Happy Fall!  Everything at ARB and Princeton Ballet School is in full swing.  The beginning of the year has brought a wave of new faces and forces of creativity.  Classes at the School began on Friday, welcoming new students, including some trainees who have come all the way from Italy to study at Princeton Ballet School.  The Company has begun rehearsing today, welcoming new choreography and seven new dancers to the studios and the stage.  The Company will be dancing numerous world premieres this year, including pieces by Resident Choreographers Mary Barton and Matthew Keefe, which will be performed at ARB Presents: Opening Night  on October 22 at Raritan Valley Community College.

Lastly, there is a new addition to ARB’s administrative staff – me!  I am excited to have joined the ARB team as Marketing and Development Associate.

With my start at ARB, I am embarking on a personal new beginning – post-college life.  Last year at this time, I was entering my last year at Princeton University.  I was “shopping” for courses, thinking (with a mixture of excitement, nervousness, and a sprinkling of dread) about my Senior Theses for my English major and my Dance Certificate, and busily kicking off rehearsals for Princeton University Ballet (PUB), of which I was founding Artistic Director in 2008.  I have left campus feeling proud to say that I left my mark on campus with PUB, as it is the University’s only ballet performance company.  It has attracted numerous well-trained ballet dancers to the school and has even changed the face of the University Program in Dance, which, since 2009, has offered seemingly ever-increasing ballet performance and curricular opportunities.  I wrote my English thesis on poetry and dance theory.  For my dance thesis, I choreographed and performed a contemporary ballet performance, which won the Outstanding Senior Creative Thesis Award.  I also got a diploma (good thing...phew!).  But after being thrust out of the “Orange Bubble” of Princeton, it was time to look forward.  What should I do with all this??