Master Class Teachers

As part of our mission in providing the surrounding area with a ballet training conservatory of the highest international standards, the Maple Conservatory is pleased to offer a series of Master Classes that are open to the dance community.

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The following is our growing list of Master Class teachers:

• Leslie Browne, Former Principal Dancer, American Ballet Theatre
• Arturo Fernandez, Ballet Master, Alonzo King's LINES Ballet, San Francisco
• Susan Jaffe, Former Principal Dancer, American Ballet Theatre
• Susan Jones, Ballet Mistress, American Ballet Theatre
• Alonzo King, Artistic Director, Alonzo King's LINES Ballet, San Francisco
• Nancy Raffa, Ballet Mistress, American Ballet Theatre
• Summer Lee Rhatigan, Director, San Francisco Conservatory of Dance
• John Selya, Award-Winning Broadway Dancer in Movin' Out and Times They Are A-Changin'
• Rochelle Zide-Booth, Former Soloist, Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo and Former Principal Dancer, The Joffrey Ballet

Leslie Browne

Former Principal Dancer, American Ballet Theatre

Master Class:
Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 10am-12 Noon
Open to intermediate/advanced & advanced dancers ages 14+

Leslie Browne is one of ballet's most celebrated ballerinas, having danced with New York City Ballet and as a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre.

Ms. Browne was born in New York and raised in Phoenix where she received her early ballet training at the Phoenix School of Ballet. She continued her training at the School of American Ballet at the age of 16.

She first danced with New York City Ballet and then joined American Ballet Theatre as a soloist in 1976; she was appointed as principal dancer ten years later. While dancing for ABT she received critical acclaim for her performances in classical roles such as Gamzatti in Natalia Makarova's La Bayadere, as Juliet in the company premiere of Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo & Juliet, as Kitri in Mikhail Baryshnikov's Don Quixote and as Clara in his production of The Nutcracker to name but a few. She also danced principal roles in contemporary works such as Twyla Tharp's Push Comes to Shove, Anthony Tudor's Jardin aux Lilas and Pillar of Fire and George Balanchine's La Sonnambula, Who Cares and Stravinsky Violin Concerto.

Ms. Browne has had a successful film, TV and Broadway career appearing in Herbert Ross' The Turning Point with Mikhail Baryshnikov for which she won an Academy nomination for Best Supporting Actress and his film Nijinsky in which she played Romola Nijinsky. She guest-starred on the classic television series Happy Days and on Broadway as Irina in the musical Red Shoes. In 1997 Ms. Browne was the recipient of the New York City Dance Alliance's Distinguished Achievement Award.

Ms. Browne is on the faculty of Steps on Broadway in New York City, the ABT Summer Intensive Program and enjoys guest teaching master classes in New York and around the world.

Arturo Fernandez

Ballet Master, Alonzo King's LINES Ballet, San Francisco

Master Class:
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Intermediate-Advanced Class (ages 12+) 11:30am-1:30pm

A native of Oakland, California, Arturo began dance training at the School of Performing Arts in San Diego. He joined the San Diego Ballet in 1978, and performed with the California, Arizona, Sacramento and New Jersey Ballets as well as Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo and Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. In 1981, Arturo joined modern dance company ODC/San Francisco, and served as the assistant to the choreographers from 1988 until spring 1991. Arturo has choreographed for the James Sewell Ballet, Inland Pacific Ballet and LINES Ballet, and has also demonstrated his work in self-produced concerts throughout the region. Since 1992, he has been the Ballet Master for LINES Ballet, assisting Alonzo King in the creation of new work.

Since 1998 he has coordinated and taught in Alonzo King's Professional Summer Intensive. In 2001 he directed the first summer Pre-Professional Program at LINES. For more than a decade he has been an integral part of the faculty of the San Francisco Dance Center. He has set ballets by Alonzo King on companies and universities throughout the U.S. including NYU, Washington University in St. Louis and the Florida State University, Most notably, in August of 2006 he set Handel, choreographed by Alonzo King, on the Royal Swedish Ballet in Stockholm.

Susan Jaffe

Former Princpal Dancer, American Ballet Theatre

Master Class:
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Intermediate Level Class (ages 10+) 1-3pm
Advanced Level Class (ages 14+) 3:30-5:30pm

Recognized as one of the leading ballerinas of her time, Ms. Jaffe has performed in many Opera houses throughout the United States and Europe. She joined American Ballet Theatre in 1980 at the invitation of Mikhail Baryshnikov and became well known in the dance world at a young age. She has received critical praise for her interpretations of such roles as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Kitri in Don Quixote, Nikiya and Gamzatti in La Bayadere, Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Swanhilda in Coppelia and the title roles in Manon, Giselle, and La Sylphide.

Ms. Jaffe has worked with and performed the repertoire of many of the twentieth century's most prominent choreographers including George Balanchine, Anthony Tudor, Kenneth MacMillan, Jerome Robbins, Roland Petit, Twyla Tharp, Jiri Kiyan, and James Kudelka.

Ms. Jaffe's European engagements have included performances with The Royal Ballet, The Kirov Ballet, The Stuttgart Ballet, The Munich State Opera Ballet, La Scala Ballet, The Vienna State Opera Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet, The Royal Swedish Ballet and The English National Ballet. Television appearances have included several "Dance in America" programs and host of "Dance New York." Film credits include 1994's "Angie" with Geena Davis and the 1995 documentary "Ballet" directed by Frederick Wiseman.

Ms. Jaffe has served as advisor to the chairman and president of the Board of Governing Trustees at American Ballet Theater. She gives master classes throughout the U.S. and Japan and she has recently received the Annual Dance Magazine Award. Ms. Jaffe is currently director of the Princeton Dance & Theatre Studio in Princeton, New Jersey.

Susan Jones

Ballet Mistress, American Ballet Theatre

Master Class:
Saturday, July 14, 2007 at 2pm-4pm

© American Ballet TheatreSusan Jones was born in York, Pennsylvania and began her early dance training there. She continued her studies with Lucille Hood at the Rockville School of Ballet, Rockville, Maryland, and with Mary Day at the Washington School of Ballet in Washington, D.C.

In 1969, she accepted an apprenticeship with the Joffrey Ballet, dancing with the original Joffrey II, and made her professional debut with the New York City Opera, Robert Joffrey, choreographic director.

Miss Jones joined American Ballet Theatre in 1971 and danced with the Company for eight successive seasons. Among her roles were the Cowgirl in Rodeo and Lizzie Bordon as a child in Fall River Legend. Her transition from dancing to staff began in 1976 when she assisted Twyla Tharp with Push Comes to Shove. She was appointed Assistant Ballet Mistress in 1978. Retiring as a dancer at the close of the 1979/80 season, she was appointed Ballet Mistress in the Spring of 1980 and Regisseur in 1982.

Miss Jones has returned to ABT after a three-year absence during which she mounted Natalia Makarova's full-length La Bayadère for the Ballet del Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Mikhail Barysnikov's production of Don Quixote (Kitri's Wedding) for The Royal Ballet.

Alonzo King

Artistic Director, Alonzo King's LINES Ballet, San Francisco

Master Class:
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Advanced Class (ages 15+) 11:30am-1:30pm

Alonzo King, Choreographer and Artistic Director of LINES Ballet, has works in the repertories of companies throughout the world including Frankfurt Ballet, The Joffrey Ballet, Dance Theater of Harlem, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Hong Kong Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, and The Washington Ballet. He has worked extensively in opera, television, and film and has choreographed works for prima ballerina Natalia Makarova and film star Patrick Swayze. Mr. King has also collaborated with artists such as actor Danny Glover, legendary jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and tabla master Zakir Hussain. Renowned for his skill as a teacher, Mr. King has been the guest ballet master for National Ballet of Canada, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, San Francisco Ballet, Ballet Rambert, Ballet West and others.

In 1982, Mr. King founded Alonzo King's LINES Ballet, which has developed into an international touring company. Seven years later, he inaugurated the San Francisco Dance Center, which has grown into one of the largest dance facilities on the West Coast. In 2001, Alonzo King started the LINES Ballet School and Pre-Professional Program to nurture and develop the talents of young dancers. Expanding the scope of his educational visions to the college level this year, Alonzo King and LINES Ballet have embarked on a partnership with the Dominican University of California, creating the West Coast’s first BFA program in Dance. It is the only joint BFA program in the country to be led by a living master choreographer.

In December 2006, Alonzo King was recognized as one of the fifty outstanding artists in America by the United States Artists organization. In the first year that these awards have been given, Alonzo King is one of only four Fellows in Dance, and the only Dance artist outside of New York to be honored by the USA Fellowship. The Fellowship is the second major national award Alonzo King has received in the past two years—in 2005, he won the Bessie Award for Choreographer/ Creator—and one of many such honors he has received over the course of his career. He is also the recipient of the NEA Choreographer's Fellowship, Irvine Fellowship in Dance, National Dance Project and the National Dance Residency Program, as well as five Isadora Duncan Awards. He has also received the Hero Award from Union Bank, the Lehman Award, and the Excellence Award from KGO in San Francisco.

Alonzo King has served on panels for the National Endowment of the Arts, California Arts Council, City of Columbus Arts Council and Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Arts Partners Program. In 2005 he was named a Master of African-American Choreography by the Kennedy Center. He is a former commissioner for the city and county of San Francisco, and a writer and lecturer on the art of dance; his contributions appear in the books Masters of Movement: Portraits of American Choreographers and in Dance Masters: Interviews with Legends of Dance. In 2005 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate by Dominican University of California, and the following year was given the Green Honors Chair Professorship from Texas Christian University. This spring, he received a second honorary Doctorate from his alma mater, CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles. He was just awarded the 2007 Community Leadership Award from the San Francisco Foundation.

Nancy Raffa

Ballet Mistress, American Ballet Theatre

Master Class:
Wednesday, April 2, 2008, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Open to advanced dancers ages 15+

Nancy Raffa, Ballet Mistress of American Ballet Theatre and former director of American Ballet Theatre's Summer Intensives, was the youngest and first American female to win the Gold Medal at the Prix de Lausanne International Ballet Competition in Switzerland in 1980. She joined the corps de ballet of ABT in 1981 and danced with the Company for four years.

Ms. Raffa joined Ballet de Santiago in 1985 as a principal dancer and was also a principal dancer at Ballet National Française de Nancy. In 1992, she became a principal dancer with Miami City Ballet.

Ms. Raffa began her teaching career in Miami and, in 1994, joined the staff of the Miami City Ballet School, becoming the coordinator for the school's summer intensive program and Ballet for Young People program. She was twice awarded a special teacher's recognition from the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts and won a grant from the United States Information Services to act as a cultural ambassador and teacher for the company and school in Honduras.

Ms. Raffa holds an Ace certification in exercise physiology and graduated magna cum laude in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in Psychology from St. Thomas University.

Ms. Raffa was appointed Ballet Mistress of American Ballet Theatre in June 2007.

Summer Lee Rhatigan

Director, San Francisco Conservatory of Dance

Master Class:
Saturday, January 12, 2008
10am-12 Noon
Conservatory Level B3-B1 Students only

Throughout a professional dance career which spanned more than twenty years, Summer Lee Rhatigan took advantage of every opportunity to develop and refine her teaching skills. She has taught virtually every level of student in settings as diverse as dance schools, universities, and professional dance companies.

Before launching the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, Ms. Rhatigan founded and spent three years developing the LINES Ballet School & Pre-Professional Program, which became nationally recognized, attracting highly talented young dancers from around the United States.

During her dance career, Ms. Rhatigan was a soloist and principal dancer with London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet), Oakland Ballet, National Ballet of Canada and LINES Ballet, as well as a guest artist with other dance and opera companies internationally.

She received her early training at the Royal Ballet School in London, where she was the recipient of the Kenneth MacMillan Award for Choreography and was the youngest winner of the Adeline Genée Gold Medal.

While she was dancing, Ms. Rhatigan had the privilege of working with many choreographers of distinction on the creation of new and existing works. Among these were Rudolf Nureyev, Agnes de Mille, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Léonide Massine, Sir Frederick Ashton, Robert North, Nicholas (Papa) Beriosov, Ruthanna Boris, John Butler, Mary Skeaping, Anna Sokolow, Ben Stevenson, Glen Tetley, Anthony Tudor, Tandy Beal, Ronald Hynd, Bronislava Nijinska, Michael Clark, John Hart, Matthew Hawkins, Barry Moreland, Dame Marie Rambert, Beryl Grey, John Field, Eugene Loring, Michael Corder and David Allan, as well as Bay Area choreographers Alonzo King, Michael Smuin, Ronn Guidi, Val Caniparoli, Carlos Carvajal, Betsy Erickson, Julia Adam, Lawrence Pech, Robert Moses, John Pasqualetti, Ron Thiele, Kirk Peterson, Tomi Paasonen, Alex Ketley, Christian Burns, Arturo Fernandez and Stephen Pelton.

Her classical repertoire included principal roles in Swan Lake, Giselle, Coppelia, Romeo and Juliet, Don Quixote, La Sylphide, Les Sylphides, The Sleeping Beauty, The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

John Selya

Award-Winning Broadway Dancer in Movin' Out and Times They Are A-Changin'

Master Class:
Sunday, July 15, 2007 at 11:30am-1:30pm

John Selya is a professional dancer on Broadway where he stars in The Times They Are A-Changin' (2006). He played the character Eddie in the show Movin' Out for which he received the 2003 Tony and Drama Desk nominations for Best Male Dancer and a lead actor in a musical and won the 2003 TDF/Astaire Award for Best Male Dancer in a Musical, and the Theater World Award for his performance in Movin' Out.

Born in New York City to parents who supported his yen to dance, Selya was accepted, at age ten, into the School of American Ballet. When he was 14, his family relocated to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he took up with a rough crowd and learned a new bag of tricks — break dancing — that were later tapped by Twyla Tharp for Movin' Out. Two years later the family returned to Manhattan, and Selya picked up his ballet training at SAB with Richard Rapp, Andre Kramarevsky, and Stanley Williams.

In 1988 Mikhail Baryshnikov, then artistic director of American Ballet Theatre, hired Selya, and it was there that Tharp began casting him in her ballets. He says he feels fortunate to have been exposed to ABT's diverse repertory; he learned acting skills in character roles such as Dr. Coppelius in Coppelia, Gamache in Don Quixote, and the Head Fakir in La Bayadere. He was also given the opportunity to choreograph, and produced two works that premiered during ABT's season at City Center.

For the 2000 American Dance Festival held in Durham, North Carolina, Tharp choreographed one of her most successful and devilishly demanding ballets, Surfer At the River Styx. In the dual leads she cast Keith Roberts and Selya, an avid surfer whose sport inspired some of Tharp's moves. Touring Surfer for more than a year built up Selya's stamina, and conditioned him for what was to come.

In a recent phone interview, she effused about Selya. "John is one of the most talented dancers of his generation," says Tharp. She saw Selya's potential in Surfer, and lit a fire under him when she created Eddie. She says, "I could not have done Eddie without Surfer. John's physicality inspired the moves. He has a great sense of metaphor in what he does and who he is, and he makes these connections as Eddie."

Rochelle Zide-Booth

Former Soloist, Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo and Former Principal Dancer, The Joffrey Ballet

Master Class:
Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 6:30pm-8:00pm
Open to intermediate-level dancers ages 10-13

Ms. Zide-Booth began her performing career in 1954 as a soloist with the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo and continued as Principal Dancer of The Joffrey Ballet and Prima Ballerina of the New York City Opera Ballet. In 1965, she began her teaching career as Ballet Mistress of the Joffrey Ballet and, in 1973, she accepted the position of Artistic Director of the Netherlands Dance Theater. She has also served as head of the ballet program at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and Director of the Dance Program at Adelphi University.

Ms. Zide-Booth is a nine-time adjudicator for the National Association of Regional Ballet, including the first National Festival at the Jackson International Ballet Competition, and is a certified re-constructor for the Dance Notation Bureau. In these capacities, Ms. Zide-Booth has worked with choreographers such as Arpino, Balanchine, Joffrey, Kylian, van Manen, Robbins, Tetley, Tudor, and Walker.

While simultaneously a full professor at Adelphi University and a faculty member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Ms. Zide-Booth continued choreographing and staging ballets for professional and regional dance companies throughout the world, as well as doing teaching residencies in pedagogy, choreography, technique, and repertory in such places as South Korea, Israel, the Philippines, Hungary, Austria, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Norway. In the fall of 1991, Ms. Zide-Booth was a Fulbright Lecturer, the first American pedagogue invited to teach classical ballet at the Prague Conservatory of Dance and the Ballet of the National Theatre. Ms. Zide-Booth remained in the Czech Republic conducting master classes at the Academy of Musical Arts in Prague, the Brno Ballet, and the Brno Dance Conservatory. She was also Artist in Residence at the Ballet of The National Theater in Prague, where she staged her ballet A Family Affair.

In August of 1993, Ms. Zide-Booth was chosen from an international search to be director of the New Zealand School of Dance, and, in 1997, joined the faculty of Butler University’s Jordan College of Fine Arts dance department as Associate Professor.

Ms. Zide-Booth is listed in 2,000 Notable American Women, Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in Entertainment, The International Who’s Who of Professional and Business Women, Personalities of America, and Who’s Who in the East, and has received citations for her work in South Korea and the Czech Republic.