Mark Stanley

Mark Stanley is the Resident Lighting Director for New York City Ballet, where he has designed almost two hundred productions, including Paul McCartney’s Ocean’s Kingdom choreographed by Peter Martins. Stanley has worked with such choreographers as Susan Stroman, Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, Kevin O’Day, Susan Marshall, Christopher d’Amboise, William Forsythe, David Gordon, Lynne Taylor-Corbett and Ulysses Dove. His designs are also in the repertoires of the Royal Danish Ballet, London’s Royal Ballet, Het Nationale Ballet, the Royal Ballet of Flanders, San Francisco Ballet, the Norwegian Opera Ballet, the Berliner Staatsballett, the Stuttgart Ballet, the Mannheim Ballet, Ballet British Columbia, the Bayerisches Staatsballett, the Pilobolus Dance Theatre, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Joffrey Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada and the Pennsylvania Ballet among numerous other acclaimed ballet companies.

Stanley previously served as Resident Lighting Designer for New York City Opera, lighting over twenty new productions for the resident and touring companies. Additional opera credits include works for the Boston Lyric Opera, the Virginia Opera, the Wolf Trap Opera, the Tulsa Opera, the Florida Grand Opera, the New Orleans Opera and the Kentucky Opera among others.

Mark Stanley’s work for theatre includes lighting designs for the Kennedy Center, the Long Wharf Theatre, the Goodspeed Opera House, the Ordway Music Theater, , the Paper Mill Playhouse, Maurice Sendak’s Night Kitchen Children’s Theatre, the Lost Colony theatre, the Drama Dept theatre and the Blue Light theatre. Off-Broadway productions include Curse of the Starving Class with Kathy Bates and Bill Pullman. His designs have been seen nationally on PBS for Live from Lincoln Center and Great Performances, among them George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, Peter Martins’ Romeo and Juliet, The Diamond Project, Swan Lake, The Balanchine Celebration, An Evening with Alan J. Lerner and New York City Opera’s The Merry Widow, The New Moon and Carmen.

Internationally, Mark Stanley has worked as a lighting director with the Bolshoi Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, the Vienna Volksoper, the Sankai Juku theatre, the Donestk Ballet, the Kodo Drummers, the National Puppet Theatre of Japan and the Carleton Dance Festival in Brazil.

Mark Stanley currently teaches Lighting Design at Boston University and conducts master-classes at universities throughout the USA and in Europe. He is on the board of the Hemsley Lighting Programs and is the author of The Color of Light Workbook.