Born in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. Susan Dromisky is a graduate of The National Ballet School of Canada. She began her professional career with the National Ballet of Canada and became a soloist in 1985. Ms. Dromisky was also a soloist with The English National Ballet in London in 1985 – 1986. Some of her leading roles included Sugar Plum and Snow Queen in The Nutcracker. Swahilda in Erik Bruhn’s Coppelia. Teresina in Peter Schaufuss’ Napoli and Olga in John Cranko’s Onegin.
Ms. Dromisky has worked directly with Rudolph Nureyev, Erik Bruhn, Sir Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, James Kudelka, Peter Schaufuss, Glen Tetley, Natalia Makarova, Gelsey Kirkland, Brian MacDonald, David Allen, John Alleyne, Laura Alonzo, Michael Clark and John McFall.
Ms. Dromisky was a recipient of the Peter Dwyer Scholarship for High Excellence in Dance in 1978. She was also awarded a Canada Council Grant for the Arts in 1979. Upon retiring from the stage, she was a full-time artistic faculty member with the National Ballet School of Canada before coming to BalletMet in 1998. Ms. Dromisky was Director of the Trainee Program and the Senior Performance Ensemble before being named Rehearsal Director in 2014. She will have been with BalletMet for 25 years before joining NABC in July.
Jessica began her dance education in Florida with both Joan Miller’s Palm Beach Ballet Center and Miami City Ballet. After attending the pre professional program at BalletMet Columbus she
began teaching in their academy. Miss Jessica has taught for 15years in both Gahanna and Lewis Center, focusing on early childhood dance education. Her love of preschoolers and having a little dancer of her own then led to the exploration of Mommy and me classes. She’s very excited to bring this program to NABC.
Sarah Webb, a Columbus native, received her training and graduated from BalletMet and went onto dance with BalletMet as a trainee in the company. She spent a year in the Richmond Ballet trainee program then moved to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida to dance with Ballet Palm Beach. Some of her favorite roles include performing the title role in Snow White, Carabosse in Sleeping Beauty, Step-Sister in Cinderella, Helena in A Midsummer Nights Dream, Mercedes from Don Quixote as well as Lady Capulet in Romeo&Juliet.
Sarah is currently dancing with Columbus Dance Theatre.
Over the years Sarah has had the opportunity to teach for multiple ballet studios alongside her dancing career. Whilst living in south Florida she taught ages 3-Adv for the Ballet Palm Beach Academy, In house Expressions, Florida School for Dance Education, South Florida Dance Company and The De George Academy at The Kravis Center for the Performing Arts. Sarah spent a Summer back at her home studio teaching for the BalletMet Jr. intensive, along with the De Geroge academy summer launch back in Florida.
Sarah is very excited to be joining New Albany Ballet Company for her first full year.
Ruth began studying ballet in Columbus, Ohio at Charisma Centre for the Arts. She continued her movement education by adding various styles such as jazz, modern, and tumbling. Ruth was accepted into the Department of Dance at The Ohio State University where she studied under renowned faculty. She performed in student pieces and faculty works by Susan Hadley, Michael Kelly Bruce, and Eddie Taketa. Her research and areas of study focused around dance education where she gained knowledge and experience working with diverse ages and populations.
In 2016, she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Dance. Ruth has taught in central Ohio for 7 years and is excited to join the team at New Albany Ballet Co. She hopes to inspire children to love movement and grow in technical excellence.
Bethany Lee was born and raised in Charlotte, NC. Her training began at an early age at the Charlotte City Ballet Company under the direction of Melissa Hale-Coyle and Lisa Leone. Upon graduating in 2003, Bethany continued her training at The Houston Ballet where she was apart of Houston Ballet II on full scholarship. In the spring of 2005, she joined BalletMet and danced for the company for eleven seasons. In June 2010, Bethany had the opportunity to perform with BalletMet in Russia at the Moscow International Contemporary Festival. In past seasons some of her favorite principal roles she performed were, The Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, Lucy in David Nixon’s Dracula, The Afternoon of a Faun by Amadeo Amodio, Dwight Rhoden’s Carmina Burana, the principal in Summer from James Kudelka’s Four Seasons, as well as the role of Daisy in Jimmy Orrante’s The Great Gatsby. December 2016 she retired from the company and is excited to begin her teaching career. Her husband and her gave birth to a beautiful daughter, Sienna Nicole Lee on January 22, 2016. She looks forward to being a mother as well as having the opportunity to teach young students, challenging them and giving them all the wisdom that she has learned throughout her career.
Karen Mitchell was born and raised In Columbus, Ohio and began dancing at the tender age of 3. She continued dancing until graduating from High School. She has trained in Tap, Jazz, Ballet, Contemporary, Lyrical, Tumbling and Hip Hop. She has been teaching for the last 10 years for students 3 years of age to adults.
She has performed as a member of the American Dance Team and traveled to Barcelona, Spain to compete for the World Cup. She also was an instructor with the well known Americheer dance program, AmeriDance. She truly loves the art of dance and inspires to share that love with as many students as possible, young or old. Karen will be teaching Hip Hop for the New Albany Ballet Company starting in the summer of 2017.
Emily Glinski hails from Westerville Ohio where she grew up dancing at and performing with the New Albany Ballet Company and BalletMet. She holds a BFA from The Ohio State University where she graduated Cum Laude with a Distinction in Dance. She has studied under the most distinguished dance educators in the country including Bebe Miller, Susan Hadley, Susan Petry and Ming-Lung Yang. While living in San Francisco, CA Emily had the pleasure of performing and choreographing throughout the Bay Area and taught modern and jazz at the prestigious Roco Dance. She then relocated to New York City where she was the Marketing and Events Coordinator as well as a faculty member at the renowned Broadway Dance Center. While in NYC Emily held master classes throughout the city and its boroughs including NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing and the Horace Mann School. She currently performs and tours professionally with Ani Niemmann’s The Dance Cartel. Emily is a faculty member at Otterbein University’s Department of Theatre and Dance, The Ohio State University’s Department of Dance and New Albany Ballet Company.
*Photo courtesy of Broadway Dance Center.
Sonia is a Columbus native and a graduate of BalletMet’s original pre- professional program under the direction of Don Eryck. She received additional training on full scholarship at the Boston Ballet and San Francisco Ballet Schools. In 1991 she became an Arts and Letters Awardee and a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, dancing at the Kennedy Center for the President. She joined BalletMet in 1991 and during her 15 years with the company danced leading roles in ballets like Nutcracker, Romeo and Juliet, The Sleeping Beauty, Dracula, Giselle, Dangerous Liaisons and Carmina Burana. She also originated title roles by choreographers David Nixon, John McFall, Birgit Scherzer, Dwight Rhoden and Julia Adam to name a few. She has guested with National Ballet of Zimbabwe, Northern Ballet Theatre in Leeds, England and the Cincinnati Ballet. During a 10 year affiliation with the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp she danced, taught and ultimately co-directed their International Program touring throughout Germany and France with 35 students. She retired from BalletMet as a dancer with the second of her three children in 2006 and has been teaching and coaching exclusively since. She is excited to be part of New Albany Ballet Company!
Stephanie Sestak started dancing much like most of our students; at her home town dance studio in St Joseph, Michigan. By the time she was in high school she started teaching ballet, tap, and jazz. While attending Western Michigan University she studied and performed with the Kalamazoo Ballet Company. She soon relocated to Kansas City, Missouri where she started to study Ballroom Dancing. It is there where she taught and competed in Ballroom. Stephanie took some time away from dancing to start a family. Four children later she has returned to dancing at The New Albany Ballet Company. She has been on staff for three years and enjoys teaching the Little Ballet classes. Stephanie will be taking over as the Pre Little Ballet teacher this season. Being a mother of four young children, Stephanie is the perfect teacher for our young two year olds.