ON POINTE - LARISSA BILLS INTERVIEW

Get Ready for Some Holiday Magic with The Sugar Plum Fairy and Mouse King in On Pointe!

On Pointe is a six-part docu-series that captures a season in the School of American Ballet (SAB) in New York City. Featuring unprecedented access to the famous ballet institution, the series follows the lives of the students ages 8 to 18 pursuing their dreams to become ballet dancers. While older students from all over the country rigorously train for professional careers, younger students from New York City are put through their paces as they rehearse and perform in New York City Ballet's holiday classic "George Balanchine's The Nutcracker" onstage at Lincoln Center.

The original series is produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Documentaries and directed by Larissa Bills.

Larissa Bills has worked as a producer, writer and/or director on a wide range of documentary features and series for more than 20 years for outlets including The New York Times, Discovery Channel, Vh1, Lifetime and A&E Networks, among others. Since 2006, she has produced a number of projects for HBO Documentaries -- most recently the feature documentary Finding the Way Home, which focuses on child deinstitutionalization efforts around the world. In addition to documentary films, she has contributed radio features to SiriusXM and WNYC Public Radio. Larissa grew up near Denver, Colorado and is a 1992 graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America, The Producers Guild and The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

On Pointe  Premieres December 18 on Disney+

I spoke with Larissa Bills about working on this series and getting the unprecedented access to the world renowned ballet school.