Patricia Ward Kelly
Ambassador
Patricia Ward Kelly is the wife and official biographer of legendary dancer, director, choreographer Gene Kelly. They met in Washington, DC in 1985 when she was a writer on a television special about the Smithsonian and he was the host. Soon after, he invited her to California to write his memoir; a project for which she recorded his words nearly every day for over 10 years. They married in 1990 and were together until his death in 1996. As Trustee of The Gene Kelly Image Trust and Creative Director of The Gene Kelly Legacy, Inc., Mrs. Kelly celebrates Gene Kelly’s artistry worldwide. Her one-woman show, Gene Kelly: The Legacy, is currently on tour in the U.S. and abroad. Her live symphonic/cinema tribute, Gene Kelly: A Life in Music, launched in the spring of 2018 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The show traveled to Ireland, Canada, had its U.S. debut with three sold-out shows with the Seattle Symphony, and is now headed to the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in November 2024. In 2021, Mrs. Kelly served as creative consultant in Scottish Ballet’s re-mounting of the ballet that her husband created for the Paris Opera in 1960. Now called “Starstruck,” the ballet played to sold-out houses throughout Scotland and will return to the stage in 2026. Mrs. Kelly lives in Los Angeles, where she curates the Gene Kelly Archives and is completing the book about her late husband.
Mrs. Kelly is a patron of the following organizations:
- The ADHD Neurodiversity Foundation based in Liverpool, England.
- The London Ballet Circle
- Phoenix Boys, a UK-based organization with the mission of encouraging and training young men to dance
- The Royal Academy of Dance