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Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre

non-profit organization in the USA

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ7199230 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre (PBT) is an American professional ballet company based in the Strip District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1969.

History

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre is founded in 1969, by a Yugoslavian choreographer and Founding Artistic Director Nicolas Petrov, and Founding Board Chair Loti Falk. They initially met at an outdoor ballet performance featuring Petrov's Pittsburgh Playhouse dancers. They founded the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre in 1969 in affiliation with Point Park College.

Following its 1969 stage debut at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre sold out its inaugural 1970-71 subscription season at the Syria Mosque, featuring Petrov's The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. In 1971 Loti and Leon Falk purchased the first studio space on the Boulevard of the Allies. By the end of the 1970s, the company was financially independent of Point Park College. When Petrov stepped down to focus on the Point Park program, John Gilpin, of London’s Festival Ballet, briefly led the company until Patrick Frantz, a former Paris Opera Ballet dancer, took over in 1978. In 1979, he established the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre” as non-profit organization in the USA. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pittsburgh, Ballet and Theatre.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1969, 1970, 1971, 1978—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1968-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Pittsburgh, Ballet and Theatre providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre”, the useful work is to connect “non-profit organization in the USA” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7199230. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1978.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre primary sources, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre archive and Pittsburgh research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.