Lisa Sanborn began her dance training in New Jersey at the Princeton Ballet School. After moving to Illinois, Ms. Sanborn trained at the Ruth Page Foundation in Chicago with Larry Long, Dolores Lipinski, and Warren Conover. Ms. Sanborn danced as a member of the Clinton Contemporary Ballet and Quad Cities Civic Ballet companies in Iowa, performed for several years in the Chicago Tribune Charities production of The Nutcracker at the Arie Crown Theater, and appeared with the Royal Danish Ballet at the Auditorium Theater in Napoli. Prior to her appointment as Artistic Director at New Haven Ballet in April 2014, Ms. Sanborn was a distinguished teacher at the Ballet, and during her tenure taught ballet technique, variations, and pointe to both children and adults. She also choreographed and staged several works for NHB. Her students have pursued professional careers in dance and been accepted into elite programs, including: School of American Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Miami City Ballet, the Rock School (Pennsylvania Ballet), Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet Academy, Joffrey Ballet, Boston Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet, and many others.
In addition to ballet, Ms. Sanborn is classically trained and certified in Pilates mat and all apparatus. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Skidmore College and a Juris Doctorate from Albany Law School of Union University. In 2015, Yale University appointed Ms. Sanborn an Associate Fellow of Pierson College. Ms. Sanborn also serves as a member of the Arts Industry Coalition and previously served on the Board of Directors for the Connecticut Dance Alliance.
Alisa Bowens is the Director of Alisa’s House of Salsa in New Haven, Connecticut. Ms. Bowens’s dancing journey began at the age of three at Gloria Jean’s Studio of Dance. She is a classically trained ballet, tap, and jazz dancer, who obtained her Dance Masters Of America (DMA), Professional Teaching Certificate. In 1998, she decided to take a Latin “Salsa” dance class and instantly was addicted to the music, movements, and spirit of Salsa dancing. In September of 2002, Ms. Bowens opened Alisa’s House of Salsa I, Studio Of Latin Dance, in New Haven, Connecticut. In the Winter of 2003, Alisa’s House Of Salsa II opened in Waterbury, Connecticut and in the summer of 2004, Alisa’s House Of Salsa III opened their doors in Hartford, Connecticut. Ms. Bowens has opened for Grammy-Award Winner Rueben Blades and performed as the lead Back-Up Dancer for M&M Recording Artist Hector-Bonet. She acted as lead Choreographer/Dancer/Performer with the Concert Tour of Morning, Noon, and Night, featuring A.W. Nardi. In addition, Ms. Bowens has opened for Jose Alberto “El Canario”, Huey Dunbar, Brenda K. Starr, Tito Nieves, Tiempo Libre, Eddie Palmieri, India (Salsa Palooza Tour), Spanish Harlem Orquestra, & Dee Dee Bridgewater, as well as performed as a dancer with Mi Cata (Afro-Latin Salsa band), Orquestra Espada and Marion Meadows, Jazz Saxophone player.
Emily Coates received the School of American Ballet Mae L. Wein Award for Outstanding Promise in 1992 and joined New York City Ballet that same year. After six years with NYCB, she transitioned into contemporary dance. At the invitation of Mikhail Baryshnikov, she joined White Oak Dance Project (1998 – 2002), and subsequently performed with Twyla Tharp Dance (2001 – 2003), and Yvonne Rainer (2005 – present). Performing career highlights include three duets with Baryshnikov: Mark Morris’ The Argument, in Karole Armitage’s The Last Lap, and Erick Hawkins’ Early Floating, principal roles in works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp, Lucinda Childs’ canonical solo Carnation, Yvonne Rainer’s 21st century creations, and Christopher Janney’s solo HeartBeat, originally performed by Sara Rudner and later Baryshnikov. In her own creations, she tries to integrate whenever possible movement research, choreography, and writing. Her research interests include the aesthetics and evolution of postmodern dance and intercultural collaboration, focusing on two distinct areas: contemporary American and African dance collaborations, and interdisciplinary arts and science research.
She has been a resident artist at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, where she was a Martha Duffy Memorial Fellow, Duo Multicultural Arts Center, and Jacob’s Pillow through its Creative Development Residency. Her recent projects include a multi-sited research project on intercultural collaboration undertaken with Lacina Coulibaly, an artist based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Their joint-creations include the development of a duet titled Ici Ou Ailleurs, performed in full or excerpted at Cornell, Harvard, Brown, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and in the Movement Research Fall Festival. Their second piece for a group of eight dancers, commissioned and performed by Ballet Memphis and titled Où Que Nous Soyons, premiered in Memphis , TN in February 2011. They are currently working on a third choreographic creation and a book project, developed in collaboration with scholar Brent Hayes Edwards. In the area of integrated arts and science research, she has collaborated with particle physicist Sarah Demers since 2011, first on a co-taught course at Yale titled The Physics of Dance, and now through co-authoring an interdisciplinary book on physics and dance based on the course, forthcoming from Yale University Press. Their project “Discovering the Higgs” was selected for the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s Reintegrate initiative in 2012-2013. Their related science-art video “Three Views of the Higgs and Dance” premiered online in December 2013. Her essays have appeared in Theater, PAJ, Huffington Post, and Transformations. With Joseph Roach, she is co-editor of Theater’s 2010 issue on postglobal dance. Between 2006 and 2012, she served as the artistic director of Professor Roach’s World Performance Project at Yale. She graduated magna cum laude with a BA in English from Yale ’06 and holds an MA in American Studies from Yale ’11. Currently, she is an assistant professor (adjunct) in Theater Studies and director of dance studies at Yale University, where she has directed the dance curriculum since its inception in 2006.
Jeremy Cox trained with New Haven Ballet for over 10 years and also at the School of American Ballet in New York City. Professionally, he danced with Miami City Ballet as a principal dancer for 10 years performing works by such notable choreographers as George Balanchine, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp. In 2010, Mr. Cox debuted on Broadway as “Marty” in Twyla Tharp’s Come Fly Away. Mr. Cox joined NHB’s faculty in 2015.
Jennifer Rockwell Edwards is an alumna of the Walnut Hill School for the Fine Arts in Natick, MA, where she studied dance performance, dance pedagogy and choreography. Ms. Rockwell danced with Rosella Hightower’s Jeune Ballet International in France, and then returned to the United States to perform as a principal guest artist with the Amherst Ballet and Pioneer Valley Ballet. In addition, Ms. Rockwell danced with the Twin Cities Metropolitan Ballet as well as Minnesota Dance Theater and, was eventually invited to join
the Saint Paul City Ballet Company as a principal artist in 2007. She graduated suma cum laude from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2004, where she earned a BFA in Dance and a BA in Psychology.
Lauded as “refreshingly original” by Alastair Macaulay of The New York Times, choreographer Miro Magloire is the founder and artistic director of New Chamber Ballet. Magloire has created over 60 ballets in his signature style for his company, all distinguished by sweeping elegance, a striking theatricality, and bold musical choices. “It’s heartening to see work so focused on the meeting of dance and music,” Macaulay wrote in his Times review, “always you’re aware of an intelligence at work that resists romantic cliché.”
Known for his visionary collaborations with musicians – singers, violinists, pianists and large ensembles – Magloire has a special affinity for cutting-edge contemporary music, which has led him to work with many of today’s leading composers. Magloire, the subject of a 2008 full-page profile in the Sunday NY Times, recently received an O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation Grant. His works have been performed at Joyce SoHo, the Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out Stage, Roulette, Ailey/Citigroup Theater, the Center for Performance Research and the Museum of Art and Design, among other venues. He has collaborated with the Argento Chamber Ensemble, Ensemble Moto Perpetuo, Ensemble Sospeso and, in addition, has created ballets for the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and the State Academy of Dance in Cologne, Germany.
Born in Munich, Germany, Magloire started his career as a composer. At age 17 he won the “Forum of Young Composers Award” in North Rhine-Westphalia, and went on to study with Mauricio Kagel at the Conservatory of Music in Cologne, Germany. After relocating to New York to study Modern Dance at the Ailey and Martha Graham Schools, where his teachers included Yung-Yung Tsuai and Kazuko Hirabayashi, and ballet with Wilhelm Burmann and Peff Modelski among others, he turned his attention to choreography and in 2004 founded New Chamber Ballet.
Marc Spielberger performed as a dancer with the State Opera in Berlin. He joined Miami City Ballet in 1999 and was promoted to Soloist in 2006. He has danced works by notable choreographers such as Balanchine, Robbins, Forsythe, Bejart, Petit, among others. Mr. Spielberger received the “Prix Nouveaux”award for choreography at the American Ballet competition.
Nazorine Ulysse was born in Port au Prince, Haiti, started studying dance at East Rock Middle School in New Haven and is a graduate of ECA. Ms. Ulysse studied with the Ririe Woodberry Dance Company in Utah and at the Martha Graham School in New York City. While in New York, she studied Hatha Yoga at the Open Center and worked with Douglas Dunn on his dance project to Europe. She received her B.F.A in Dance from the California Institute of the Arts and an M.F.A in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College. After spending several years in New York City dancing with Oliver Tarpage, choreographing, and teaching, she returned to New Haven where she founded her own company, Ulysse and Dancers. She’s worked with Yale faculty Lasso Coulibaly from Burkina Faso. Ms. Ulysse performed and worked with professor Jerry Gardner exploring Japanese Butoh and martial arts. She worked On Terra Trackus: The Earth Moves- as the head choreographer. At Educational Center for the Arts (ECA) she teaches modern dance technique, Choreography III, Contact Improvisation, Sites Specific, Yoga, faculty Repertory, directed the E.C.A Dance Repertory Company and advises Senior Projects in the spring. She’s a faculty member of the Center for Creative Youth (CCY) at Wesleyan University.
Hyung Ji (Heidi) Yu began her early ballet training in the Vagonova Method in Korea. As a dancer of the Korean Ballet Theatre, Ms. Yu performed roles in several classical ballets. She received her Masters of Fine Arts degree in dance from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where she focused on pedagogy and choreography. Ms. Yu has performed with the Roxey Contemporary Ballet Company and Albano Ballet Company, taught ballet and shown her choreography at festivals throughout New York. She holds a teaching certificate in the Vagonova Method. Ms. Yu is currently the Artistic Director of AS Arts NY and teaches ballet at the Broadway Dance Center in New York.
NHB is thrilled to announce that Stephen Hanna will perform as the Cavalier in our 2016 Nutcracker. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he trained under Roberto Munoz. He entered the School of American Ballet (SAB) where he then trained with his teachers Stanley Williams, Andre Kramervsky, and Richard Rapp. At SAB Mr. Hanna was awarded the Mae L. Wein Award for outstanding promise. Mr. Hanna became an apprentice with New York City Ballet in 1997, and later that year he joined the Company as a member of the corps de ballet. Mr. Hanna was promoted to the rank of soloist in February 2004, and in January 2005, he was promoted to principal dancer. He has performed Principal roles in Ballets by Peter Martins, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Richard Tanner, and Albert Evans.
