News & Events
Anna Fitch Ardenghi Trust Awards DanceAIR Grant
Artistic Director, Lisa Sanborn, is delighted to announce that the Anna Fitch Ardenghi Trust awarded a grant in the amount of $2,500 to New Haven Ballet. This grant was made to support the DanceAIR program. NHB is proud to provide professional classical ballet training to 2nd grade students in underserved New Haven Public Schools and award scholarships to students who participate in the program. For more information about DanceAIR please contact Children’s Division Director, Christopher DeNofrio, at DeNofrio@newhavenballet.org.
Jenna Lavin Crabtree Offers Master Classes
NHB is pleased to announce that Jenna Lavin (Crabtree) will offer master classes to NHB Level 5-8 students on September 26, 2016. Ms. Lavin is originally from Queens, New York. She began her ballet training with Mme. Gabriela Darvash and Jody Fugate. She later graduated from the School of American Ballet where she studied with such teachers as Alexandria Danilova, Antonia Tumkovsky and Stanley Williams. Ms. Lavin began her professional career at 17 when she was invited to join the Chicago City Ballet, under the direction of Maria Tallchief. Ms. Lavin also danced with the Atlanta Ballet directed by Robert Barnett, for seven years. Her principal and soloist roles with the Atlanta Ballet include: Balanchine’s Prodigal Son, The Four Temperaments, Serenade, Tarantella Pas de Deux, Minkus Pas a Trois as well as Le Corsaire Pas de Deux, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. Ms. Lavin was a principal dancer with the Nashville Ballet where she danced Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, the title role in Giselle, and principal roles in the company’s contemporary repertoire. Other professional affiliations include the Los Angelos Ballet, under the direction of John Clifford. Ms. Lavin spent eight summers as a member of the Chautauqua Ballet Company, under the direction of Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux where she performed principal roles in ballets by Balanchine, Bonnefoux and Clifford. she is a former soloist with Edward Villella’s Miami City Ballet where she danced principal roles in many ballets including Divertimento #15, Jewels, Pas de Dix, Raymonda Variations, Valse Fantasies, Western Symphony, Glinka Pas a Trois, The Nutcracker and Who Cares? Ms. Lavin has worked with numerous choreographers, creating principal roles in ballets by Alonzo King, Lisa de Ribere and Stanton Welch to name a few. In the summer of 2003, Ms. Lavin performed in Casablanca, a collaboration between Warner Bros. and John Clifford’s Los Angelos Dance Theater.
Ms. Lavin has been teaching ballet to young dancers throughout her career beginning in Chicago when she was 17. She has taught master classes in Atlanta, Michigan, and for the Nashville Ballet School. Ms. Lavin has been on faculty at Ballet Academy East since 2003 where she teaches and choreographs for the Pre-Professional Program. She is married to Cornel Crabtree. They are the proud parents of Sky, 7, Grayson, 3, and Cooper, born April, 2012.
NHB Open House
New Haven Ballet will hold an Open House on Saturday, September 10, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Meet Artistic Director, Lisa Sanborn, Children’s Division Director, Christopher DeNofrio, and the professional NHB faculty.
The Branford studio is NHB’s home on the Shoreline. Located at 9 Business Park Drive, right off exit 56 of I-95, the Branford location features two large dance studios with sprung wood floors, marley surfaces for pointe work, natural light, and ample parking. Artistic Director Lisa Sanborn notes enthusiastically that the state-of-the-art studio enables NHB to better serve both New Haven and Shoreline students. She invites all interested members of the public to stop by to tour the spacious studios and learn more about NHB’s programs. Registration for fall classes is now open. For more information, please call the NHB office at 203-782-9038.
NHB is a 501(c)(3) non-profit community based classical ballet school providing ballet instruction to students aged 3 years – adult. In 2015, NHB’s Company was voted “Best Dance Company” and “Best Arts Organization” by New Haven’s CTNow Readers Poll. NHB presents its annual production of The Nutcracker at the Shubert Theater, which exclusively features NHB students. NHB’s Company performs throughout the region at local festivals and schools. NHB offers both needs based and merit scholarships and its outreach programs include, “DanceAIR,” affording classical ballet training and scholarships to underserved students, and “Shared Ability,” which provides dance training and performance opportunities to differently abled students. NHB is thrilled to offer its professional classical ballet programming to Branford and acknowledges the generosity of its devoted patrons and corporate as well as foundational support, including Carolyn Foundation, City of New Haven Arts, Culture & Tourism, Department of Economic and Community Development, Ethel & Abe Lapides Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, NewAlliance Foundation, The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, and Withers Bergman LLP. Photo: Thomas Giroir Photography © 2016.
Christopher DeNofrio Appointed Children’s Division Director
Artistic Director, Lisa Sanborn, is pleased to announce Christopher DeNofrio, a distinguished teacher and dancer, has been appointed Children’s Division Director of New Haven Ballet.
Mr. DeNofrio holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance from the Boston Conservatory of Music. A native New Englander, Mr. DeNofrio began his training on Cape Cod with Klara Koenig and studied with Edward Villella before continuing his training in Boston. In 1993, Mr. DeNofrio was given an apprenticeship with George Verdak’s Indianapolis Ballet Theatre where he had the opportunity to work with former Kirov stars, Irina Kolpakova and Vladien Seminov. He also performed the principal role in David Hochoy’s the “Farewell” at IBT’s 20th Anniversary Gala.
Mr. DeNofrio returned to the Northeast and danced with the Albany Berkshire Ballet. His roles included Benvolio in Francis Patrelle’s “Romeo and Juliet” and the Cavalier in Madelline Cantarello Culpo’s “The Nutcracker”. He joined Jose Mateo’s Ballet Theatre in 1994 and danced original works by Jose Mateo while touring New England. He danced featured roles in Jose Mateo’s “Isle of the Dead” and “Schubert Adagio” at the Lincoln Center “Out of Doors” festival.
While in Boston, Mr. DeNofrio performed the principal role in George Balanchine’s “Valse Fantasie” and the “Balcony Pas de Deux” from Romeo and Juliet under the direction of James Reardon with Boston Dance Company. In 1997, Mr. DeNofrio danced in Boston Ballet’s “Le Corsaire”, “Swan Lake” and Michael Corder’s “Cinderella”. In 1998, he joined the Louisville Ballet as a soloist. He performed original works by Alun Jones, Dale Brannon, Paul Taylor and David Parsons.
Mr. DeNofrio was appointed Associate Director of Louisville Ballet School in 1999 and became a member of SERBA, the Southeast Regional Ballet Association. In 2002, Mr. DeNofrio moved to Vancouver, Canada where he joined the British Columbia chapter of the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists, The Vancouver International Dance Festival and Kokoro Dance. He is certified in Primary through Level 3 of the ABT National Training Curriculum. Mr. DeNofrio joined New Haven Ballet in 2014 and is excited to begin working with families and students in his new position teaching in both New Haven and Branford, where he will be focusing much of his attention.
NHB Announces July 2016 Faculty
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.
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.
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.
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.
For more information about NHB Faculty: https://newhavenballet.org/faculty/
Congratulations Seniors
NHB wishes to congratulate our 2016 Seniors. We will miss you and wish you all the very best as you embark on your life’s journey!
Master Class with Alejandra Iannone
NHB is thrilled to announce that NHB alum, Alejandra Iannone, will return to NHB to teach master classes to June Session Level 4-8 Students on Friday, June 3, 2016.
About Alejandra Iannone
Alejandra Iannone (NHB Alumna, 2004) is as an interdisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of art and the humanities. After receiving a B.F.A. cum laude in Dance from Fordham University/The Ailey School, Alejandra went on to earn an M.A. in Philosophy from Temple University, where her research focused on Aesthetics, Philosophy of Dance, and Philosophy of Mind. She is also a graduate of Temple University’s Teaching in Higher Education Certification Program, an American Ballet Theater® Affiliate Teacher, an alumna of the Leap n’ Learn certification program, and Balanced Body® Pilates Instructor.
Like her educational background, Alejandra’s professional pursuits have been wide in scope. Over the last decade, Alejandra has had the honor of performing and presenting choreography at venues throughout the United States and abroad, including the Josie Robertson Plaza at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Jacob’s Pillow, the Ailey Citigroup Theater, and the Versace Mansion. She was a featured performer in The Ride (a New York Drama Desk Award Nominee for Unique Theatrical Experience), and has danced in works by Sidra Bell, Christopher Huggins, Take Ueyama, Alvin Ailey, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Donna Salgado and Penelope Freeh.
Her writings on philosophy and art have been distributed through scholarly and popular channels, including the International Journal of Technoethics, DIYdancer, and the American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-journal. Alejandra has been an invited speaker on art, culture, and technology at Columbia University-Teachers College, Central Connecticut State University Philosophy Circle, and during proceedings of the New York City Council’s Committee of Cultural Affairs.
She has also had the pleasure of working as an educator in both arts and humanities contexts. Since 2014, she has served as Coordinator of the Young Children’s Division at Minnesota Dance Theatre & School. Before joining the MDT team, Alejandra was a long-time member of the ballet faculty at The Ailey School and an adjunct member of the philosophy departments at Fordham University, Temple University and the City College of New York.
In 2015, Alejandra co-founded Sparkle Theatricals, a Minneapolis-based performance group whose productions celebrate curiosity and inspire laughter.
