About Me
Teaching at NYSSSA, 2007
Living in Manhattan I am immersed in the culture, excitement, and fast paced life of city living. Days are spent working as a freelance dancer, teaching artist, choreographer, residency design consultant and arts administrator. Below is my full bio or you can email me for more info at ballarodance@gmail.com.
Graduating summa cum laude from The State University of New York College at Brockport, Marisa f. Ballaro is thrilled to be living and working as an artist in New York City where the energy of the city serves as inspiration. With dual degrees in Dance and Interdisciplinary Arts for Children, Ms. Ballaro has a passion for arts education as well as dance performance. She spent a year at Brockport creating a five-day motor retention study to research the impact of mental imagery on physical practice in dancers and non-dancers. It was one of the most daring thesis projects completed in the Honors Program, and she is currently working towards publication of her manuscript. While in the dance department at Brockport Ms. Ballaro studied under Melanie Aceto, Anne Burnidge, Bill Evans, James Hanson, Greg Ketchum, Mariah Maloney, Clyde Morgan, Diane McGhee, Juanita Suarez, and Wallie Wolfgruber.
Originally from Buffalo, NY, Ms. Ballaro received all of her early ballet training from her mother, Michelle Zalewski Ballaro. She was a student of the New York State Summer School of the Arts prestigious modern dance program in Saratoga Springs, NY for five summers before attending college. The program, under the direction of Carolyn Adams and Julie Adams Strandberg along with various master artists in residence has a focus in technique, repertory, composition, and dance history. Ms. Ballaro was able to perform the works of David Parsons, Robert Battle, Anna Sokolow and Pearl Primus, to name a few. She began teaching and choreographing while in Buffalo and at NYSSSA as a young person; this is where her passion began.
In the summer of 2008, Ms. Ballaro was selected as an Access Dance/USA scholarship recipient and invited to attend the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver, and then went on to set her own work on the students of the NYSSSA program that same summer. She has presented work in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Providence, RI and New Haven, CT. In June 2009 Ms. Ballaro set her work titled Catch Flow on Delaware’s NOVA Dance Company. In August she completed her fourth residency while on faculty at NYSSSA as a member of the American Dance Legacy Institute’s performing and teaching ensemble, Dancing Legacy. Ms. Ballaro is ADLI’s Communications Director and past involvement has included designing methodology, teacher training institutes and performer intensives.
Currently Ms. Ballaro works as a teaching artist with LeAp, Creative Music Programs, and BallaroDance. She is Vice Chair for the Youth Advisory Committee of Dance/NYC, on the SUNY Brockport Alumni Board of Directors and a volunteer with StreetWise Partners.
