Mira Cook is the founder and director of NY Community Ballet. Originally from Austin, TX, she has been a dancer with Battery Dance, Indelible Dance, John Passafiume and Dancers, Liss Fain Dance SF, & City Ballet of San Diego and has taught dance in more than 40 countries world wide. She is featured in the documentary “Moving Stories” which won best doc at Chesapeake Film Festival and is currently streaming on Amazon. Mira also choreographs, is a fully certified Pilates Instructor and writes music. Her 6th album was released in 2024. Check it out at miracook.com
Mira’s class focuses on body alignment, musicality and ease of movement, pairing rigorous combinations with generous use of breath and individual interpretation.
Billy Blanken started his professional career with the Amy Marshall Dance Company before joining Les Ballets Grandiva. His credits include: Mobile Ballet, CoDa 21 of San Juan, Catherine Gallant Dance, Atlantic City Ballet, Northwest Florida Ballet, Ajkun Ballet Theatre, isadoraNOW, Project in Motion, and many others. In 2016 he founded Sheep Meadow Dance Theatre for which he is Artistic Director.
Billy has taught at Peridance, the Jakarta Intercultural School, the Rioult Dance Center, the National School in Tirana, Albania, Gibney Dance, Logrea Dance Academy, and others.
Blanken uses a mindful approach to ballet technique with a focus on body awareness, kinesthetic learning, musicality and movement dynamics. He nurtures specific ballet qualities including classicism, aplomb, and use of epaulement to create resilience suitable for recreational to professional dancers. The class is thorough but uncomplicated with emphasis on creating efficient movement patterns.
Gabrielle Lamb, winner of a Princess Grace Award for Choreography, is based in NYC, where she directs Pigeonwing Dance. A native of Savannah, GA, she trained at the Boston Ballet School and was a longtime soloist at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal. In 2009 she was invited by Christopher Wheeldon to join his company Morphoses in NYC. DANCE Magazine described her as “a dancer of stunning clarity who illuminates the smallest details—qualities she brings to the dances she makes, too".
Her choreography has been presented by the ABT Incubator, The Juilliard School, the MIT Museum, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Whim W'Him, BalletX, Sacramento Ballet, Ballet Austin, and Ballet Memphis. She has won fellowships and competitions at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Milwaukee Ballet, the Banff Centre, and NY City Center, as well as a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Gabrielle is on faculty at the Joffrey Ballet School and Peridance Center, and she is also a certified teacher of Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement®.
Gabrielle's ballet class emphasizes coordination of the upper and lower body as the basis for holistic and connected movement. From the beginning of the barre, rhythm and alignment create the base for healthy and efficient center work. Dancers are challenged to make interpretive choices regarding musicality, phrasing, and focus.
Sabrina Pretto is originally from Vicenza, Italy and started her dance training at the Acadèmie de Danse Classique Princesse Grace de Monte Carlo with Marika Besobrasova. Sabrina went on to dance with English National Ballet, Stadt Theater Koblenz in Germany, Les Ballets Grandiva (NYC) and spent 8 years with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. She currently performs with Sheep Meadow Dance Theater and is a level 3 ABT® Certified Teacher.
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Sabrina's class focuses on slowly building strength and stamina, with a special attention to coordination and musicality.
The succession of exercises with strongly articulated ballet vocabulary and precision of footwork is characteristic of the French style. Center work focuses on fluid and organic movement.
Tiffany Mangulabnan is New York-based dancer and choreographer. Originally from Manila, she was a principal dancer with the Philippine Ballet Theatre until 2012. Tiffany is a co-founder, co-director and dancer of Brooklyn-based contemporary ballet company konverjdans. She performs with Pigeonwing Dance, Gleich Dances, Indelible Dance, John Passafiume and The Metropolitan Opera and has performed with Emery LeCrone Dance, Claudia Schreier & Co, and BalletNext among other companies.
Tiffany's ballet class, while technical and challenging, places a strong emphasis on the full breadth and extension of movement, on freedom of expression within the confines of technique, and on thoughtful form, placement and alignment as a necessary foundation for movement.
Amy Saunder is a Brooklyn-based dancer, choreographer, and videographer who was born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. She studied classical ballet at Baltimore School for the Arts and at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts under the tutelage of Ethan Stiefel. Amy began her professional career with The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, where she performed at The Kennedy Center in numerous George Balanchine works such as Valse Fantaisie, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, Dances Concertantes, Divertimento no. 15, and Episodes. In 2014 she moved to New York City and since then she has freelanced with companies such as BalletNext, Indelible Dance, Traverse City Dance Project, MorDance, Movement Headquarters, Gleich Dances, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, and Ballet Vero Beach, and has performed in the works of Brendan Fernandes in The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Noguchi Museum. In 2016, alongside Tiffany Mangulabnan and Jordan Miller, Amy co-created konverjdans (con-verge-dance), a contemporary dance company focused on collaborative creation.
Amy aims to teach a fun ballet class focusing on breath, spine mobility, and expansive movement.
Michelle Thompson Ulerich is currently a professor at SUNY Purchase. Michelle was the Artistic Director of New York based Spark Movement Collective from April 2020-March 2024. Michelle grew this company for the past 4 years and has been awarded grants by The Flushing Town Hall for programming for children and The Queens Council on the Arts for her work Armenian Voices.She received her training from San Francisco Ballet, and danced for 14 years with Ballet Austin. She performed in works by Balanchine, Twyla Tharp, Ulysses Dove, Stephen Mills, Sidra Bell, Greg Dolbashian, Nelly Van Bommel, Amy Seiwert, James Gregg, Gina Patterson, Thang Dao, and more. Also during her time in Texas she earned her undergraduate degree from St. Edward’s University, and began her choreographic career with an emphasis on site specific and immersive dance experiences. She is a freelance choreographer in New York, and has recently shown work at Mark O’Donnell Theater, Green Space, Dixon Place, and Art On Site. She has recently been commissioned by NuVu Festival, CreateArt, Kingsland Wildflower Festival, SUNY Purchase, and Pegasus Contemporary Ballet. Michelle has worked closely with Grammy award winning musician Johnny Butler and creative partner Caleb Patterson on projects performed at The Visionary, Mercury Lounge, Ace Hotel in Brooklyn, C'mon Everybody, and the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY. She was chosen as the Women’s Choreography Project winner in 2017 by Avant Chamber Ballet in Dallas and was featured in Dance Magazine. Michelle’s Illusory Impressions collaboration and co-directorship with composer Catherine Davis was given an award by the Austin Critics’ Table for excellence in a Site-Specific work. She also creates for film and music video projects. She also teaches yoga, and is a mother of two.
IG @michelle_thompson_ulerich
Michelle’s class focuses on technique, musicality, coordination, and artistry. The combinations at the barre help to prepare dancers for a technical and fun center with epic adagios, sweeping turns across the floor, and vibrant jumps. Michelle aims to encourage and coach all dancers who step into her classroom and to create an environment where everyone feels welcome. She hopes dancers walk away from her class with a renewed sense of joy and love for ballet.
With a professional performing career spanning two decades, Robin Cantrell has worked with numerous dance companies including City Ballet of San Diego, Rioult, Rebecca Kelly Ballet, and, most notably, as a member of Battery Dance for 12 years. With Battery, Robin performed, taught, and presented her own choreography in over 60 countries. She is the subject of the award-winning documentary Moving Stories, about the company’s cultural diplomacy work, and most recently led a successful teacher training pilot program at Vassar College for the past two years.
Robin currently dances for Gabrielle Lamb’s PigeonWing Dance and is the Artistic Director of Indelible Dance: a Brooklyn-based dance company that creates otherworldly dance films and presents multimedia immersive dance events.
Her most recent dance films, ODYSSEY, and TRIPTYCH, have garnered numerous awards and accolades, including Best Screendance of the Year at the 2022 Independent Shorts Awards.
Robin recently co-founded Constant John Productions with her creative partner Alexis Gideon. The company creates dynamic films that tell their stories entirely through dance and music. Their fist film, Flatland No. 1 was completed last year.
Robin Cantrell is a native of St. Paul Minnesota and received her BFA in ballet performance at the University of Utah as a Willem F. Christensen scholarship recipient.
She loves her bird very much and continues to expand her mindfulness practice.
Robin's class focuses on the love of dance, self acceptance, joy, and playful expansive movement
JoVonna Parks is an NYC based freelance dancer, teacher and choreographer currently performing with Clymove and Konverjdans. She has been a guest artist with Ballet Vero Beach and a member of Elisa Monte Dance. Her own creations have been performed at Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company, as well as the all female collaborative choreography festival CounterPointe in 2019, 2022 and 2023. JoVonna recently made an appearance in Season 2 of HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness.
JoVonna’s class focuses on efficiency and alignment and is technically challenging but still leaves room for experimentation with musicality and artistry.
Allegra Herman is a native New Yorker and a Bessie Award-winning dancer based in Brooklyn. She trained at Manhattan Youth Ballet and the School of American Ballet, performing in numerous productions with New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. She furthered her contemporary training at prestigious programs including the Nederlands Dans Theater Summer Intensive, Springboard Danse Montréal, and b12 Berlin. Currently, Allegra is a member of Gabrielle Lamb’s Pigeonwing Dance and Trainor Dance. She has also performed with The Metropolitan Opera, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, and the Little Orchestra Society. From 2018–2019, she toured nationally with Barlett Sher’s Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, choreographed by Hofesh Shechter.
Allegra's ballet class emphasizes dynamic musicality and artistic expression. Contrasting precision and technicality, informed by her Balanchine training, with fluid, sweeping movements inspired by her contemporary background, Allegra works hard to ensure that her barre combinations prepare dancers to approach center with both confidence and abandon.
