FOUNDER PROFILE // LAUREN LEONARD PROFILES CHRISTINE COX OF BALLETX
The Freedom to Walk Through Fear
Christine Cox of BalletX wants to make dance that keeps you up at night
by Lauren Earline Leonard
Volume 7 // Issue 2 // Fall 2025 // Conservation
I’ve seen BalletX with my mom (who supported my ballet aspirations for years and years), with dear friends, with dates—and once as the third wheel on someone else’s date—so I can attest directly to the Philadelphia company’s resonance. More than once they’ve taken my breath away: The full company onstage, moving in unison, a crescendo of music, and a backdrop of incandescent bulbs at maximum brightness, stunning me into a silence that’s interrupted only when someone in the dark theatre remembers to clap in gratitude for the gift of collective catharsis. This fleeting, magical, and acutely human experience can’t be replicated outside of a live performance. It’s something company co-founder Christine Cox knows from watching BalletX performances as well: “Fifteen years ago, I was watching a husband and wife. I remember being behind them, and the wife was crying, touching her husband, and their little son was in the middle, and just thinking, Wow, that’s it.”
I met with Cox late summer of 2025 in her office, which overlooks the company’s airy studio space on Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia’s Point Breeze neighborhood. She wears her brown hair in a twist at the back of her head and sits upright, her carriage revealing her to be every bit the ballerina. Cox undulates as she speaks, using her torso, neck, head, arms, and hands to accentuate and punctuate. In her presence I recall my own training, roll my shoulders back, knit my ribs together, lengthen my neck. She is an equally engaged listener, breaking warm, intense eye contact only to fawn—understandably—over her beagle, Oscar, resplendent on a nearby chair.
What distinguishes BalletX from other contemporary companies is Cox’s commitment to commissioning choreographers from around the world to set work on the company in Philadelphia, rather than featuring the work of a single choreographer (usually the founder). To date, this amounts to 150 world premieres from 80 choreographers. //
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