Tara Ghassemieh

Tara Ghassemieh is an Iranian American principal dancer, choreographer, director, and the founding Artistic and Executive Director of INTUITV ARTSHIP, a boundary-breaking ballet company dedicated to contemporary narrative storytelling through classical ballet. Her work lives at the intersection of artistic excellence and cultural resistance, using ballet as a living language capable of carrying memory, truth, and political urgency.

At age sixteen, Ghassemieh moved to New York City to train at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School of American Ballet Theatre, launching a professional career marked by artistic rigor and international recognition. Throughout her career, she has received multiple artist and choreography awards, reflecting both her technical mastery and her commitment to original, narrative-driven work.

Recognized as the first Iranian American principal dancer, Ghassemieh centers representation and authorship in her practice, creating original, full-length ballets that reclaim suppressed histories shaped by exile, repression, and resilience. Her critically acclaimed ballet The White Feather—which she wrote, produced, directed, choreographed, and performed—tells the true story of the disbanding of the Iranian National Ballet. The work toured nationally to sold-out audiences and culminated in a performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, transforming ballet into an act of remembrance and resistance.

Her subsequent ballet, Tchaikovsky: A Love Letter, reexamines classical history through a contemporary lens, exploring the composer’s inner life through letters, memory, and fractured time.

Beyond the stage, Ghassemieh mentors underground dancers inside Iran, where dance remains illegal, and is the Creative Director, Executive Producer, and lead subject of the feature documentary Exile of the Swans. Across stage, film, and education, her work asks how ballet can bear witness, tell the truth, and evoke freedom.