In 1964, after professional careers with American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, Eugene Loring’s Dance Players in Hollywood, and performing in Broadway musicals, film, and television, Robert and Carol Hanlin opened the Goleta School of Ballet. The Hanlins had studied with some of the world’s finest teachers including George Balanchine, Muriel Stewart, Anthony Tudor, and Margaret Craske. They recognized the need for elevated training and performance opportunities in Santa Barbara and in 1968, they founded the Goleta Civic Ballet, a pre-professional ballet company. By 1970 the Company was collaborating with the Santa Barbara Symphony at the Arlington Theatre. Collaborations included Peter and the Wolf and the Symphony’s Concerts for Young People, reaching some 8,000 children annually! The largest joint undertaking has been The Nutcracker, started in 1975. That same year, Goleta Civic Ballet, now Santa Barbara Festival Ballet, joined the Pacific Regional Ballet Association (now The Ballet Alliance).

The Hanlins retired in 1991. The present Conservatory Director, Denise Rinaldi, studied under the Hanlins, is a Fellow of Cecchetti USA, an examiner for the organization, as well as its Executive Director. The SBFB Company dancers are privileged to work with Valerie Huston, UCSB Senior Lecturer in the Dept. of Dance, as the company’s Interim Executive Director and resident choreographer.

Most gratifying is the number of children of former dancers we now have studying with us. When the Hanlins were requesting funding for the first production of The Nutcracker they stated, “We hope to establish something children of Santa Barbara can grow up with, on both sides of the footlights.” That, indeed, has come to pass.