Co-Founder and Co-Director

Mireille Briane

Shortly after beginning her ballet training at 8 years-old with the Paris Opera, Ms. Briane was performing in the famous children’s ballet “L’Eventail de Jeanne.” At sixteen she became a principal dancer at the Grand Theatre of Bordeaux, France. Since then she has appeared with the Ballets de Paris, the Chicago Opera Ballet and London Festival Ballet (English National Ballet).

Ms. Briane has directed highly successful children’s ballets for Radio Television Francaise and she created a year-long series of educational ballet programs for Britain’s Independent Radio Television. She also led her own ballet school in London.

As choreographer of “The Nutcracker” for the Ballet de Rio de Janeiro she guided a cast of over 250, and later restaged it for the Garden State Ballet and the Omaha Ballet. Eventually she returned to the Ballet de Rio de Janeiro to teach company classes and stage “The Nutcracker” once again.

Lured back to the States by George Balanchine, Ms. Briane joined the faculty of the School of American Ballet and went on to teach at the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Alvin Ailey School of Dance. She is currently co-director, with her husband, of the Ballet Guild of the Lehigh Valley in Bethlehem, PA.