Risa Kaplowitz

Photo: Peter Hsu.

Risa Gary Kaplowitz is on the American Ballet Theatre National Training Curriculum Board of Examiners and is an ABT® Affiliate Instructor, who has successfully completed the ABT® Teacher Training Intensive in Primary through Level 7 and Partnering and has successfully presented students for examinations. She resides in Florida where she is on the faculty of The Sarasota Ballet’s Marjorie Barbieri Conservatory.

Kaplowitz was originally trained at Maryland Youth Ballet by Tensia Fonseca, Michelle Lees, and Roy Gean. She went on to dance as a principal dancer with Dayton Ballet under Stuart Sebastion, and as company member of Houston Ballet under Ben Stevenson and Ballet Manhattan under Charla Genn. She has also performed with Pennsylvania Ballet and Metropolitan Opera Ballet and as a guest artist with many companies nationwide. She has performed the repertoire of many choreographers including Fredrick Ashton, George Balanchine, Ben Stevenson, and Stuart Sebastian.

After spending ten years in a successful business career while building a family, Kaplowitz returned to the dance world and founded Princeton Dance and Theater Studio and Princeton Youth Ballet (formerly DanceVision, Inc.) with Susan Jaffe, former principal ballerina with American Ballet Theatre. Kaplowitz stayed as PDT’s Director and the Artistic Director of Princeton Youth Ballet for 18 years where she choreographed more than twenty ballets including The Secret Garden, The Snow Queen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Nutcracker. Additionally, she has choreographed for several New Jersey Symphony Orchestra family and school outreach concerts. Many of her students went on to have professional dance careers.

Kaplowitz has written on matters of dance for The Huffington Post and 4Dancers.com.  She also started the dance program and was an adjunct professor of dance at The College of New Jersey, and has lectured the ABT/NYU Master candidates on starting a dance studio. Most recently, she was featured in Dance Teacher Magazine’s, “What My Teacher Taught Me,” written by her former student, Jillian Davis of Complexions Contemporary Ballet Company.