Cuban Ballet Workshop

About the Workshop

The intensive serves students ages 8 through adult and is the first ballet workshop of its kind in the New York area. An important aspect of the workshop is the Cuban Ballet methodology as developed by Caridad Martinez, a former principal dancer with the National Ballet of Cuba.

The workshop includes Technique, Pointe, Pas de Deux, Variations, Choreography and Yoga. Martinez will be joined by Pedro Ruiz, Matthew Powell, Blanca Alonso, Brooklyn Ballet Artistic Director Lynn Parkerson and faculty member Megan Brunke. In addition to professional level technique classes led by world-renowned instructors, offerings will include open rehearsals in Downtown Brooklyn and a culminating performance by workshop participants on Thursday, July 22.

Caridad Martinez in Don Quixote

In addition to professional level technique classes led by world-renowned instructors, offerings will include pre-professional workshops, open rehearsals in Downtown Brooklyn storefronts and public performances at St Francis, The Schermerhorn and other venues in the borough.

Hosting the Cuban Summer Workshop will aid in Brooklyn Ballet’s mission to highlight Brooklyn’s place on the international stage and contribute to cultural tourism in the borough. The program will also provide opportunities for further community outreach, chiefly through free outdoor performances of classical and neo-classical repertory learned during the intensive. Public performance is an essential component in Brooklyn Ballet’s intimate relationship with the community. The summer workshop will feature a culminating performance which will include prestigious repertory by George Balanchine and the classics.

To ensure that the summer intensive adheres to the company’s stringent commitment to making dance accessible to all, Brooklyn Ballet will provide scholarship opportunities for talented students who demonstrate financial need in order to curtail the costs of attending the workshop. Professional dancers can take the workshop for 50% of the tuition cost.

For more information about the upcoming summer intensive or to reserve your space now, call (718) 246-0146 or send us an e-mail.

Intensive Faculty Bios

Caridad Martinez, Brooklyn Ballet Conservatory Director, is a graduate of the Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana, Cuba, where she studied with Alicia and Fernando Alonso. As a principal dancer of the National Ballet of Cuba she performed in the most important theaters in North and South America, Europe and Asia. Martinez was Artistic Director of the Cuban-Mexico Ballet School for 13 years, and Artistic Director and choreographer of The Havana Ballet Theater. The Havana Ballet Theater was the creative concept that transformed the performing arts in Cuba during the decade of the 80's. Martinez is considered one of the leading figures of the Performing Arts in that country. She has obtained innumerable awards for her choreographic work for dance and theater. She has choreographed for the Hispanic Heritage Awards, and for the acclaimed Julian Schnabel film Before Night Falls. 

Pedro Ruiz trained in his native Cuba and in Venezuela. He choreographed three celebrated ballets while dancing as a principal with Ballet Hispanico for 21 years. Choreography credits include: The Joffrey Ballet, Luna Negra, New Jersey Ballet, The Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Marymount College, The Ailey/Fordham BFA Program, Ailey’s Spring Celebration, Summer Sizzler Concerts, Ballet Builders 2010 and international gala "Notte di Stelle" in Italy.

Ruiz is on the dance faculty of Marymount College and the staff of The Ailey School. He is also currently a master class teacher at The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Scarsdale Ballet. Ruiz has taught master classes and performed throughout the United States, Europe, Central and South America.

He has received numerous awards, including the Bessie Award, the Choo-San Goh Award, The Cuban Artist’s Fund and The Joyce Foundation Award to create a new work for Joffrey Ballet. Mr. Ruiz has performed at the White House and was profiled nationally on PBS’s “In The Life.”

Matthew Powell, a native of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, received his training at the West Virginia School of Ballet and on scholarship at the School of American Ballet. As a dancer, he has performed with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, the San Francisco Opera, West Side Story International Tour and has danced principal and soloist roles in more than 50 works by renowned choreographers such as George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, Lynne Taylor-Corbett, Michael Smuin and more.

As a teacher, Powell was a faculty member with the Kansas City Ballet School and has taught classes at numerous institutions such as the Universities of Iowa and Alabama, Marymount Manhattan and Ballet Academy East. He worked as Assistant Director for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s production of Pirates of Penzance, and in 2006, his choreography received a fellowship from the New York Choreographic Institute, an affiliate of the New York City Ballet. This piece, Resonant Dances, was later performed by the Kansas City Ballet as part of the company's 50th anniversary season. In 2008, Powell conceived and directed the Crossroads Ballet Festival. These performances combined the talents of dancers from nine respected ballet companies worldwide and presented selections from classical ballets along with three original works from upcoming choreographers and George Balanchine's Stars and Stripes Pas de Deux. Proceeds from the festival were donated to arts organizations in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Matthew is currently working as Ballet Master for Morphoses and teaches at Broadway Dance Center.

Blanca Alonso was born and educated in Argentina and began studying at the Dance School of the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. She joined the ballet company at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and performed as a guest Soloist for Ballet de Camara Mendoza and Ballet Arte. Upon arriving in New York City in 1982, Alonso studied dance at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Peridance Center and the Limon Dance Institute with masters such as Zvi Gotheiner, Igal Perry, Risa Steinberg, Carla Maxwell and Jennifer Muller, among others. Alonso has danced in works by Igal Perry, Ze’Eva Cohen, Martita Goshen, Patricia N. Nanon and other independent choreographers. She has choreographed works for the Gestures Dance Ensemble, the faculty of the Harbor Conservatory dance division and for the Yard at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Her work has been performed at Aaron Davis Hall, Dancing in the Streets, Lincoln Center Out-of Doors, Miller Theater (Columbia University), Hostos Center for the Performing Art, The Field Gallery (MA), Kids Café, Alvin Ailey Theater and The Yard. Her teaching experience includes Master Modern classes at Dickinson College (PA), Company Ballet classes and Community Dance classes at the Yard and Ballet Classes at Harkness Dance Center (92nd Street Y). She has been a faculty member at the Harbor Conservatory since 1992, teaching Ballet, Pointe Variations, Partnering and Modern (Limon Technique). Alonso is currently Ballet Mistress for Gestures Dance Ensemble.

Lynn Parkerson, Artistic Director, began her career as a choreographer while living in Germany. German critic Joachim Ernst-Berendt wrote of Parkerson, “She makes music with her body like a musician on his instrument, and when she moves we feel it, that’s the way free music should be danced.” Jack Anderson of The New York Times wrote, “Ms. Parkerson successfully made her dancers seem witness to a miracle...one knew she was talking to God and the world,” and Jennifer Dunning of The New York Times has called her solo dance, “an innately spiritual embodiment of grace.”

In recognition of her exceptional leadership contributions to Brooklyn’s cultural community, Parkerson received the Betty Smith Arts Award as part of the Women's “Herstory” Induction Ceremony and Reception on March 22, 2007. Each year, the awards, named after some of the most outstanding women in Brooklyn "herstory," are given to six outstanding Brooklyn women. In November 2006 she received the Paul Robeson Award for Artistic Excellence and Community Service.

Parkerson’s choreography has been presented at many prominent international events and venues, including the Munich Theater Festival, Frankfurt’s Theatre am Turm, the Florence International Festival of Dance, Moers New Jazz Festival, Jazz Festival Baden-Baden and An Appalachian Summer Arts Festival in Boone, NC, among others. In New York City, she presented annual dance programs—notably the popular ballet series To the Pointe—as Director of Dance at Holy Trinity from 1991-2001. Her work has been supported by grants from the Harkness foundation for Dance, Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation and Con Edison. She also served as the Assistant Director of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center from 1996-1999. Parkerson has taught dance to children and adults in New York and abroad.

Megan Brunke holds degrees in dance with a concentration in kinesiology from Wayne State University and London Contemporary Dance School at The Place. She travels as a guest teacher for various companies and schools and worked as an adjunct faculty member at Wayne State University. Brunke comes to Brooklyn Ballet from Las Vegas where she worked with the Nevada Ballet Theatre. Primarily a solo artist since 2003, Brunke cultivates a varied repertoire focused on audience connection and drawing from a multitude of techniques, the most recent of which are the Latin dances. 

*Due to unforeseen circumstances, Joaquin Banegas, originally scheduled as a faculty member for the intensive, will be unable to attend this year.