Our Story

Founder Robert Fulton is a professional dancer with the Nevada Ballet Theatre. He auditioned his way up the ranks as a dancer and experienced firsthand how hard it is to find the right opportunities in dance. In the spring of 2019, many of Robert’s peers were cut last-minute from the program they were training at. They spent hours scouring the web for information on auditions, only to find a handful of options. None worked out and several were forced to transition away from dancing. Robert realized that if there was a centralized database for all that information, so many dancers' passions could be saved.

Robert teamed up with Sasha Ahrestani, a computer science major at Penn State, and together they began designing a prototype. When the pandemic hit, so many dancers were scrambling to find their next steps, so they buckled down, brought on Eugene Ryoo, a cyber-security major at Penn State, and launched The Ballet Scout for the 20/21 audition season. They entered into several pitch competitions to raise money to develop the site and took 1st place in the IdeaMakers challenge and 3rd place in the Happy Valley Venture Capital challenge. In the summer of 2022, they were accepted into the Happy Valley Launcbox Summer Founders program where they received a large grant, mentorship, and facilities to build their company. Today, Eclaireur has a dedicated team of developers and data gatherers helping dancers all over the world succeed.

What started as just an idea turned into a website you're using today. We have helped dancers of all ages and levels find training and jobs and we have helped companies of all sizes market and recruit for their programs. In the future, we want to create a “Scout” for every artform and help every artist pursue their passion. But for now, as we say, you can discover your next step on The Ballet Scout!