ABOUT DIANA

Diana Byer has performed as a principal with the company and as a guest artist with ballet companies throughout the U.S. Before establishing the company and school, she performed as a soloist with Les Grandes Ballets Canadiens, Manhattan Festival Ballet, New York City Opera, and the Juilliard Ensemble. Ms. Byer received her principal dance training from Margaret Craske and Antony Tudor.

Under Byer’s leadership, NYTB stages works that are intimate in scale and able to touch audiences in deeply personal ways. Hailed by Dance Magazine as “a miniature American treasure,” NYTB is known for its theatrical inventiveness, high production quality, excellent technique, and accessibility to its audiences. To achieve authenticity in classic restorations, Ms. Byer brings in original dancers and set designers whenever possible and researches all details of costuming, set construction, and other production values to try and faithfully restore and recreate the original artists’ vision. Byer has also developed NYTB to serve as a center for the creation and performance of new choreography suitable to its distinctive role as a national chamber ballet company.

 Byer teaches advanced/professional classes, pointe technique and advanced children’s classes at NYTB School. She has taught at the Manhattan School of Dance and abroad at Compagnie de Michel Hallet (Lyon, France) and Cascina Bela (Milan, Italy). In the United States, she has been a guest instructor of the Cecchetti Society of America, the Cecchetti Society of Canada (Toronto), Cornell and New York Universities, State University of New York at Purchase, Martha Graham School, and other centers of dance. She conducts master classes in schools and performance settings across the USA and Europe.

 Byer received extensive media attention for her ongoing work with homeless and at-risk children, winning special citations from President George Bush, First Lady Hillary Clinton, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the President’s Committee on the Arts & the Humanities. The LIFT Community Service program, which provides dance classes, performance opportunities, scholarships, and services for homeless and at-risk children in New York, was initiated at NYTB through her vision and commitment. In 1988, 1990, and 1993, Ms. Byer received the Helen Wieselberg Award of the National Arts Club in recognition for her ongoing work with LIFT. In 1992, Lincoln Center produced, at Alice Tully Hall, a one-hour presentation for children called Dreams On A Shoestring, featuring an original script based on Ms. Byer and LIFT. She received a Humanitarian Hero recognition from Good Housekeeping Magazine for her ongoing work with LIFT and was the 2023 Martha Hill Dance Fund Lifetime Achievement Awardee. The feature-length film LIFT, documenting Ms. Byer’s journey of LIFT, was featured in the 2022 Tribeca Festival and recognized with a “Children’s Resilience in Film Award” by Shine Global.

In December 1996, she was spotlighted in two features in Dance Magazine. Byer coached the principals in the Columbia Pictures film, Center Stage. She was a member of the Antony Tudor Centennial Celebration Committee and in 2008 staged Tudor’s Judgment of Paris for the American Ballet Theatre Gala at The Metropolitan Opera House. She is a repetiteur for the Antony Tudor Trust and a member of the Board of Directors and Education Advisor of the Dance Notation Bureau and Senior Advisor for The Clive Barnes Foundation. In 2010 she assisted Kevin McKenzie in ABT’s restaging of Antony Tudor’s Jardin Aux Lilas (Lilac Garden) and staged Agnes de Mille’s Three Virgins and a Devil for the Alabama Ballet. In 2011 Ms. Byer restaged Antony Tudor’s Soiree Musicale and the dances from Agnes de Mille’s Carousel, Oklahoma, and Brigadoon for American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company.

In May 2022, Ms. Byer stepped down from her position as Artistic Director of NYTB after 44 years. She stepped down as Director of the NYTB School and the LIFT program in 2025.