New York City Ballet promotes three dancers to soloist
Meaghan Dutton-O’Hara, Owen Flacke and Kloe Walker were moved up from the corps de ballet after an all-Balanchine matinee on the closing weekend of the company’s autumn season.
New York City Ballet has promoted three members of its corps de ballet – Meaghan Dutton-O’Hara, Owen Flacke and Kloe Walker – to the rank of soloist. Artistic director Jonathan Stafford and associate artistic director Wendy Whelan made the promotions on Saturday 17 October, following a matinee of an all-Balanchine programme during the final weekend of the 2026 Fall Season, which ended the next day.
All three had taken on a string of featured roles over the four-week season.
Meaghan Dutton-O’Hara
Born in New York City, Dutton-O’Hara began dancing at three at the Frederick School of Classical Ballet in Frederick, Maryland. She arrived at the School of American Ballet (SAB), NYCB’s official school, for its 2007 summer course and stayed on as a full-time student that autumn. She became an apprentice in August 2011 and joined the corps de ballet a year later. In 2011 she received both the Martin E. Segal Award and a Mae L. Wien Award.
This season she made her debuts in featured roles in “Emeralds” from George Balanchine‘s Jewels and in Christopher Wheeldon’s Continuum, and returned to featured roles in Jerome Robbins‘s The Concert, Justin Peck‘s Pulcinella Variations and Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments. Her wider repertoire includes Balanchine’s Agon, Ballo della Regina and La Valse, Anita in Robbins’s West Side Story Suite and Carabosse in Peter Martins‘s The Sleeping Beauty. She has also created featured roles in works by Silas Farley, Lauren Lovette, Andrea Miller, Matthew Neenan, Alexei Ratmansky and Wheeldon.
Owen Flacke
Flacke, from Boston, Massachusetts, started training at four at the Community Dance Academy of Walnut Hill School for the Arts, then moved to Boston Ballet School at seven, where his teachers included Tamara King, Christopher Anderson, Margaret Tracey and Peter Stark. After SAB’s 2020 summer course he enrolled full-time for that winter term. He became an NYCB apprentice in November 2022 and joined the corps in October 2023.
His debuts this autumn came in featured roles in Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments and “Diamonds” from Jewels, Kyle Abraham‘s Love Letter (on shuffle) and Wheeldon’s Continuum; he also returned to a featured role in Ratmansky’s Solitude. He has danced Theseus in Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Cavalier in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, and originated featured roles in Ratmansky’s The Naked King and Solitude.
Kloe Walker
Walker was born in Jefferson County, West Virginia, and trained locally from the age of four. At 13 she moved to Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to study with Darla Hoover. She attended SAB’s summer courses in 2021 and 2022 before enrolling full-time for the winter term in 2022, then became an apprentice in August 2023 and joined the corps in May 2024.
This season she made debuts in featured roles in Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, Peck’s Pulcinella Variations and Ratmansky’s Solitude. Her repertoire also includes Dawn in Balanchine’s Coppélia and Dewdrop in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, and she originated a featured role in Tiler Peck‘s Symphonie Espagnole.
Coming up at NYCB
The company returns with its annual run of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker from 27 November 2026 to 3 January 2027, followed by the Winter Season (19 January – 28 February 2027) and the Spring Season (20 April – 30 May 2027). More information at nycballet.com.
