Fernando Schaffenburg

Shortly after the foundation of the Company, Fernando Schaffenburg, who was teaching in Dallas at the time, began working with Fort Worth Ballet. In 1964, Schaffenburg took the reigns as Artistic Director, with his wife Nancy serving as Artistic Advisor. The Schaffenburgs worked to nurture and grow the civic company by expanding performance opportunities and developing the company repertoire. As an honor company of the Southwest Regional Ballet Association, Fort Worth Ballet hosted the Southwest Regional Ballet Festival in 1966. The festival strove to nurture dance as a performing art in the community, and brought civic ballet companies from across four states together to perform and partake in lectures and master dance classes. Fort Worth Ballet participated in the festival for nearly ten years, acting as an honor company for the duration of its participation.

By 1974, the Schaffenburgs had expanded the company to include twenty dancers and a repertoire of more than twenty-five ballets, including Les Sylphides and Coppelia.       Fort Worth Ballet, in cooperation with Texas Christian University, also began hosting a summer workshop program for ballet students, which drew nearly one hundred students from the area. That same year, Fort Worth Ballet commissioned stagings of Graduation Ball by David Lichine, originally performed by the Ballet Russe, and Holberg Suite by Arthur Mitchell, under a National Endowment for the Arts grant. The Company then took these commissioned works on tour to several cities in the southwest United States.