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| Our Mission Statment
"Bringing arts to the community and the community to the arts."
Our Vision Statement
Focus on providing platforms for the development of dancers and choreographers, repertoire expansion and a reinvestment in the infrastructure of underserved communities through aggressive community programming, and public and private partnerships and a continual reassessment of the vision and focus
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| Biography
Rodolfo Mendez, Artistic Director
Founded Ballet East Dance Company in 1978 as a company dedicated to excellence in modern dance and choreography. He studied classical ballet with what is now Ballet Austin, flamenco and folkloric dance, and as a member of the Peace Corps, danced with the national companies of Costa Rica and Chile and developed theater and dance curriculum for the public schools of Costa Rica. He studied in New York City at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance on scholarship, American Ballet Theatre and Alvin Ailey American Dance School, danced off-Broadway, and toured with companies based in New York City. He studied flamenco dance in Spain on a Fulbright Scholarship with Jose Molina and Pepe Fernandez.
Ballet East has long maintained an active outreach program, following Mendez’s belief that the arts can transform the lives of individuals and communities. The company acts as a force for change with lively after-school programs, scholarships for dancers and other performers, internships in stagecraft, and special projects in community building and development. These efforts have been recognized at the local, state and national level; for example, Ballet East’s Dare to Dance program was selected as a semifinalist for the Coming Up Taller Awards of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities two years in a row. In 2006 the Austin Critics’ Table in recognition of the consistently high standards Ballet East Dance Company has sustained for close to thirty years inducted Rodolfo Mendez into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame. Mendez believes the arts are surging with new energy now, and that leadership must emerge to support it.
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Melissa Villarreal, Associate Director
Began dancing under the direction of Rodolfo Mendez at the age of 14. Throughout her years as a performer with Ballet East, Ms. Villarreal had the opportunity to work with various talented and notable local, national and international choreographers such as Fred Benjamin, Max Luna III, Regina Larkin, Carmen de Lavallade, Bruce Wood, Hope Boykin, Sabrina Madison-Cannon, Eugene Slavin, Stephen Mills, Jason Ansara Brooks, Andrea Ariel, Toni Bravo, Andrea Beckham, Lyn Wiltshire, Gina Patterson, and Eric Midgley to name a few. In June 1997, July 1998, and July 2000, she attended master classes in New York, through scholarships awarded by Regina Larkin, Artistic Director of the Joyce Trisler Danscompany.
In 1996, Ms. Villarreal became the Assistant Artistic Director, resident choreographer and teacher of Ballet East; and recently in 2010 became Associate Director. She has set over 30 original works on the company. Her first work; And God Created Woman debuted in December 1997. In June 2006, she began collaborating with UpRise! Productions, as a teacher and choreographer. She has been invited as a guest choreographer for Tapestry's Visions In Rhythm, Paramount Theatre's Summer Youth Project, EastSide Memorial High School's Drill Team, and Nudo Piedi Contemporary Dance Company. Ms. Villarreal’s collaborative and independent works have been featured at the Annual National SpitFest, The Hot September Flurries, Frontera Fest, and Zilker Park’s Trail of Lights, and the Paramount Theater in Austin. Her 1999's choreography "Liquid Diamonds" was commissioned by The Muse Project, and performed in Hollywood, California.
In Spring 2010 she was invited by St. Edward's University Ballet Folklorico Dance as a guest teacher, where she taught the finesse of technique and line as a dance workshop. Since 2009, she has been regularly invited to teach master classes for Nudo Piedi Contemporary Dance Company in Laredo, Texas.
Ms. Villarreal is also the Artistic Coordinator of the “Annual Festival Celebrating Youth”, an umbrella project through Ballet East, which she hosts annually in May. By day, she continues to thrive artistically as the Cultural Arts Enrichment Programs Coordinator for Southwest Key, where she actively enjoys working with and mentoring youth through the Latino Art forms of Ballet Folklorico, Mariachi, and Bilingual Theater. She is also the Fine Arts Coordinator for the newly built charter school, East Austin College Prep Academy, where she teaches 6th, 7th, and 8th graders how to tap into their creative minds. In Spring 2010, she was nominated by Southwest Key for Ballet Austin Guild's "Women On Their Toes" award, due to her extensive volunteer service to the East Austin Community through the arts.
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