Miss Cynthia, Teacher:

Cynthia Ridler has been teaching ballet for over 25 years all across the US. With a corresponding 13 year performing career with Ballet West and the Cincinnati Ballet, performing all of the traditional classical repertoire and many works by important choreographers of the 20th century. She performed in theaters from Anchorage, AL, to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. She is well respected by her colleagues and loved by her students for her energetic mentorship, her enthusiasm for ballet, and her meticulous attention to detail. As a professional student she attended both the Ballet West Academy and the University of Utah on full scholarship. She also holds a magna cum laude BS in Psychology from the University of Cincinnati. Cynthia was blessed as a student to be trained and mentored personally by Willam F. Christensen, founder of the San Francisco Ballet and Ballet West. Her pivotal training in Utah was done at the hands of Densie Schultze Godfrey, Louis Godfrey, Conrad Ludlow, Jan Fugit and Sharee Lane.

Cynthia took on the role of owning a ballet studio in Jackson, MS, in 2002. Seeing an opportunity in the Fondren neighborhood of that city, she rented warehouse space and proceeded to build all of the infrastructure needed for a studio. This included installing ballet barres, mirrors, and a specialized sprung floor. All of the graphic design and marketing was handled by Cynthia, and she opened her doors in August of 2002 with 45 students.

Over the next two years, her student body grew to over 150 students. She entered into a strategic partnership with an existing studio about 25 miles north of her location, in order to share the costs of producing performances. She also worked with the Mississippi Society for Disabilities to create a program of classes and specialized performances, providing an opportunity for dancers with spinal cord injuries to participate in the creation of a specially commissioned ballet. Her work with this organization also led to the creation of a weekly class for children with special needs, adapting the ballet curriculum to provide these students with both classes and performance opportunities.

Cynthia moved to Pittsburgh, Pa, in 2005, and shortly joined the faculty of Pittsburgh Youth Ballet. As a leading faculty member of that school, she oversaw casting, scheduling, repertoire choices, and the placement of students within the curriculum. She choreographed and rehearsed students in both stagings of The Sleeping Beauty, Coppelia, Cinderella and The Nutcracker as well as creating her own version of a ballet adaptation of The Velveteen Rabbit. She served as rehearsal director for stagings of the works of George Balanchine’s Who Cares?, Waltz of the Hours from Coppelia, Harlequinade, the Scherzo from a Midsummer Night’s Dream and Waltz of the Snowflakes from Balanchine’s The Nutcracker and Jerome Robbins’ Circus Polka. This work especially helped connect her to a network of dance professionals from the famous New York City Ballet, connections that she maintains to this day. While in Pittsburgh she also was adjunct faculty in the dance department of Point Park University Conservatory of Dance and served as the ballet mistress for Abby Lee Miller Dance Company.

In 2015, she moved to Salt Lake City, UT, where she became a member of the principal faculty at Ballet West Academy(BWA). In this capacity she helped to develop the Professional Training Division of the Academy, teaching across all 4 campuses, working to develop the curriculum for ages 6-18, recruiting and auditioning nationally for the summer intensive. She loved her opportunity to serve as rehearsal director for Balanchine’s Valse Fantasie, Concerto

Barocco, Walspurgis Nacht and Western Symphony. She also had the privilege to be rehearsal director for Viva Vivaldi choreographed by Gerald Arpino. An ongoing passion is the coaching and preparing of young performers for participation in international ballet competitions such as The Youth American Grand Prix, World Ballet Competition and ADCIBC. Her solo students have gone on to win scholarships to national and international schools. She served on the Juries of the Miami International Ballet Competition and Canann International Dance Competition.