Faculty Updates for the 2024-2025 Winter Term
We are delighted to announce that SAB has acquired approximately 5,000 square feet of the Rose Building’s 6th floor to facilitate the expansion of the School’s artistic health and wellness programs (including a new Pilates studio, strength and conditioning facilities, physical therapy rooms, and one-on-one counseling spaces) and provide much-needed lounge and study areas for Intermediate and Advanced students to utilize throughout their training days. We are in the early stages of designing the expansion, but it is already clear that when the project is complete, our Rose Building headquarters will be thrillingly transformed. The 6th floor renovation should begin early in 2025 and the new space will be dedicated and opened for use in the fall of 2025.
This space expansion is a critical component of SAB’s ongoing mission to expand student physical health and wellness resources to better support the artistic growth and development of our students. The new facilities will ensure that more robust programs for strength and conditioning, injury prevention, injury recovery, and self-care can be fully integrated into the daily training routines of SAB’s Intermediate and Advanced students. This programmatic growth will require focused artistic leadership and oversight, and we are very pleased to announce that Aesha Ash will be stepping into the essential new role of Head of Artistic Health and Wellness at the start of the 2024-25 Winter Term. A member of SAB’s permanent faculty since 2020, Aesha has served as Associate Chair of Faculty for the past two years. In her current role she has already moved SAB’s focus on physical care and injury recovery forward in significant ways, and this new artistic leadership position will be critical to our comprehensive approach to student care and artistic development. Aesha will continue to teach weekly advanced technique classes alongside her new responsibilities.
In additional news for the coming school year, we will be expanding SAB’s artistic leadership structure and appointing dedicated management to oversee our individual training divisions. We are so pleased to announce that this September SAB and NYCB alumna Jenifer Ringer will be joining the artistic leadership team in the newly created role of Director of Intermediate/Advanced Divisions and Artistic Programming. Since concluding her celebrated performing career at New York City Ballet in 2014, Jenifer has become an accomplished teacher and arts administrator, co-founding the Colburn School’s Dance Academy with James Fayette in Los Angeles in 2017 and serving as Dean of Colburn’s Trudl Zipper Dance Institute until 2021. Over the past several years she has worked extensively in the U.S. and internationally as a répétiteur for the George Balanchine Trust and for the Jerome Robbins Trust, while also teaching in her home state of South Carolina. Jenifer has been a guest teacher at SAB in recent years and has recently been onsite to work with our advanced students. We are so excited to welcome Jenifer home to SAB and know that she has so much to contribute to the development of our Intermediate and Advanced students and to the day-to-day management of our artistic programs. We look forward to formally introducing Jenifer to our community this fall.
Finally, stepping into the role of Director of Children’s/Preparatory Divisions at the start of our next term will be current Senior Children’s Division Manager Katrina Killian. Katrina will continue to oversee SAB’s syllabus and teacher training programs but will take on broader artistic and administrative responsibilities pertaining to all aspects of the student training experience for those divisions. Over her almost thirty years as a member of SAB’s faculty, Katrina has served as a pivotal link to the syllabus developed by Antonina Tumkovsky and Helene Dudin, two leading teachers of SAB children’s classes for decades under George Balanchine’s watchful eye. Katrina has carried forward Tumey and Dudin’s expertise and maintained it as the foundation of our Children’s Division education. Katrina’s unique knowledge, passion for her work, and commitment to her students have made her an invaluable contributor to the School’s ongoing success, and we are very pleased to elevate her to this new role.
We feel fortunate to have the expertise and leadership of Aesha, Jenifer, and Katrina as we look to SAB’s future. We know that all three will play vital roles in fulfilling our mission to provide students with unparalleled training while supporting their physical and developmental needs in the best possible way.
