COMPANY LEADERSHIP

yurek Hansen

Artistic Director

Yurek was born into the dancing family of Alfred and Marla Hansen and raised on tour and backstage of the American Festival Ballet. He began receiving training with his parents, but continued more formally with IDT and Boise State University’s Summer DanceFest workshop, in addition to study in Suzuki actor training and Viewpoints with Anne Bogart's SITI Co. and multiple martial arts and dance forms. Yurek has danced 22 plus seasons with IDT, during which time he performed in approximately 150 original works and choreographed over 15 works. He spent a month in Guinea with his friend and West African dance/drum teacher, Manimou Camara, training in the traditional rhythms and dances of the peoples of West Africa. He has performed in many diverse events including the Boise Creative and Improvised Music Festival, RawArtists, Ballet Bellevue, Little School of Dance in Kodiak AK, Ballet Idaho, EPAC, with Manimou Camera for the Seattle International Dance Festival, Treefort music festival, Boise’s Tour de Fat and Boise Dance Co-op. He has been an adjunct instructor at BSU for approximately for 15 years teaching ballet, modern, men's class and repertory dance in addition to choreographing for Theatre and Music department productions, most recently in spring 2022 "Sponge Bob, the Musical". Yurek has also taught for Treasure Valley Institute for Children’s Arts, Ballet Idaho, Eagle Arts Charter School, BSU Summer DanceFest workshop, Methods of Movement, Footlight, Columbia Dance, Cornish University, and Grand Valley State University. Yurek has performed with the SunValley Summer Symphonies in L'Histoire du Soldat, and with LED (Lauren Edson+Dancers) performing her works in Boise, NYC, NY, and across the nation.

Marla Brattain Hansen

Artistic Director Emeritus

Marla and her husband, Alfred Hansen, founded Idaho Dance Theatre in 1989. Since that time, she has choreographed over 67 ballets for IDT. Marla has collaborated numerous times with other artists including composers Eric Sandmeyer and David Allen Earnest, pianists Del Parkinson, and Mark Hansen, soprano Laura Rushing Raynes, just to name a few. Organizations include Opera Idaho’s Faust, Amahl and the Night Visitors, and Orpheus and Euridici and the Boise Philharmonic Brass Quintet. An acclaimed teacher, Marla was named the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, “Dance Educator of the Year”. She was also one of the 2015 Women of the Year honored by the Idaho Business Review.

Marla is also a Professor at Boise State University in the Department of Theatre Arts and directs the Dance Minor, the Dance Option BA Degree and the BSU-IDT Summer DanceFest workshop. Marla choreographs regularly for BSU Theatre and Music Department productions including Metamorphoses, Cabaret, Pippin, Into the Woods, Iolanthe, Cinderella, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Damn Yankees, to name a few Marla began her early professional training as a Harkness Ballet company trainee in New York City. She earned her BFA and MFA in ballet at the University of Utah while apprenticing with Ballet West. She then danced at Portland Ballet Company for three years and choreographed on several Northwest companies. From 1981 to 1989 she danced with American Festival Ballet in Idaho and was a teacher, ballet mistress, choreographer and acting artistic director. She choreographed the full-length Cinderella and Firebird. In 1988 she received the Idaho Commission on the Arts Artist Fellowship for her Firebird choreography.