Faculty
Mary Pat Robertson Faculty Emeritas
Ballet, Workout, Pointe, Choreography, Coaching
Mary Pat Robertson, an internationally known dance educator, worked closely with Douglas Martin and Mary Barton for over 25 years at Princeton Ballet School. Early dance training in Tulsa, Oklahoma, led to performing with Tulsa Civic Ballet (now Tulsa Ballet Theatre). After an academic education (BA) from Wellesley College and Stanford University, Ms. Robertson pursued advanced training in ballet and modern dance in Manhattan, where she studied with such greats as Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, and David Howard.
After moving to Princeton in 1980, Ms. Robertson founded Teamwork Dance, a contemporary dance company,and produced a decade’s worth of repertory evenings. has provided choreography for a dozen operas for June Opera Festival and Opera Festival of NJ.
In 2016, Ms. Robertson retired after 30 years as Director of Princeton Ballet School. Under her leadership, the school grew dramatically in size and reputation. She created the PBS syllabus, organized and directed the moves into the Princeton Shopping Center and Cranbury studios, created the conservatory program with Artistic Director Septime Webre and the Trainee Program with Douglas Martin. At the invitation of Rider professor, Dr. Patrick Chmel, Ms. Robertson helped get the Rider University/Princeton Ballet School program up and running. For well over 25 years, she conducted a national, and then international, audition tour recruiting students for PBS’ Summer Intensive and Trainee program. Mrs. Robertson is proud to have students performing with Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham, Mark Morris, Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp, as well as on Broadway.
Robertson has been cited by the United States Congress for her leadership of Princeton Ballet School, and has also been recognized by the Arts Council of Princeton and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for her choreography and leadership of Teamwork Dance. Ms. Robertson has also taught at Princeton University, Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, the Lawrenceville School,and the Peddie School. She spent the 2018-19 academic year in London with her husband, Michael. While there, she was chosen by English National Ballet to appear in a short film, danced with Alleyne Dance in a performance at The Place, and choreographed a new work, An Object of Beauty, based on the life of William Morris’ wife, Jane Burden Morris. She is enthusiastic about returning to work with her former colleagues on this new project.
Maria Youskevitch
Ballet, Pointe, Coaching
Maria Youskevitch brings to the Martin Center for Dance a lifelong wealth of experience from the highest levels of the dance world. It began in childhood as the daughter of legendary ballet star Igor Youskevitch (premier danseur of ABT & the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo). Her pedigree stems directly from the stars of the Maryinsky Ballet & Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe.
Ms Youskevitch began her training with her mother Anna Scarpova Youskevitch, who had been a soloist with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and student of Bronislava Nijinska (Nijinsky’s sister) and the great Maryinsky ballerina Olga Preobrajenska. She had also studied with Julia Sedova
(Nijinsky’s partner at his Maryinsky debut). Maria continued her training with her father, the great Igor Youskevitch, who had himself been trained by Preobrajenska. Maria also benefited from training by Ludmilla Schollar, who along with Maria’s mother was one of the original teachers for Ballet Theatre’s first school in New York City. Ms Youskevitch’s godparents, Vera Nemchinova and Anatole Oboukoff were also Diaghilev stars. Ms Youskevitch studied with Anatole Vilzak, Vera Nemchinova, Igor Schwezolf, Leon Danielian, William Dollar, Fernand Nault and Yurek Lazovsky.
As a child, Ms. Youskevitch performed with her young partner, Leonide (Lorca) Massine Jr. She then performed with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the old Metropolitan Opera House in Massine’s Beau Danube and as Clara in their Nutcracker. Ms. Youskevitch also appeared as the Coppelia Doll in the Alonso/Youskevitch production of Coppelia, having been personally coached by Alicia Alonso while just 13 years of age. At 15 she also danced on the Perry Como Show. Ms.Youskevitch danced with Maria Tallchief and Erik Bruhn on the Bell Telephone Hour and later in the historic film of Carla Fracci and Erik Bruhn in Giselle.
Ms Youskevitch has been a soloist with American Ballet Theatre (ABT) and Maryland Ballet, and a ballerina with Natalia Krassovska in Igor Youskevitch’s concert group, Ballet Romantique. Prior to this she had been in the Ballet Company of the Radio City Music Hall and performed in summer stock with Vicky Crandall Productions. Among her many roles were “Adelina” in “The Song of Norway”, a role originated on Broadway by Alexandra Danilova. Ms. Youskevitch performed in The Nutcracker and as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in concert with ABT premiere danseur Ted Kivitt, plus Le Corsair and the Don Quixote pas de deux. She also performed with her father in La Peri for the New Orleans Opera under the direction of Director Lelia Haller. Ms. Youskevitch later worked with premier choreographers including Leonide Massine, Antony Tudor, Agnes de Mille, David Blair and George Balanchine, and performed in works by Michael Fokine and Alvin Ailey.
Ms. Youskevitch brings more than 44 years of ballet teaching and coaching experience to the Martin Center for Dance. She began teaching at the Igor Youskevitch School of Ballet and has been featured in Dance Teacher Magazine. Ms. Youskevitch was company teacher, rehearsal assistant and senior faculty member for Hartford Ballet under the artistic direction of Kirk Peterson, where she staged all the children’s roles in Peterson’s The American Nutcracker.
Ms. Youskevitch has been ballet mistress for BalletMet and Nevada Dance Theatre and has coached for the New York International Ballet Competition. As well, Ms. Youskevitch has taught at such prestigious schools as the David Howard Dance Center, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Houston Ballet’s Ben Stevenson Academy, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre, Maurice Bejart’s Mudra, Richmond Ballet, the VIrginia School of the Arts and the National Academy of Arts in Champagne-Urbana, both under the direction of Petrus Bosman, and the Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts.
Ms. Youskevitch has staged versions of Giselle, Coppelia, La Fille Mal Gardee and her father’s one act Romeo and Juliet. She has also staged Michael Fokine’s Le Spectre de Ia Rose as taught to her by her father and Natalia Krassovska who in tum were taught and coached by Michael Fokine himself. She has also staged Fokine’s Les Sylphides as taught to her by Dimitri Romanoff while with ABT.
Maria’s greatest thrill was dancing the Waltz in Les Sylphides at ABT, the same role her mother had danced for Fokine while in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
Ms Youskevitch was on the faculty of ABT and choreographed for ABT’s Young Dancer Workshop in New York City for eight years. She is an ABT certified teacher, having completed the ABT National Training Curriculum. She had been a principal faculty member at the Princeton Ballet School for almost 20 years where she stage the classical repertoire. A generation of Maria Youskevitch’s students have continued on to professional careers.
Kirk Peterson
Ballet, Pointe, Choreography, Coaching
Peterson has had a long and distinguished career as a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre and San Francisco Ballet. He was also a principal dancer with London Festival Ballet, Harkness Ballet and the National Ballet of Washington. Peterson had an extremely distinguished 17 year career with American Ballet Theatre as a principal dancer, choreographer, Artistic Director of ABT II, ABT Ballet Master, Principal Character Artist and Master Teaching Associate for the main company, ABT II, the JKO School at ABT and the ABT Summer Intensive.
Peterson began his ballet studies at the age of three in his native New Orleans, where he studied for fifteen years with Lelia Haller, a distinguished pedagogue from the Paris Opera Ballet.
In addition to ABT, Mr. Peterson was also a principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet, London’s Festival Ballet, Harkness Ballet and the National Ballet of Washington. Peterson’s extensive repertoire included all the full-length classics and he appeared in a wide range of works by the world’s renowned choreographers of the 19th and 20th century.
Peterson was also Artistic Director of the Hartford Ballet for five years. As a choreographer, Peterson has created over 50 ballets including new versions of The Firebird and Le Sacre du Printemps. His choreography has been seen with San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Washington Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, BalletMet, San Francisco Opera and The Royal Ballet School and Balanchine’s School of American Ballet. He is a specialist in re-staging the full-length classical repertoire such as Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and Giselle utilizing original choreography and technique. He was nominated for the prestigious Prix Benois de la Danse in Moscow for Othello, created for Alberta Ballet. Peterson was resident choreographer for Cincinnati Ballet for six years and he is also a repetiteur for the Antony Tudor Ballet Trust. His varied and challenging works, such as the often-performed Belling the Slayer and his trilogy of ballets to the music of Philip Glass, The Eyes That Gently Touch, Vortex and Amazed in Burning Dreams, have received consistently high acclaim. Carmen, Fandango Furioso, to the music of legendary film composer Bernard Hermann, and the passionately scintillating The Howling Cat (Imaginary Tango), have added to the long list of his imaginative works. Other recent works include Tears of the Moon and his newest work, a full length Beauty and the Beast to the music of Tchaikovsky.
ABT entrusted Peterson with the responsibility of restaging Michael Fokine’s final and definitive version of Fokine’s master piece Les Sylphides. Les Sylphides was taught to Peterson by ABT regisseur of 40 years, Dimitri Romanoff, with the help of Sally Wilson. Peterson also revived Fokine’s Le Spectre de la Rose for ABT, which had been personally passed down to him by Igor Youskevitch, with the assistance of Maria Youskevitch. Mr. Youskevitch had been originally coached in the role by Michael Fokine himself.
Additionally, Peterson collaborated with Michael Smuin on two Broadway productions. The first, Anything Goes, starred Patti LuPone and in 1990, he was co-choreographer with Smuin of a lavish musical based on James Clavell’s novel Shogun. Mr. Peterson also appeared in and served as ballet master and consultant for the feature film Center Stage. He also staged all of the classroom scenes for the film.
Erika Mero
Ballet, Pointe, Coaching, Choreography
Erika Mero began her dance training at Princeton Ballet School. As a dancer in the Professional Training Program, she studied with Elisabeth Carroll, Septime Webre, Maria Youskevitch, Mary Pat Robertson, and Douglas Martin.
Mero was a member of Princeton Ballet II, a pre-professional company of the school, where she performed works by Sherry Alban and other members of the Princeton Ballet School staff. Later, as a dancer in American Repertory Ballet Workshop, Mero appeared in the premiere of Graham Lustig’s Standstill as well as the ballerina role of Swanhilda in Coppelia. During these years, she also attended The Juilliard School’s summer program for two years.
In 2006, Mero graduated cum laude with a BFA in dance performance from Purchase College–State University of NewYork. While in attendance there, Mero began teaching at American Repertory Ballet’s Princeton Ballet School in 2003 and continues to do so as a ballet instructor. She is also a dance instructor with Princeton Ballet School’s Dance Power in New Brunswick and was recently named the curriculum and assessment supervisor for the program. Mero’s performance work includes two seasons with Stuart Loungway’s Terra Firma Dance Theatre, several opera productions with Opera New Jersey, and as a featured dancer/choreographer in Capriccio at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.
In May 2010, Mero graduated with an MA in dance education with a concentration in American Ballet Theatre (ABT) ballet pedagogy from New York University. Mero is an ABT-certified teacher who has successfully completed the ABT Teacher Training Intensive in Primary through Level 7 and Partnering of the ABT National Training Curriculum.
In March 2019, Ms. Mero was the recipient of the Audrée Estey Award for Excellence in Dance Education.
Ms. Mero is currently the Director of the ABT Ballet School at Rutgers Community Arts at Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Ms. Mero is also currently an adjunct instructor at The Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, NJ as well as a Part-Time Lecturer at Rutgers University at Mason Gross School of the Arts.
Jennifer Gladney
Children's Ballet, Coaching, Choreography
JENNIFER GLADNEY has been teaching dance for 20 years, and has a special gift of conveying the joy of dance to young children. A summa cum laude graduate of Rider University, Gladney has a BA in Elementary Education and Dance, specializing in Early Childhood Education, making her a certified NJ Educator, preschool to 5th grade.
Gladney started taking classes in New York City with master teachers such as Fabrice Herrault, Michael Vernon, and Willie Berman, when she was a young teen. She finished her high school years of dance study at Princeton Ballet School, including a year as a Trainee to ARB. While studying at Mercer County Community College, Gladney danced freelance, enjoying leading roles as Cinderella, Aurora and Sugar Plum Fairy. During this time period, she also began performing beyond the ballet world, appearing with Teamwork Dance, Mercer Dance Ensemble, and Boheme Opera in “La Traviata.”
After receiving her AA (and receiving an Academic Award in Dance), Gladney transferred to Rider University, where she was awarded the Mildred C. Hawkins Fine Arts Endowed Scholarship. She began a long and rewarding involvement with Rider Dances, appearing in several world premieres choreographed by Mary Barton, and choreographing her first ballet as her senior honors project. Since graduation in 2006, Gladney has been an adjunct faculty member in Rider’s Dance Department. She has choreographed over 15 dances, and has taught ballet, modern dance, contemporary dance, and pedagogy. Since 2016, Gladney has also been a member of the Dance and Theater faculty at Mercer County Community College, where she teaches dance history, technique, and choreography. She has also had a long relationship with Mercer’s dance company, Mercer Dance Ensemble, rising from dancer (2001) to co-director.
Simultaneous to her deep involvement in these collegiate dance communities, Gladney continued her connection to the ballet world. Post college, she became a member of American Repertory Ballet under the direction of Douglas Martin, performing works by Martin, Twyla Tharp, Philip Jerry, and Kirk Peterson.
Gladney started teaching children’s ballet in her early twenties, working first under the direction of Nancy Warner at Pennington Dance, then also joining the faculty at Princeton Ballet School in 2005. Since 2011, she has been the teacher for PBS’ Summer Intensive Juniors Program. She and then-Director Mary Pat Robertson worked on expanding its interface between dance and general elementary education, helping to facilitate and further young dancers’ love for ballet during the summer.
In addition to her many teaching positions in the dance world, Gladney has been a pre-school teacher for the past 12 years—first at Cross Roads Nursery School (affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study), and for the last seven years at Lawrenceville Presbyterian Preschool. Now also a mother, Gladney enjoys integrating all these facets of her life as dancer, teacher, and on-going student of childhood development.
GABRIELLA Cunha
Dance workout (Modern dance base)
GABRIELLA CUNHA holds a BFA in Dance Education with a specialization in Ballet Performance and a minor in Musical Theater from University of the Arts, University in Philadelphia. After graduation, Ms. Proffitt danced professionally with Ballet Fleming, Ballet 180, and most recently with Roxey Ballet. In addition to her ballet training and performing, Gabriella received a 200-hour certification in Prana Yoga and is a trained Reiki II Practitioner, receiving her training from the Princeton Center for Yoga and Health. Gabriella has maintained several teaching engagements in New Jersey spanning the disciplines of ballet, yoga, and health and wellness. She is currently in a doctoral program studying Naturopathy at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. Her supplementary interests lie in music, alternative somatic modalities, and multidisciplinary collaboration – all of which inform her work as an arts and healing educator.
Gabriella’s dance workout class:
This workout utilizes modern dance concepts and patterns for grounding, cardiovascular health, strength building, coordination, and balance. At this time when most of us are not attending gyms for exercise, this class is designed to get you moving at home in a small space. No dance experience is necessary! Modifications will be provided, and anatomical safety is emphasized.