Abbey McWhirter is a first year student at Barnard College majoring in Dance and American Studies. In 2021, after graduating from the University of North Carolina School of Arts (UNCSA) as a ballet major in their high school division, Abbey took a gap year to join Ballet Idaho as a trainee. While with Ballet Idaho, Abbey had the opportunity to choreography on her fellow trainees, culminating in a 8 minute piece entitled Jabber. During the summer of 2021, Abbey remained in Boise, Idaho as a company artist with LED (formerly known as Lauren Edson and Dancers). Prior to UNCSA, Abbey spent two years as a preprofessional trainee with Colorado Ballet, where she performed with the company on multiple occasions. In 2019, she was selected as one of 22 dancers for the inaugural cohort of Jacob’s Pillow Contemporary Ballet Summer program. Abbey has had the honor of performing soloist roles in productions of Swan Lake, the Nutcracker, Raymonda and Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco and has performed original works by Matthew Neenan, Stephanie Martinez, Florian Lochner and Alice Klock (FLOCKworks), Yoshito Sakuraba and Lauren Edson. Abbey is a 2018 YoungArts winner for contemporary/modern dance.