20 years, one final curtain call — Adam Sklute’s legacy at Ballet West

Adam Sklute, Ballet West’s artistic director since 2007, has announced he will retire at the close of the 2026-27 season — his 20th anniversary with the company and the longest artistic directorship in Ballet West’s 63-year history, surpassing even that of founder Willam F. Christensen.

Sklute broke the news in a personal letter posted to Ballet West’s website, framing the decision as one made from strength, not crisis.

“I come to this decision at a time when Ballet West is both artistically and financially strong and solid,” he wrote, calling the company “renowned around the world as one of America’s top ten ballet companies.”

That wasn’t always the case. When Sklute arrived in March 2007, Ballet West was canceling programming, its Academy had fewer than 150 students, and no new works had been created in nine years. Sklute — a 23-year veteran of The Joffrey Ballet who danced for Robert Joffrey himself before rising to associate director — was hired with a three-part mandate: strengthen the dancers and productions, raise Ballet West’s national profile, and grow the Academy.

Two decades later, the numbers tell the story. The operating budget nearly tripled. The Academy swelled to more than 900 students across four campuses, making it the fourth-largest ballet school in the country. Subscriptions climbed against national industry trends. Sklute launched the Innovations series (later split into the Choreographic Festival and Works From Within), expanded story-ballet offerings with titles like Onegin, Dracula, and Madame Butterfly, and steered Ballet West through its Breaking Pointe reality-TV run and the 2015 move into the Jessie Eccles Quinney Ballet Centre — the first time the company operated under one roof. In 2024, the Utah Legislature designated Ballet West’s Nutcracker a Living Historic Landmark.

Board Chair Jennifer Huntsman credited Sklute with elevating “every aspect of the organization,” while executive director Michael Scolamiero called their near-decade partnership among the most gratifying of his 29-year career leading ballet companies.

An international search for Sklute’s successor, led by DeVos Institute chairman Michael M. Kaiser, will launch during the 2026-27 season, which will double as a celebration of Sklute’s tenure. He plans to stay in Salt Lake City after stepping down.

Beyond the studio, Sklute has been a visible presence in Utah’s civic and LGBTQ circles — an adjunct professor at the University of Utah, a recipient of the Utah National Guard’s Bronze Minuteman Award and Westminster College’s MLK Unsung Hero Award, and a 2007 honoree among the “25 Movers and Shakers of the Utah Arts Scene.”

He’s also established a life at home to match his professional milestone: Sklute and his husband, Christopher Renstrom, have been together for 33 years — a partnership that has quietly paralleled nearly the entirety of his career remaking one of the nation’s top ballet companies.