Name: From Cancer and Closure to Creating New Ballet: A Ballerina’s Journey
Uploaded: 2026-05-25T05:34:02.000Z
Description: In today’s episode, Dalia Rawson, executive and artistic director of the New Ballet in San Jose, California, shares her remarkable journey from principal dancer to company founder—navigating cancer, bankruptcy, and reinvention through passion, recovery, and innovation.

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Steve Ispas is an investigative journalist with The Epoch Times and the host of Epoch TV’s “Bay Area Innovators” program. Steve grew up in Eastern Europe, and lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 35 years. He worked in the tech industry for 15 years at LSI Logic and Rambus, and has been with The Epoch Times in various positions since 2003. His recent coverage includes an in-depth exclusive investigation of the secret Chinese biolab discovered in Reedley, Calif., in 2022.

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In today’s episode, Dalia Rawson, executive and artistic director of the New Ballet in San Jose, California, shares her remarkable journey from principal dancer to company founder—navigating cancer, bankruptcy, and reinvention through passion, recovery, and innovation.

Rawson reflects on her time performing with the San Jose Cleveland Ballet and the life-altering diagnosis that abruptly ended her dancing career.

“One week I was dancing the lead in The Nutcracker, and the next week, my career was over,” she says.

However, her love for ballet remained strong. She went on to choreograph and teach with Ballet San Jose, which went bankrupt in 2016. Out of that closure, she founded the New Ballet—a company rooted in classical tradition but built for the future.

“We’re a classical ballet school—but in a new way,” she explains, emphasizing dancers’ health, diversity, and the enduring power of live performance in a digital age.

Join us for a powerful conversation about rebuilding from loss, reshaping tradition, and why ballet still matters in today’s culture.

<em>Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of  NTD.</em>

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