Lifetime Achievement Award
Criteria
The criteria for the CORPS de Ballet International’s Lifetime Achievement Award candidates is as follows:
- Candidates must have furthered the growth of ballet in higher education and/or made valuable contributions to ballet departments, through administration, teaching, choreography, mentoring or research.
- Candidates must have worked for or with an academic institution for at least five years.
- Candidates must have a prior or current relationship (choreographer, teacher, dancer, writer, historian etc.) with the professional world of ballet.

Molly Lynch
2026 Award Honoree
MOLLY LYNCH is an award winning choreographer and artistic director, with over 50 years of experience creating, producing, and presenting dance. She is currently a Professor in the Dance Department, Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California Irvine. She teaches ballet, pointe, ballet repertory, senior seminar and arts management. She was the Chair of the Dance Department 2018-2023 and the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Affairs 2015-2018. She began her career at the university in 2006.
Since 2004, Ms. Lynch has been the Founder and Artistic Director for the National Choreographers Initiative, an internationally known project to nurture the development of new choreography. NCI received a prestigious National Endowment for the Arts grant in 2015.
She was the Artistic Director for Ballet Pacifica from 1988-2003. During her tenure, Ms. Lynch established Ballet Pacifica as Orange County’s leading professional dance company and one of the area’s top performing arts organizations. Among her innovative trademark programs was the Pacifica Choreographic Project (1990-2003), the predecessor to NCI. Under Ms. Lynch’s direction, the company worked with forty emerging choreographers, premiered more than forty new ballets and restaged some of America’s most beloved classics by George Balanchine, Antony Tudor and Choo San Goh. Ms. Lynch has also choreographed over 30 concert and story ballets, 6 children’s ballets and a full-length production of “The Nutcracker” for the company.
Ms. Lynch has choreographed over 50 ballets including full-length and contemporary works for Singapore Dance Theatre, Ridgepointe Ballet (Manila, Philippines), Festival Ballet Theatre, Sacramento Ballet, Nashville Ballet, BalletMet (Columbus, Ohio), Ballet Pacifica, and Dance Collage (Hermosillo, Mexico). She has presented her research at the NDEO conference and the CORPS de Ballet International conference. Lynch has served on the Board of CORPS de Ballet Int’l. and chaired the Nominating Committee.
She began her dance training with Lila Zali, received a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet School and performed as a soloist and principal dancer with the Louisville Ballet and Ballet Pacifica for over 10 years. As a fine arts major at the University of California, Irvine, she studied with such distinguished figures in dance as Eugene Loring, Antony Tudor and Olga Maynard. Upon receiving her MFA in dance from UCI, she was named Outstanding Graduate Student—the first student from Fine Arts so honored. In 1992, Ms Lynch was given the esteemed Outstanding Alumnus award from UCI and was named one of Orange County Metro Magazine’s Ten Women Who Make A Difference. She was also the recipient of the Red Cross Clara Barton Cultural Arts Award and the Boy Scouts of America Women of Excellence award in 1996. She was the recipient of the 2001 Choo San Goh Award for Choreography. In 2007 she received the Outstanding Arts Organization Award for her National Choreographers Initiative from Arts Orange County. In 2008 she was honored with the Irvine Barclay Theatre’s prestigious Jade Award for her extraordinary leadership and creativity. In 2017 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Arts Visionary from Arts Orange County. And in 2023 she was awarded the UCI Lauds and Laurels Claire Trevor School of the Arts – Outstanding Alumni honor.
Past Recipients
Biographies on this page reflect the year the Lifetime Achievement Award was conferred and may not be current.