Michael Burfield

From Lubbock, Texas
With Nashville Ballet since 2018

Training and Education
Lone Star Ballet, Ballet Lubbock, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Ballet Austin II

Previously
Ballet Austin, Sarasota Ballet

BIO
Originally from Lubbock, Texas, Michael Burfield studied at Ballet Lubbock and Lone Star Ballet. In the summers, he attended several programs on full scholarships, including Kansas City Ballet, The Joffrey Ballet School, Carolina Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. After graduating high school, Burfield returned to Pacific Northwest Ballet on full scholarship as a professional division student.

In 2010, Burfield joined Ballet Austin’s second company and was quickly promoted to the organization’s main company the following season. There, he spent three years working closely with artists such as Stephen Mills and Michelle Martin and had the honor of working on Mills’s Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project. In addition to touring the work in Miami and across Israel in Akko, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Burfield was also selected to perform a section of the project at the Kennedy Center during Ballet Across America. Burfield also had to the opportunity to work with world-renowned choreographer Annabelle Lopez-Ochoa and toured her piece Requiem for a Rose to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Passionate about the organization’s diverse repertoire, Burfield made the move to Sarasota Ballet in 2014 as a coryphee member under the direction of Iain Webb. Some of Burfield’s highlights there include performing Dicken in Will Tuckett’s The Secret Garden, George Balanchine’s Jewels and Stars & Stripes, Rudolf Nureyev’s Raymond Act III, Christopher Bruce’s Sargent Early’s Dream, Paul Taylor’s Company B, Christopher Wheeldon’s The American, Sir Peter Wright’s Summertide, Kenneth MacMillan’s Concerto, Dominic Walsh’s Wolfgang for Webb, and Anthony Tudor’s Continuo. In 2018, Burfield joined Nashville Ballet.