After 53 years with the San Francisco Ballet, one performer is moving out of the spotlight.
“I will be stepping away from the (Ballet) stage to continue my focus full time on choreography,” Principal Character Dancer Val Caniparoli announced on Instagram Monday, March 16. “During my tenure, SF Ballet has performed 25 of my ballets and I have created over 150 works for 60 Companies globally.”
His final performance with the company will be on March 28 in “Don Quixote.”
In the meantime, the Washington-born dancer revealed that he’s currently creating “Goat Rodeo,” a world premiere for Richmond Ballet, as well as his full-length “Dr. Coppélius,” set for March 2027.
The Chronicle has reached out to the Ballet for comment.
Caniparoli arrived at the S.F. Ballet School in 1972 on a Ford Foundation Scholarship, eventually joining the company one year later. He was appointed a resident choreographer under the leadership of Lew Christensen and Michael Smuin, and later named a principal character dancer and rehearsal director by Helgi Tomasson. Caniparoli has continued to choreograph and dance under the current artistic director, Tamara Rojo. He frequently performs as Herr Drosselmeyer in the Ballet’s annual production of “Nutracker.”
Over the course of his career, he received 10 grants for choreography from the National Endowment for the Arts, an artist fellowship from the California Arts Council and the Isadora Duncan Award for Sustained Achievement, among other recognitions.
Caniparoli’s departure comes at an interesting time for the Ballet, which recently canceled planned performances of “Mere Mortals” at the Kennedy Center this spring, following weeks of pressure to withdraw from the performances in protest of President Donald Trump’s takeover of the institution.