Rinat Gizatulin
Rinat Gizatulin studied dance at the Choreographic Institute in Moscow, the school associated with the famous Bolshoi Ballet. There he was trained by ballet master Alexander Prokofiev. In 1979 he joined the Gorky Ballet as the youngest second soloist, where he danced lead roles in Don Quixote, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet and Giselle. In 1981 he transferred to the Moscow Classical Ballet, where he held the rank of principal soloist.
From 1986 he also developed into a ballet master, for which he was taught by Naum Azarin-Messerer, followed by two years of study at the famous GITIS Institute in Moscow. Gizatulin's international career started in 1991 with Dortmund Ballett, Germany, where he was simultaneously second soloist and ballet master. In 1993 he obtained his education diploma in the Netherlands and since then he has been teaching classical ballet at both Dutch National Ballet and the National Ballet Academy. In 2010 he was appointed senior teacher at Dutch National Ballet.
Grigori Tchitcherine
"It is impossible for me not to want to pass on what others - teachers and choreographers - have put in me. In terms of dance education, I firmly believe in the combination of tradition and innovation. And by tradition I do not mean that you keep groping and turning around in the ashes, in the "old" and dusty, but that you know how to keep that tradition alive. Or, as Mahler once so beautifully put it, "Tradition is the passing on of the fire, not the worship of the ashes."
Grigori Tchitcherine - Grisha as his colleagues and students call him - has been teaching classical ballet and caractère at the National Ballet Academy since 2001. He is also a much sought-after guest teacher at Dutch National Ballet, the Youth America Grand Prix, the Académie Princesse Grace in Monte-Carlo, the Ballett-Akademie der Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, Tanz Akademie Zürich, the Ballettschule Theater Basel and with the company where he started his dance career, the Marijinski Ballet in Saint Petersburg.
Initially, Tchitcherine wanted to be a gymnast, but after he was rejected from the gymnasium where he auditioned, he started pre-ballet classes at the Vaganova Academy at the age of nine, on the advice of his mother. Because he was small in stature, he was allowed to dance for many years in the performances of the Marijinski Ballet. After his education, he danced with the Marijinski Ballet for five years, where he danced solo roles such as the Blue Bird in The Sleeping Beauty, in the pas de trois in Swan Lake and Paquita and in the farmer's pas de deux in Giselle. Love brought Tchitcherine to the Netherlands in 1994, where he danced with Dutch National Ballet in the rank of coryphée until 2005. Already in his first season he danced the role of the Blue Bird in Sir Peter Wright's production of The Sleeping Beauty.
It was Anatoli Nisnevich, his former teacher at the Vaganova Academy, who inspired him at an early age to start teaching later. After his departure from the dance stage, Tchitcherine obtained his bachelor's degree as a teacher in 2008 in Saint Petersburg. He has now also transferred a large part of the Vaganova Teacher Training method to various former dancers of the Dutch National Ballet, some of whom are now also teachers at the National Ballet Academy.
Laurence Korsenti
Laurence Korsenti studied at L’École de Danse de l’Opéra de Marseille under the guidance of Rosella Hightower, Pedro Consuegra and later Roland Petit. As a ballet student, she toured several times with Les Ballets de Marseille. After her education she danced successively with the Israel Ballet, Scapino Ballet, Ballett Frankfurt and the Scottish Ballet, where she was promoted as principal soloist.
After completing her ballet teacher training, she was a teacher at the Royal Conservatoire's dance academy in The Hague from 1992 to 2011. In 2011 she joined the National Ballet Academy as a teacher of classical ballet. From 2014 to 2016, she was also the academy's pedagogical coordinator. As a guest teacher, Korsenti also regularly teaches at the Royal Ballet School in London.
Jane Lord
Jane Lord, an American, studied for four years at Canada's National Ballet School. She then joined Dutch National Ballet in 1979. In 1982, as a member of the corps de ballet, she danced her first lead role as Giselle in Sir Peter Wright's production of this famous ballet classic. Two years later, Lord was promoted to second soloist and first soloist in 1990. Except in Giselle she danced leading roles in evening-filling ballets such as Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella and Swan Lake. Especially for the role of Julia, she was intensively coached by Rudi van Dantzig, who also asked her in 2000 to dance this role in Florence, with Maggio Danza. She has also appeared in other works by Van Dantzig, such as Vier letzte Lieder and the Autumn Haze, which was created especially for her, and in choreographies by Sir Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Wayne Eagling, Hans van Manen and Toer van Schayk, among others. Lord won several prizes for her achievements as a dancer, including the Golden Theater Dance Prize of the Association of Theater and Concertgebouw Directors, the Duval-Leroy Oeuvre Prize and the Prize of Merit from Stichting Dansersfonds '79.
After completing her dance career, Lord completed several teacher training courses, including at Kalina Boegova, David Howard, Canada's National Ballet School and American Ballet Theater, where she completed the "ABT® Teacher Training Intensive for Primary to Level 3" in 2013. She has taught at Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, the Dutch Summer Dance Course, Amsterdam Dance Center and the Henny Jurriëns Studio, among others. She has also given repertoire and pointe lessons at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and gave ballet, pointe technique and repertoire to ballet students and teachers during the Yokohama Intensive in Japan in 2017 and 2018. Lord has been with the National Ballet Academy since 2011 as a talent scout and coordinator of the outreach program. She also teaches
classical ballet and teaches them in repertoire and variations. She has also been a regular on stage with Dutch National Ballet since 2017, as a guest character dancer in various evening-filling productions
Ainara Garcia Navarro
The dance training of Ainara Garcia Navarro took place partly in her native Spain and partly in Cuba. In 1998 she started working for Dutch National Ballet, where she eventually became a grand sujet and also made various choreographies of her own. In 2005 she switched to the Ballett am Rhein in Düsseldorf. Garcia Navarro performed a wide range of solo roles in both the classical and contemporary repertoire, including works by George Balanchine, Ted Brandsen, Rudi van Dantzig, William Forsythe, Hans van Manen, Toer van Schayk and Martin Schläpfer.
After ending her dance career in 2012, Garcia Navarro has developed into a teacher. In recent years she has taught at the Spanish Conservatorio Municipal de Danza de Zaragoza, at the Henny Jurriëns Studio, the Junior Company of Dutch National Ballet and at the Graz Oper in Austria. Since 2017 she is a teacher of classical ballet at the National Ballet Academy.
Nathalie Caris
Nathalie Caris was educated at Canada's National Ballet School in Toronto. When she graduated in 1981, she accepted an invitation from former artistic director Rudi van Dantzig to dance with Dutch National Ballet. She was associated with the company for 24 years, of which seventeen years as principal soloist and then two years as ballet master. She danced countless leading roles, both in the classical repertoire and in works by George Balanchine, Ted Brandsen, Rudi van Dantzig, William Forsythe, Hans van Manen, Krzysztof Pastor, Toer van Schayk and Glen Tetley, among others.
She also danced regularly as a guest soloist with foreign companies and performed at various international ballet gala. Caris was known for her great technical ability, but also for her organic way of moving and her strong stage personality. During her dance career she received The Peter Dwyer Awart, a Canada Council Grant, the Alexandra Radius Prize and the Merit Prize from Stichting Dansersfonds '79.
Caris has been teaching classical ballet at the National Ballet Academy since 2010.
Ernst Meisner
Ernst Meisner was appointed artistic director of the National Ballet Academy in September 2018. In addition, he is very active as a choreographer and, since 2013, he is the artistic coordinator of the Junior Company of Dutch National Ballet founded that year.
Meisner studied at the National Ballet Academy himself and completed his dance education at the Royal Ballet School in London. He danced with The Royal Ballet from 2000 to 2010 and then with Dutch National Ballet. until the establishment of the Junior Company.
During his dance training he started choreographing and in recent years he has made a large number of works for Dutch National Ballet, including And after we were (2011), Saltarello (2012), Dutch National Canta Ballet (2012), Axiom of Choice ( 2014), In Transit (2017), Impermanence (2018) and the children's production De kleine grote kist (2011).
Meisner choreographed for the Dutch National Ballet Junior Compan, Embers (2013), Lollapalooza (2013), No Time Before Time (2016) and Revelry (2017). With Marco Gerris, artistic director of urban dance company ISH, he made the acclaimed 'hip hop meets ballet' productions Narnia: de Leeuw, de Heks en de Kleerkast (2014) and GRIMM (2018). In addition, Meisner also created choreographies for the New York Choreographic Institute (part of New York City Ballet), The Royal Ballet New Works Program, English National Ballet School, DanceEast and Encore Dance Company.
Meisner has been a guest teacher at the English National Ballet School, the Summer Schools of The Royal Ballet School, Korean Youth Ballet Stars and the Youth American Grand Prix, among others. As a young dancer he reached the final of the Eurovision Young Dancers competition in 1999 and in the same year he was awarded the Encouragement Prize from Stichting Dansersfonds '79.