Directors Barry & Amy Trammell

Premier Classical Ballet Training

Barry Trammell
has danced extensively across the United States for the last 20 years. His professional career has taken him from Ballet Florida and Oregon Ballet Theatre to City Ballet of Houston and Memphis Ballet. Principal roles in The Sleep Beauty, Giselle, and The Nutcracker were his forte. In performing these roles he developed an esteemed reputation as a sensitive, caring, and strong partner. Through out his career he has sought to work with the magnificent artists of the Russian tradition of Classical Ballet. Among these artists are Leo Ahohnen, Marek Cholewa, Andrei Ustinov, and Elena Martinson. As a result of his collaboration with these distinguished dancers, he has abosorbed the rich, centuries' old tradition of Russian Classical Ballet (a.k.a. the Vaganova Method). Upon retiring from active performing, Mr. Trammell decided to dedicate himself to teaching. Some of his students went on to win awards at national ballet competitions as well as dance professionally.

Amy Trammell
earned a place in the illustrious Colorado Ballet. She was chosen as one from amoung hundreds of dancers auditioning in Europe, Japan, and The United States. While dancing with this international company she had the honor of working with artists from the Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg, Russia. Mrs. Trammell trained, on full Scholarship, at the International Ballet School in Denver, Colorado. While there she studied with German and Valentina Zamuel from the Maly Theatre of St. Petersurg, Russia and the Royal Ballet School of London respectively. Mrs. Trammell has danced a wide repertoire of ballets from contemporary to classical. With the Grand Valley Ballet she had the opportunity to develop her teaching skills as a protege of Ildiko Fricasy. Her teacher training gave her a base in the Vaganova Method as well as an elaborately creative class structure for teaching young children.


                                           Teaching Method


     The Vaganova techique is widely recognized as the most comprehensive method of teaching Classical Ballet.
     Mme. Vaganova (1879-1951) danced at the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia under the directorship of Marius Petipa (the father of Classical Ballet.) While she was known as the "Queen of the variation" she was continually frustrated in her career. Remarkably, she only achieved the title of "Ballerina" one year before she retired in 1916. She blamed this in large part to the haphazard and ineffective teaching methods of her time. Thus, she set out to develop an incomparable method of teaching. She sought to combine the strength and agility of the Italian school with the plastique and elan of the French school. By the mid 1930's she had created a technique that was producing outstanding results. Her dancers were known for their amazing and seemingly contradictory qualities: incredible strength, suppleness, pliancy, expressiveness, and the all important "iron aplomb" (the ability of a dancer to maintain a strong vertical axis).
     Besides an illustrious method, we believe that there are other important attributes to excellence in training dancers. We focus on the student's strengths while teaching them to overcome their weaknesses.    In addition, we treat each student as an individual. We strive to learn their temperament as we have found that by learning their emotional characteristics we can find the best means of maximizing the student's potential.
    While the Vaganova Technique is our principal method of teaching, we do not use it to the exclusion of all others. We regularly incorporate and discuss Bournonville Technique and Balanchine Technique in our classes among others.