Ryoko Tanaka was born and raised in Wakayama Japan, where she began her training. In 2013, she was selected to be in the Nancy Einhorn Milwaukee Ballet II program. In 2017, she joined the trainee program at American Repertory Ballet and soon moved up to ARB 2, and by 2018, she was promoted to ARB company member. Since joining the company, Ryoko has performed the title role in Ethan Stiefel and Johan Kobborg’s Giselle, Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, Odette in Swan Lake (for Princeton Ballet School). She has also performed featured roles in Stiefel’s Wood Work, Overture, VARIANTS, as well as Caili Quan’s Circadia, Amy Seiwert’s Sight Line and World, Interrupted, Paul Taylor’s Airs, Trey McIntyre’s Blue Until June, Meredith Rainey’s Intrare Forma and multiple other roles. In 2021, she made her debut as choreographer for ARB with Saudade. She continued her choreographic work with ARB in 2022, collaborating with composer/pianist Ian Howells to create Hindsight and most recently TSUBOMI, for Princeton Ballet School.
ARB Position: Teacher
Rebeca Maso
Rebeca Maso is a former ballet dancer from Cuba. She received her training at the Professional Ballet School in Cuba. She also obtained her Diploma as Ballet Teacher in Cuba and has been teaching for more than 30 years for professional and school levels. She was one of the founder dancers of the Professional Ballet Company of Santiago of Cuba under the direction of Maria Elena Martinez and worked as rehearsal assistant and maître of this company for a few years. In 1995 traveled to Venezuela where she was a member of the Professional Ballet Company Nuevo Mundo of Caracas under the direction of Zhandra Rodriguez. Maso came to the US in 1999 as a guest artist of Ballet Metropolitano de Caracas participating in the International Ballet Festival in Philadelphia.
In Cuba, she was teaching in regional ballet schools and taking students to examinations and open classes during national seminars. She had been a guest teacher for Milwaukee Ballet School Summer Intensive, San Jose Ballet Festival in Costa Rica, New Orleans Ballet Association, Martha Graham School, Kentucky Ballet Theatre and had the opportunity to participate in the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) in Mexico as an invitation of this organization as a part of Ballet Hispanico ballet faculty. She is currently in the ballet faculty of Ballet Hispanico School of Dance in NY, Evolution Dance Center and American Repertory Ballet/ Princeton Ballet School.
Ms. Maso is an ABT Certified Teacher, who has successfully completed the ABT Teacher Training Intensive in Primary through Level 3 of the ABT National Training Curriculum ABT.
Her work includes classical and neo-classical styles of renowned choreographers such as Jose Pares, Paulo Denubila, Dennis Nahant, Alberto Mendez, Carlos Orta, Jorge Lefebre, Lazaro Martinez, Gustavo Herrera, Hilda Rivero, Maria Rovira, Hector Montero, among others.
Lindsay Cahill
Lindsay Cahill began her career at American Repertory Ballet in 2009 as a Dance Power Teaching Artist. Now in her new role as Access and Enrichment Coordinator she is excited to combine her love of the arts with her students, families and entire New Brunswick community. As a dance and gymnastics instructor for over 17 years, her passion of the arts shine through in her strong, patient and encouraging teaching style. Her past community partnership experience working in the City of New Brunswick’s Mayor’s Office and with New Brunswick City Market, her new role offers the ability to strengthen and improve the great City of New Brunswick she also calls home.
Email: [email protected] | Phone: 732.249.1254, ext. 19
Susan Tenney
Susan Tenney (Modern Dance, Ballet) is an award-winning Director and Choreographer. Her eclectic career has had her working professionally in dance, theatre and film, performing or having her work produced in venues that include the Kennedy Center, Off Broadway, Edinburgh Festival, Williamstown Theatre Festival, La Mama, Florence Gould Hall, Jacobs Pillow, France, Princeton University, and regional theatres including Cincinnati Playhouse, and McCarter Theatre. She received four commissions from the Coalition for Peace Action to create commemorative pieces, and a grant from the Princeton Arts Council to create The Tower a multi-disciplinary work. Her evening-length work Je me Souviens…I Remember was called “stunningly dramatic” by Princeton Patch. In 2020 she was a Resident Artist with New York Stage & Film developing McCourt a new play about the Pulitzer Prize winning memoirist Frank McCourt. She began her dance training at the Princeton Ballet School with Audree Estey and remembers Audree asking her and all the five year olds in the class, to whisper in her ear what “kind” of bird they would like to be, before they “flew” across the studio floor. For Princeton Ballet School she has taught Ballet, Modern Dance, and Choreography to students ages 4 to 84, and set her Mozart Divertimento in F on PBII and students from the Summer Intensive. Her fundraiser for the organization brought over 150 dancers, musicians and community members on to the fields of Princeton University for an outdoor performance featuring her choreography and structured improvisations danced by the community. Her initiative “Got Dance?” was a set of yearly weekend performances which she produced and directed that had the Adult Students of the school dancing in sold out shows in Studio A. She holds a B.F.A. in Dance from SUNY Purchase.
Amy Megules
Amy Megules began dancing with the Vineland Regional Dance Company and received her BFA in dance from SUNY Purchase, where she received the Bert Terborgh Dance Award. She apprenticed with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, and then danced with American Repertory Ballet. Amy has also been on faculty at Today’s Dance Center, the National Dance Institute of Trenton, and Mercer County Community College. Amy taught and choreographed for the Otto M. Budig Academy of Cincinnati Ballet, the College Conservatory of Music Preparatory Division of the University of Cincinnati, and was the ballet instructor for the elite and accelerated gymnasts at the Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy. Amy enjoys teaching the littlest dancers through adults. She is a children’s rehearsal director for ARB’s “Nutcracker” and Princeton Ballet School’s spring productions.
Cheryl Whitney
Cheryl Whitney (Ballet) received an M.S. in Ballet from Indiana University and a B.A. in English Literature and Music from St. Lawrence University. She was trained and performed professionally in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area. For more than 30 years, she has been involved with Princeton Ballet School and American Repertory Ballet, serving as a faculty member, rehearsal director for both the ARB productions of The Nutcracker and the Princeton Ballet School shows, and Coordinator for Princeton Ballet Workshop. Ms. Whitney is the 2008 recipient of the Audrée Estey Award for Excellence in Dance Education. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the dance programs at Rider University.
Guest teaching credits include Brandywine Ballet, Peabody Conservatory and NJ Governor’s School. Her teaching in academic settings includes Princeton University, Howard University, Indiana University, The Lawrenceville School, Foxcroft School and Latin School of Chicago. and has received grants from the New York and New Jersey State Councils on the Arts. She is Artistic Director of Reverence Dance Company.
Nanako Yamamoto
Nanako Yamamoto was born and raised in Japan where she began her training at the Geijutsuza Ballet Studio “Jardin des Arts”, performing such roles as Clara in The Nutcracker, Rose Adagio in The Sleeping Beauty and the title role in Cinderella. In 2005, she was selected to attend the prestigious Royal Ballet Summer School, then was accepted to the Elmhurst School for Dance in Association with the Birmingham Royal Ballet. While a student, she performed in the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s National Tour of Firebird, Fokine’s Petrushka, Petipa’s Raymonda and David Bintley’s Beauty and the Beast. She performed for his Royal Highness Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall in addition to the grand re-opening of Birmingham’s Town Hall. Since graduating in 2009, she has performed with New Tampa Dance Theatre, Dance Theatre of Tampa, Ballet Fleming, Virginia Regional Ballet, in Giselle with Boca Ballet Theatre alongside Julie Kent and Marcelo Gomes, and as soloist in La Bayadere with Gillian Murphy and José Manuel Carreño. Since joining ARB, she has danced featured roles in The Nutcracker, including Sugar Plum Fairy and Snow Queen, the title role in Ethan Stiefel and Johan Kobborg’s Giselle, Changeling and Titania in Stiefel’s world premiere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as Belle in Kirk Peterson’s world premiere of Beauty and the Beast. She has also been featured in Gerald Arpino’s Confetti and Sea Shadow, Peterson’s Carmen and Glaznov Variation, Claire Davison’s world premiere Time Within A Time and other works by Douglas Martin, Kirk Peterson, Mary Barton, David Fernandez, Colby Damon and Ethan Stiefel.
Erikka Reenstierna-Cates
A California native, Erikka Reenstierna-Cates received her training under Leslie Ann Larson and Rene Daveluy. Before joining American Repertory Ballet in 2016, she previously danced with Central West Ballet, Oklahoma City Ballet, and Ballet Ireland. Reenstierna-Cates has been featured in a number of ballets in such notable roles such as Elena in Ethan Stiefel’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Caroline Bingley in Douglas Martin’s Pride and Prejudice, and Zulma and Bathilde in Stiefel and Johan Kobborg’s Giselle. She has had the privilege of performing works by renowned choreographers including George Balanchine’s Serenade, Who Cares?, and Valse Fantaisie, José Limón’s There Is A Time, Paul Taylor’s Air, Ethan Stiefel’s Wood Work, Paul Vasterling’s Peter Pan, Val Caniparoli’s Songs and Violin, Septime Webre’s Fluctuating Hemlines, Ronn Guidi’s Trois Gymnopedies, Dennis Spaight’s Scheherazade, Kirk Peterson’s Tears of the Moon, Carmen, and Beauty and the Beast, Ryoko Tanaka’s Saudade and Hindsight, Claire Davison’s Bewitched, Stiefel’s Woodwork and VARIANTS, Amy Seiwert’s World, Interrupted and Sight Line, Caili Quan’s Circadia, Da’Von Doane’s Kaleidoscope Mind, Arthur Mitchell’s Holberg Suite, Meredith Rainey’s Intrare Forma, Stephanie Martinez’s The Time That Runs Away, and Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker.
Kathleen Moore
Kathleen Moore trained with Dame Sonia Arova and Thor Sutowski at the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and attended summer intensives at the School of American Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) School. In 1979 she won an Obelisk Award in the Performing Arts from the city of Birmingham, Alabama and in 1980 she graduated from ASFA as a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and moved to NYC to join ABT II. Invited by Mikhail Baryshnikov to become a member of the corps of ABT in 1982, Moore was appointed soloist in 1988 and Principal dancer in 1991. Her work included roles across the classical, dramatic, modern and contemporary repertory. Having been closely associated with the works of Anthony Tudor she was on the cover of Dance Magazine issue about him in May 1987. Agnes de Mille, Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris and other respected choreographers created roles for her and she was a member of the premiere tour of the White Oak Dance Project under the direction of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Mark Morris in 1990. Moore has appeared in several dance documentaries, the Herbert Ross movie Dancers, and was interviewed on The Charlie Rose Show, was featured on the cover of the special Spring Magazine of The New York Times in 1988 and profiled in the magazine Mirabella. Moore began teaching for Princeton Ballet School in 1993 as a guest teacher, expanding her hours over the years to include teaching levels 4C through the Trainee program. She has worked with American Repertory Ballet since 2006 and she was the recipient of the Audrée Estey Award for Excellence in Dance Education in 2018. She has also been a member of the ballet faculty at the Lewis Center of the Arts at Princeton University since 2012. Moore is certified to teach all levels of ballet through the ABT® National Training Curriculum.