Carly Topazio is the Founder, Artistic Director, and CEO of The Rosin Box Project, San Diego’s premier contemporary ballet company. Since founding the organization in 2018, she has grown TRBP from a $5,000 startup into a dynamic nonprofit arts institution with an annual budget of more than $500,000, leading its evolution into one of the region’s most ambitious and distinctive contemporary ballet organizations. Since incorporating as a 501(c)(3) in 2020, she has shaped the company’s artistic identity, organizational growth, and community impact with a vision centered on bold creation, meaningful accessibility, and contemporary relevance.

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Under Topazio’s leadership, The Rosin Box Project has commissioned more than 55+ premiere ballets by both emerging and internationally recognized choreographers, while cultivating a reputation for innovation, artistic rigor, and entrepreneurial momentum. She has led the company in collaborations and recognitions with major cultural partners and platforms including La Jolla Playhouse, Dance St. Louis’ Spring to Dance, and the Palm Desert Choreography Festival, where Topazio was selected two consecutive years as a presenting finalist. Her curatorial leadership has helped establish the company as a vital platform for new ballet creation and a growing force in the national conversation around contemporary dance.

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Topazio has also stewarded TRBP’s expansion into dance film, leading the company to produce more than 15 dance films that have earned selections and recognition from leading film festivals in the dance and independent film worlds, including San Francisco Dance Film Festival, Dance Camera West, Movies by Movers at American Dance Festival, Portland Dance Film Festival, LA Film Awards, and Choreoscope, where one of TRBP’s films was broadcast on television in Barcelona. The company’s films have also received festival awards from Top Shorts and Los Angeles Film Awards, further cementing TRBP’s reputation for artistic excellence across both live and screen-based work.

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Deeply committed to broadening the reach of ballet, Topazio has championed programming that invites new audiences into the art form through immersive performance experiences, site-responsive work, and arts education initiatives rooted in connection and access. She helped create and expand TRBP’s flagship arts-integrated outreach program, building partnerships with K-8 schools across San Diego Unified School District and helping the organization serve more than 3,000 students. She has also successfully secured and stewarded support from leading funders including the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, San Diego Foundation, Conrad Prebys Foundation, and The Parker Foundation. In 2019, she was recognized as an Emerging Arts Professional in San Diego by Rising Arts Leaders.

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Originally from Millis, Massachusetts, Topazio received her early training at Boston Ballet and later studied at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet under the renowned Marcia Dale Weary. She further refined her classical foundation through summer intensives with Houston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballet Austin, and Milwaukee Ballet, and expanded her artistic practice through international performance opportunities in Prague, Austria, Madrid, including a residency with Iratxe Ansa in Mexico City, and IB Stage in Spain. She also appeared as a ballet dancer in Disney’s The Game Plan starring Dwayne Johnson.

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As a professional dancer, Topazio joined Alabama Ballet in 2011 and danced with City Ballet of San Diego from 2013 to 2020. She has also performed as a guest artist with Ballet Inc., Eglevsky Ballet, and Ballet Neo in New York City, as well as Golden State Ballet in San Diego. Her performance career includes featured roles in works by some of ballet’s most celebrated choreographers, including Twyla Tharp’s Baker’s Dozen, Jiří Kylián’s Sechs Tänze, and numerous ballets by George Balanchine, including Allegro Brillante, Square Dance, Rubies, Serenade, Walpurgisnacht, Valse Fantaisie, Who Cares?, The Four Temperaments, La Source, and Raymonda Variations. She has performed extensively as a soloist and principal in both classical and contemporary repertory, including original works created on her.

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In addition to her work as a director and performer, Topazio is a multidisciplinary media artist with professional experience in photography, graphic design, and film. On behalf of The Rosin Box Project, she produced a dance film series in collaboration with Vanguard Culture that received awards from the San Diego Movie Awards, Paris Film Awards, and the Cannes World Film Festival. Her creative work behind the camera reflects the same interdisciplinary sensibility that defines her leadership as an arts executive and maker. She launched her freelance photography business in 2014, and her work has been featured in publications including the San Diego Union-Tribune, The Voyager, Pointe Magazine, and Peerspace. In 2019, she was named one of San Diego’s Top Ten Fine Art Photographers.