multilingual vocabulary” (Rita Felciano, Danceview Times).

From 2001-2015, Rowe was a Principal Dancer with the Australian Ballet and Houston Ballet, and also danced with the prestigious Nederlands Dans Theater. She originated roles in creations by Paul Lightfoot/Sol Leon, Christopher Wheeldon, Wayne McGregor, Alexander Ekman, Crystal Pite, Marco Goecke and Medhi Walerski, and worked with choreographers Mats Ek, Jiri Kylián, Hans van Manen, Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Bruce. Rowe has also performed in works by Kenneth McMillan, Jerome Robbins, George Balanchine, Mark Morris and Nacho Duato, as well as the title roles in Giselle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Kitri in Don Quixote and Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. She is the former Associate Artistic Director of SFDanceworks. Rowe lives in San Francisco, Calif. with her two daughters and husband.