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Elizabeth Hartwell joined the Louisville Ballet School
as Director after a long and successful tenure with the Louisville
Ballet. After becoming a corps de ballet member of the Company
in 1984, Ms. Hartwell rose to the rank of Principal dancer soon
thereafter. During her tenure with the Louisville Ballet, she was
known and adored by audiences for her precise technique and captivating
stage presence. From 1988 to 1995, Ms. Hartwell danced as a soloist
for the Cincinnati Opera Ballet summer seasons. Then, in 1996,
she began serving on the faculty of Governor’s School for
the Arts (KY). Prior to joining the Louisville Ballet, she danced
with the Chicago Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet and Pittsburgh Opera
Ballet and was a member of the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre from 1980
to
1983. After graduating from the School for the Creative and Performing
Arts High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, she was a state and national
finalist in the National Society for Arts and Letters Competition
in Dance. This past February she was honored by Gov. Fletcher and
The Governors Awards in The Arts with The Artist Award for lifetime
achievement. Ms. Hartwell has been on the faculty of the Louisville
Ballet School since 1996.
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Bruce Simpson joined the Louisville
Ballet in 2002, bringing with him over 30 years of experience
in the international
ballet world. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Mr. Simpson studied at
the Scottish Ballet School, making his professional debut with
Scottish Opera. Upon joining the Wuppertal Dance Company, he toured
throughout Germany and Belgium. In 1970, he joined South Africa’s
State Theatre Ballet (previously known as the Performing Arts Council
of the Transvaal), which became his home for the next 30 years.
After his promotion to principal dancer in 1975, he performed
an extensive repertory specializing in the great classical roles,
including Swan Lake,
Romeo and Juliet, The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, La Fille Mal Gardée,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cinderella and La Sylphide. He
danced leading roles in The Three Musketeers, Anna Karenina and
Soft Blue Shadows by André Prokovsky; The Merry Widow, Rosalinda
and Papillon by Ronald Hynd; Don Quixote by Rudolf Nureyev; and
The Taming of the Shrew by John Cranko.
Appointed Ballet Master in 1983 and Senior Ballet
Master in 1985, Mr. Simpson
continued to perform with State Theatre Ballet until his retirement
from the stage in 1998. He was also répetiteur, teacher
and coach, refining productions of the Company’s repertoire
of over 60 ballets. He has worked with some of the greatest dancers
of our time, including Natalia Makarova, Sir Antony Dowell, Dame
Margot Fonteyn, Ivan Nagy and Sir Fredrick Ashton.
Mr. Simpson has been a guest of the major dance companies and
schools throughout the world. In 2000, he was invited to lead Texas
Ballet Theater, where he was commissioned to create new productions
of The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. Mr. Simpson was the jury co-chair
at the 2006 USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, MS.
Helen Starr has danced and taught in 36 countries
on five continents. She was born in Kent, England, and trained
at the Royal Academy of Dance and the Royal
Ballet School. Graduating into the Royal Ballet, she toured extensively
as a soloist and assistant ballet mistress. During this time, she
worked with Sir Frederick Ashton, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Dame Ninette
de Valois D.B.E., John Cranko, Leonide Massine and Rudolf Nureyev.
Miss Starr joined the London Festival Ballet, now English National
Ballet, and
was made a principal dancer after dancing Odette in Swan Lake.
Her roles included the leads in Giselle, Coppélia, Les Sylphides,
Scheherazade, Prince Igor, Noir et Blanc, La Sonnambula, Bourree
Fantasque and The Sleeping Beauty. Her partners have included such
luminaries as John Gilpin, André Prokovsky, Peter Schaufuss,
Peter Martins, Frank Augustyn, Alexander Lunev and Mikhail Baryshnikov,
with whom she danced La Sonnambula, the pas de deux from Le Corsaire
and Petrouchka.
Recognized nationwide as a fine ballet teacher
and coach, Miss Starr has staged ballets in Europe and the United
States including
Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia, Giselle, Les Sylphides,
La Fete Etrange, Ashton’s Les Patineurs, plus original productions
of Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet. Her roles with the Louisville
Ballet have included Odette in Swan Lake, Princess Aurora in The
Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Hanna Glawari
in The Merry Widow, Colette in Paradise Gained, Desdemona in The
Moor’s Pavane and Hecuba in The Trojan Women.
Born in Vienna, Austria, Mr. Kern studied with the
Ballet School of the Vienna
State Opera and at the Academie de la Danse de Princess Grace,
Monte Carlo.
He has received many awards including the Rudolf
Nureyev Scholarship Award, the Paris International Dance Competition – prix d’interpretation
and an Award for Artistic Achievement from the New York International
Ballet Competition.
Mr. Kern has performed as a soloist and principal
dancer with the Vienna State Opera Ballet, Basel Ballet, the
Joffrey Ballet,
Ballet Internationale and Charleston Ballet Theater. He has danced
leading roles in most of the major classical and romantic ballets
and won critical acclaim for his interpretation of roles in ballets
by Ashton, Cranko, Massine, Nureyev, Neumeier, Spörli, Balanchine,
Kilian and many more.
Under the guidance of Irina Kolpakova and Vladilen Semyonov, he
became a teacher and coach. He has been the Associate Artistic
Director of the Channel Islands Ballet (California) and a guest
instructor with schools, colleges and companies around the USA,
Europe and Japan.
Elena M. Fillmore returned to the Louisville Ballet
as School Administrator and faculty member in 2003. She earned
both her BFA and MFA in Dance from the University of Arizona. Ms.
Fillmore danced professionally with the Louisville Ballet, BalletMet,
Colorado Ballet and currently performs with the Moving Collective.
She has also danced around the world with jazz dance companies
QuinnWilliamsJazz and LaJAZDANZ and with the Space Dream Musical
Theatre production in Berlin, Germany.
Ms. Fillmore has coached several award-winning
middle and high school dance teams in collaboration with David
Thurmond and choreographer
Lavelle Smith. She has been a guest faculty member with Kentucky’s
Governor’s School of the Arts, Boca Ballet Theatre and Shreveport
Metropolitan Ballet.
She teaches ballet and jazz in the Elementary, Intermediate and
Pre-Professional divisions, dance and movement therapy classes
at the Home of the Innocents and is also Ballet Mistress for the
Youth Ensemble.
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Colleen Pratt studied ballet with Faith de Villiers
and completed all Grade examinations with honors. Ms. Pratt was
one of the first students to enter the professional training program
at the Johannesburg School of the Arts where she studied the Cecchetti
and RAD major syllabi, as well as Spanish flamenco, classical Greek,
National dance and mime. She also studied anatomy, music, history
of music and history of costume. At that time, Ms. Pratt was awarded
the coveted Nadia Nerina Trophy for the most outstanding Cecchetti
student in South Africa. Thereafter Ms. Pratt joined the PACT Ballet
Company and as a ballerina, danced in all the major classical repertoire.
Ms. Pratt worked with such famous choreographers as Berizoff, Petit,
Andret, Volkova, Hart and Golavine. PACT Ballet had a close association
with the Royal Ballet in London. Therefore, many Ashton works were
performed and Royal Ballet guest artists appeared each season.
Ms. Pratt worked with such famous artists as Dame Margot Fonteyn,
Sir Frederic Ashton, David Blair, Merle Park, Anthony Dowell, Galina
Samsova, Andre Prokovsky, Natalia Makarova and Ivan Nagy.
After a short period with the Bayerische Staats
Oper in Munich, she returned to South Africa where she began
teaching in Cape Town.
The following year Ms Pratt moved to New York City where she lived
for 14 years. Her first teaching engagement in Manhattan was at
Ballet Classique where she taught the RAD Major Examination Syllabus.
Soon after, Ms. Pratt was on the Faculty of Peridance Center, where
she also held the position of Administrative Director and founder
and Director of the Children’s Program. Ms. Pratt was also
on the Faculty of Ballet Hispanico.
Ms. Pratt’s teaching career has taken her worldwide, to
Toronto’s National Ballet School and Canada’s Royal
Winnipeg Ballet School, to England, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and extensively
throughout the United States. Ms. Pratt has taught Pedagogy classes
in New York and North Carolina, as well as the Netherlands and
Asia. She has also given Master Classes in Connecticut and at Brigham
Young University in Utah. Ms. Pratt holds the Licentiate Teachers
Diploma from the Imperial Society of Teachers in London, England,
awarded with "Distinction." Her belief is that one needs
to study a specific syllabus of ballet for all one’s school
years therefore enabling one to understand other syllabi and the
true meaning of classical ballet.
In 1992 Ms. Pratt joined Nevada Ballet Theatre as Ballet Mistress
and was later asked to direct the Academy of Nevada Ballet Theatre.
Ms. Pratt returned to the East Coast in 1993 at the invitation
of Ms. Wilde and Mr. Holladay to join the Faculty of Pittsburgh
Ballet Theatre School. Ms. Pratt was an established teacher in
the school for 8 years, also teaching during the Summer Intensive
Programs and rehearsing students in George Balanchine’s
Nutcracker.
While in Pittsburgh, Ms. Pratt also taught at Point Park College,
teaching Technique, Pointe, Variations and Spanish Flamenco dance.
Ms. Pratt was on the Faculty of Ballet Met and North Carolina Dance
Theatre.
In 2005 Ms Pratt accepted the position of Ballet Mistress for
Cedar Lake II in Columbia, Missouri. She also headed the ballet
faculty of the Columbia Performing Arts Centre, guiding them in
their teaching skills. In addition, Ms Pratt has given much study
over the years to various forms of body conditioning.
Ms Pratt enjoys seeing her former students obtain success in their
own careers within the ranks of ballet Companies in the USA and
Europe.
Tamara Begley is a graduate of
the Youth Performing Arts School and has earned a BFA in Choreography
and Performance
from the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She recently
completed an internship in Washington, D.C. at Dance Place, one
of the nation’s most prolific presenters of dance.
Ms. Begley has performed with John Gamble Dance Theatre in
North Carolina, Amir Kolben and Jessica Marchant in Washington,
D.C., and Art! Art! Barking Dog Dance Company in Louisville.
For the past two seasons, she has co-produced Moving Collective,
a new Louisville-based effort to promote modern dance. Ms.
Begley joined the Louisville Ballet School faculty in August
2006, as a Modern Dance instructor for upper level students.
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Ken Braso brings over 25 years of professional dance
experience to the classroom. His resume includes Southern Ballet
Theater, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and Ballet Austin, and his 17
year tenure with the Louisville Ballet Company. In 2001, he retired
from dancing to become the director of Step One Dance, at All About
Kids Sports Center. In addition to ballet companies, Ken has performed
in multi-varied stage productions, including Walt Disney World,
Cincinnati Opera Ballet and the Derby Dinner Theater, in Clarksville,
Indiana. In 2005, he co-directed a musical theater version of Cinderella
for the Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati. Mr. Braso teaches
ballet in the Elementary Division and Dance Access in the Youth
Open Division. He is married to School Director, Elizabeth Hartwell.
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Linda Ford Braun began dancing
at the age of four years old with Libby Starks Dance Studio in
Louisville, Kentucky.
By age twelve Ms. Braun was a member of the Louisville Ballet Company
and was on full scholarship with the American Ballet Theatre in
New York. While in New York Ms. Braun studied with some of the
ballet greats such as; Valentina Pereyaslavec, Mme. Swaboda, Jacques
d’Amboise, George Skibine, Maggie Black, William Dollar,
Fernand Nault, and Nels Jorgensen. Ms. Braun also studied with
Luigi, Hymee Rogers, June Taylor, Phil Black and other great tap
and musical comedy teachers.
Ms. Braun continued her career with the
Louisville Ballet Company as a Soloist and has choreographed
for Actors Theatre Louisville,
Miss Kentucky Pageants, and various community theatre
productions. For the Theatre/Drama Departments of
Seneca High School and
Trinity High School, Ms. Braun has choreographed school
productions of Grease, The Pirates of Penzance, Man
Of La Mancha, Sugar,
Fiorello, Strike Up The Band, How To Succeed In Business
Without Really Trying, Mack & Mabel, Brigadoon, and Carousel.
Ms. Braun is in her eighth year with the Louisville
Ballet School
where she teaches Ballet in the Primary and Elementary
Divisions.
Amy Trier Delaney, a Louisville native, holds a Bachelor
of Science in Ballet Pedagogy from Indiana University, Bloomington.
She has studied with, among others: Jean Pierre Bonnefoux, Jacques
Cesbron, Nancy Bielsky, Finis Jung, Robert Barnet, Jurgen Pagels
and Pat Gano.
Mrs. Delaney directed the dance department at Appel Farm Arts
and Music Center in New Jersey for four years, where she produced
shows for the Center and the local community. She was associated
with the Bronx Dance Theatre in New York. Mrs. Delaney also
taught for the Indiana University Ballet Program (which included
creative movement to pointe classes, beginning through advanced
levels.) Mrs. Delaney was invited to teach for the Kennedy
Center Imagination Celebration here in Louisville.
Mrs. Delaney has performed principal roles
with the Indiana University Ballet Theatre and
University Opera. As a teenager,
Mrs. Delaney performed with Young Dancers Company
of Louisville. She has also performed with AfterImages
Dance Company. She
taught at Ursuline School for the Performing Arts
for their dance program and was on the faculty
at Sacred Heart Academy
as their dance instructor. Mrs. Delaney also served
as a choreographer for both USPA and SHA productions.
Mrs. Delaney founded, owned
and directed The A.R.T. Centre – an Academy of Dance.
She currently teaches and choreographs in the Louisville
and Southern Indiana area. Mrs. Delaney joins the
faculty of the
Louisville Ballet School this year and teaches
ballet in the Elementary Division.
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Margie Fitzpatrick's professional ballet training
began at the age of eight with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. At
age 11, she began training with former Kirov Ballet Master Mansur
Kamaletdinov. Ms. Fitzpatrick holds a B.F.A. from the University
of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music. While there, she was
awarded two scholarships and was chosen to perform many leading
and supporting roles in original ballets choreographed by faculty
and guest artists from the Cincinnati Ballet and Houston Ballet.
Upon graduation, she was chosen to perform the Sugar Plum Fairy
in the New Castle Regional Ballet's The Nutcracker. Ms. Fitzpatrick
has been teaching for eight years. Her credentials include New
Castle Regional Ballet, Starlight Dance Studio in Scottsburg, IN,
and Director of the Harmony Elementary Dance Club in Goshen, KY.
Ms. Fitzpatrick is married with two children. She teaches ballet
in the Primary Division and in both the Youth and Adult Open Divisions.
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Loren Freed, originally from New York, teaches dance
and creative movement to individuals of all ages and experience.
She holds a Master’s degree in early childhood education
and certification as an elementary and K - 12 dance teacher. She
has worked as a teaching artist for school districts in four states
and also teaches yoga for children in schools and for community
organizations. Ms. Freed teaches ballet in the Primary Division
and Dance Access in the Youth Open Division.
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Valerie Hopkins is from Lawton, OK, and earned
her B.F.A. in ballet performance from the University of Oklahoma.
At OU, she performed roles in ballets such as Robert Joffrey’s
Pas de Deesses, James Clouser’s Carmina Burana and Balanchine’s
Serenade. Ms. Hopkins has danced lead roles in Ohio Dance Theatre’s
productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Nutcracker.
Ms. Hopkins spent the last two seasons as a trainee with the
Louisville Ballet where she had the pleasure of dancing in The
Three Musketeers, The Nutcracker, Gloria and Giselle. She joins
the Louisville Ballet School faculty this year and teaches in
the Primary Division.
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Jo Ann McDonald has a particular appreciation
for movement and fitness. Growing up as an overweight
child, she felt uncomfortable and embarrassed when
participating in
activities, and her sedentary lifestyle led to her
growing up to be a morbidly obese adult.
When Jo Ann hit her twenties, she became more aware
of the consequences associated with obesity, and decided
to make a change. Slowly, but surely, she began integrating
exercise
into her daily routine and made small changes in her
nutrition. As her health improved, she gained an amazing
level of energy
and wellbeing. She began to love all forms of exercise,
particularly Pilates. She appreciated how the focus
on alignment and control
helped correct the effects of long-term obesity on
her body.
In 2004, Jo Ann and her husband, James, moved to Louisville
to apprentice at Core Pilates in the East End. There,
she trained under teachers from many different backgrounds,
including master-level
instructor and Louisville Ballet faculty member, Montse
Cosin. Jo Ann is now a nationally certified instructor
and personal trainer as well. She works with clients
with all levels of fitness, helping sedentary adults
and children take the first
steps toward active lifestyles, training athletes,
old and young to utilize their core to increase their
performance, and dancers,
teaching them to increase mobility in necessary areas
and controlling mobility where they require stability.
Jo Ann joins the Louisville Ballet School faculty
this year and looks forward to helping the young
dancers develop good movement habits that will take them painlessly
through
their careers.
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Christy Corbitt Miller a native
of Atlanta, GA, is returning for her fifth season
as a first soloist with the
Louisville Ballet. Since joining the Louisville Ballet,
she has enjoyed dancing principal and soloist roles
in Who Cares?,
Agon, Lambarena, Serenade, Four Last Songs and Les
Sylphides. Previously, she danced with Altanta Ballet,
Ballet Memphis and,
most recently, Texas Ballet Theater, where she performed
title roles in Ben Stevenson’s Cinderella and Giselle. Ms. Miller
has also enjoyed performing more contemporary works like Paul
Taylor’s Company B, Stanton Welch’s Fingerprints
and Adam Hougland ’s
Devolve and Fragile Stasis.
Ms. Miller has taught at schools in Georgia and Texas including
the official school of Texas Ballet Theater. She joins the Louisville
Ballet School faculty this year and teaches ballet in the Intermediate
level.
Bill Ramser a Louisville native, has performed as
a dancer in over 30 musical stage productions such as Kiss Me Kate,
Carousel, Guys and Dolls, Pajama Game, and South Pacific. Mr. Ramser
was the lead dancer in the musical, Okalahoma, at the Cape Cod
Musical Tent.
Mr. Ramser studied in New York, Chicago and Louisville with
such notable teachers as Ernest Carlos, Edna McRay, Irma Flanedy
and Lilias Courtney. As a teacher for 25 years, Mr. Ramser
has shared his knowledge and love of dance with students throughout
Louisville and Southern Indiana. He teaches all levels of
tap dance.
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