Biography

Joan Boada trained with and graduated from Escuela Nacional de Ballet in Cuba. He then trained in Paris with esteemed artists Jacques Hamont, Pierre Lacotte, Manuel Legris, and Gilbert Mayer.

Boada has received major prizes at elite ballet competitions in Paris, Varna, Osaka and Shanghai. His guest artist engagements include San Francisco Ballet, Ballet de Nancy, Ballet de Marseille, Ballet de Manila, Victor Ullate Ballet, Australian Ballet, Royal Ballet of Flanders and Ballet de Bordeaux.  Boada is internationally renowned for his precise classical technique and dramatic capabilities.

Boada joined San Francisco Ballet as a principal artist in 1999, excelling in full-length classics including Giselle, Romeo and Juliet, The Sleeping Beauty, and Don Quixote and in works by Sir Fredrick Ashton, George Balanchine, and Jerome Robbins. He has worked with celebrated choreographers including William Forsythe, Mark Morris, Roland Petite, Alexei Ratmansky, and Christopher Wheeldon.

Following two years as Rehearsal Director with the Compañía Nacional de Danza in Spain, he returned to the U.S. as Artistic Director for the Kirov Academy in Washington, D.C.

Boada staged Leonid Yakobson’s Vestris for Boston Ballet in 2019, becoming Associate Director of Boston Ballet II, and a main faculty member of Boston Ballet School, in 2022.