Shelby Williams
Associate Teacher
Shelby Williams is a soloist with the Royal Ballet of Flanders (Belgium), and is the creator of the viral ballet comedy character Biscuit Ballerina.
Shelby received her professional training on scholarship at the Washington School of Ballet and the Houston Ballet Academy. Before joining the Royal Ballet of Flanders, she danced with companies in Germany, France, and Spain where she performed leading roles in works by Crystal Pite, Ohad Naharin, Johan Inger, Alexander Ekman, Pascal Touzeau, Richard Siegel, and Marco Goecke.
In 2016, she joined the Royal Ballet of Flanders (Opera Ballet Vlaanderen) where she has danced featured roles in works by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, William Forsythe, Pina Bausch, Hofesh Schechter, Akram Khan, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Benjamin Millepied, and Edouard Lock amongst others.
In Dance Europe Magazine (October 2017), she was nominated in the category "Outstanding Performance of a Female Dancer" for her performances in "Approximate Sonata 2016" by William Forsythe and "Café Müller" by Pina Bausch, portraying "Steely strength in the Forsythe, and all vulnerability in the Bausch".
In 2017 she created Biscuit Ballerina as a way to bring humor to the seriousness of ballet and address mental health in the dance world. Biscuit Ballerina was nominated in the category "Best News" in Dance Europe Magazine (October 2018) for "offering an amusing and inspiring perspective for dancers on the pursuit for perfection.