The West Side Spirit, Manhattan Media, 7/17/2008 - VIEW IMAGE
Commotion Outside, Grace and Beauty Within: New dance center
launches in evolving neighborhood west of Columbus Circle
Outside the Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, which opened last month on 248 West 60th Street beyond Amsterdam Avenue, visitors are face with noise, dirt and debris cause by the condo construction boom west of Columbus Circle. But step inside the clean, bright cultural center and Picasso’s words -- “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life” – take on a whole new meaning.
The 18,000 square-foot cultural center houses five large studios, a 200-person theater, a small sculpture garden and exhibition space for painting or photography. The center offers adult classes in ballet, jazz, musical theater, hip hop, belly dancing, aerial dance and ballroom, as well as fitness classes, including Pilates, yoga, power strike and floor barre. For children, the center will offer a full dance curriculum, as well as music and martial arts instruction.
The arts center will also be the home of the nonprofit, pre-professional ballet program, Manhattan Youth Ballet, formerly known as Studio Maestro, founded by Rose Caiola as a for-profit ballet academy in 1995. Studio Maestro’s graduates now dance with American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Washington Ballet, among others.
In its new larger practice and performance space, the Manhattan Youth Ballet will launch a cultural literacy outreach program for inner-city youth that has been approved by the New York State Board of Education. Caiola said that 3,000 children will visit the arts center during the upcoming school year.
At the center’s opening, Caiola, a longtime Upper West Side resident, thanked her parents for helping her found a ballet academy in New York City. Caiola and her father, Bennie Caiola, own the recently completed 35-story condo building, the Element, that houses the center. They waited four years for a zoning change that would allow the creation of a dance school on the building’s ground floor.
Caiola graduated from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, then danced under the tutelage of Karoly Zsedenyi, ballet master and principal dancer with the Hungarian Royal Opera Ballet. She is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and has performed in David Rabe’s “The Boom Boom Room” on Broadway and the movie “A Stranger Among Us” directed by Sidney Lumet.
Caiola based the center’s ballet curriculum on French classical technique with the assistance of Francois Perron, graduate of the Paris Opera School and formerly of New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater. Perron is the center’s artistic director. Other staff members include David Howard, who coached Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland; Rhapsody, Beyonce’s choreographer; Ivo Gueorguiev of Cirque du Soleil; Broadway dancers, Sue Samuels and Diana Laurenson; Dorit Koppel, “Dance” magazine’s “Teacher of the Year,” and Luigi, who was dubbed “the ambassador of jazz” by Gene Kelly.
“To dance,” Luigi said in his remarks at the cultural center’s opening, “put your hand on your heart and listen to the sound of your soul.”
The 18,000 square-foot cultural center houses five large studios, a 200-person theater, a small sculpture garden and exhibition space for painting or photography. The center offers adult classes in ballet, jazz, musical theater, hip hop, belly dancing, aerial dance and ballroom, as well as fitness classes, including Pilates, yoga, power strike and floor barre. For children, the center will offer a full dance curriculum, as well as music and martial arts instruction.
The arts center will also be the home of the nonprofit, pre-professional ballet program, Manhattan Youth Ballet, formerly known as Studio Maestro, founded by Rose Caiola as a for-profit ballet academy in 1995. Studio Maestro’s graduates now dance with American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Washington Ballet, among others.
In its new larger practice and performance space, the Manhattan Youth Ballet will launch a cultural literacy outreach program for inner-city youth that has been approved by the New York State Board of Education. Caiola said that 3,000 children will visit the arts center during the upcoming school year.
At the center’s opening, Caiola, a longtime Upper West Side resident, thanked her parents for helping her found a ballet academy in New York City. Caiola and her father, Bennie Caiola, own the recently completed 35-story condo building, the Element, that houses the center. They waited four years for a zoning change that would allow the creation of a dance school on the building’s ground floor.
Caiola graduated from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, then danced under the tutelage of Karoly Zsedenyi, ballet master and principal dancer with the Hungarian Royal Opera Ballet. She is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and has performed in David Rabe’s “The Boom Boom Room” on Broadway and the movie “A Stranger Among Us” directed by Sidney Lumet.
Caiola based the center’s ballet curriculum on French classical technique with the assistance of Francois Perron, graduate of the Paris Opera School and formerly of New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater. Perron is the center’s artistic director. Other staff members include David Howard, who coached Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland; Rhapsody, Beyonce’s choreographer; Ivo Gueorguiev of Cirque du Soleil; Broadway dancers, Sue Samuels and Diana Laurenson; Dorit Koppel, “Dance” magazine’s “Teacher of the Year,” and Luigi, who was dubbed “the ambassador of jazz” by Gene Kelly.
“To dance,” Luigi said in his remarks at the cultural center’s opening, “put your hand on your heart and listen to the sound of your soul.”