Brooklyn Dance Classes Taught by Experienced Performers

Brooklyn Ballet is pleased to welcome many new teachers to its talented dance faculty this fall. Two of our most recent additions to the ballet conservatory staff are Nikki Hefko and Inna Yureneva. Nikki has toured nationally and internationally with The Dance Theatre of Harlem. She has also danced with Les Grands Ballet Canadiens, the Metropolitan Opera and Brooklyn Ballet. Inna hails from Moscow, Russia, and graduated from the Bolshoi Theater Academy. She has performed with many companies, including The Metropolitan Opera, Connecticut Ballet, Saba Dance Theater and Ballet New York, among others. We can’t wait to watch our children’s ballet knowledge grow under their guidance.

Brooklyn Ballet Auditions for 10th Anniversary Season

Brooklyn Ballet recently held auditions for our 10th Anniversary Season performances. We were looking for both male and female dancers with a range of technical ability - dancers who would feel comfortable not only in classic ballet roles but in collaborations with hip hop artists and movement in the Isadora Duncan style.

The 10th Anniversary Season will include a study of Isadora Duncan's influence on the structure and content of ballet, and Brooklyn Ballet is searching for the dancer who can embody Isadora Duncan's flowing style as well as turn heads while en pointe.

This year Brooklyn Ballet Company rehearsed in the new studio in Downtown Brooklyn, unveiled the new performance space at The Schermerhorn and premiered four sections of a work-in-progress. Talk about progress and productivity!

After a nearly two-year-long hiatus, Lynn recruited dancers and returned to the studio to continue her exploration of ballet's relationship to other dance forms, artistic mediums and broader cultural questions. Building off of a duet between Kerry Shea and Mike "Supreme" Fields, she expanded her cast and extended the work by observing improvisational exercises and playing with classical pas de deux.

Kerry Shea was sitting in a deli during Brooklyn Ballet’s auditions. A friend who was auditioning gave her a call and told her to hurry down to the borough to tryout for the Company – “You’d love it!” the friend declared.

And love it she does. Grateful she ditched her sandwich and booked it to Brooklyn, Kerry doesn’t think she’d have the opportunity to do the kind of dancing she experiences with Lynn in any other company.

Lynn’s latest duet features Kerry and pop and lock artist Mike Fields. It’s a challenging but exhilarating blend of ballet and street dance – and excavation of connections between the two distinct genres of movement.

Mid-February, Lynn chanced upon another stepping stone in her latest choreographic exploration with collaborators Kalle and August Laar. During a week-long trip to Munich, Lynn introduced her international audience to her improvisatory discoveries from last September’s Mixed Movement as well as her working duet featuring pop and locker Mike Fields and ballet dancer Kerry Shea.

Joining Kalle and Augusta in their regular electronic poetry lounge performance at Schwere Reiter, Kunst Oder Unfall Salon, Lynn found new layers and myriad possibilities for her recent movement investigations. Lynn participated in a 50 minute improvisational performance, gathering ideas from Kalle and Augusta’s sound experiments and the group’s use of visual accompaniment.

Imagine this:

Lynn discusses her experience working with a pop and lock dancer and a ballerina in the same studio:

“Mike’s used to freestyle and Kerry’s used to being told what to do. She is exploring taking liberties with timing and whether or not she should do something. I want her to go further and further into that area. I think Kerry’s curious about other ways of being on stage. A lot of ballet dancers aren’t given enough of an opportunity to explore. There are psychological confrontations in the rehearsal process, nihilistic exploration, violent, hyper-mobile body contortion choreography -- that’s something that’s almost wanted by ballet dancers, because freedom is a more challenging element.”

Still, the dance contains elements that Kerry and Lynn are familiar with seeing in ballet.

“For me it’s always an opportunity to keep exploring to keep my interest piqued.” –Lynn Parkerson

Lynn’s latest choreographic journey involves multiple dance disciplines and techniques for generating movement. Kalle Laar, her friend and co-conspirator in creating art, expresses his thoughts on how they started working on their current project:

Last September, Lynn Parkerson attended a Mixed Movement event at St. Mark’s Church at the suggestion of some of her dancers. Swept away with the spirit of the evening’s dancing, Lynn found herself performing an improvised solo. Check it out here: