Ballet Studio Set Stage for Students' Careers

Current performers and stars from the past gathered Saturday afternoon for a final look at the Irine Fokine Ballet Studio in Ridgewood where they began their careers.

For 60 years,  Fokine taught ballet to hundreds of youngsters from Ridgewood, Wyckoff, Waldwick, Glen Rock and other nearby towns. The studio will close on Sept. 1.

Eric Tamm of American Ballet Theater, a student from this decade, stopped by to say goodbye. So did Christina Theryoung Neira, a student from the 1990s and now a principal with the New Jersey Ballet.

Fokine "was very strict," Neira sad. "She knew what she wanted, and she wanted it then and there. This provided a foundation. The discipline was very good."

Karen Agnello of Wyckoff, a child of the 1960s, left Fokine at 10. "Thanks to Irine's training I was able to land my first show, Carousel, at City Center."  She later became an apprentice at the Joffrey and a principal with the Terpsichore Company.

"When I returned years later, I joined the (Fokine) faculty," Agnello said. "I was a dancer, not a teacher.  Irine taught me how to teach."

But even her students who went into other careers credited Fokine's discipline with enabling them to get on with their careers. "If you can get through her training, you can get through anything," said Melissa Litton, who was at the studio from 1982 to 1993.  She is now a child neuropsychologist.

Pandora Amoratis, now a fashion editor at the New York Daily News, also was at the studio in the early 1990s and fondly recalls the many roles she had in Fokine's annual "Nutcracker" production.

"She empowers people," said Sarah Knesevitch, recalling the Fokine training.  Knesevitch left the studio in 2001 and is now a special education teacher.

Kristine Bendul, who has a starring role in "Come Fly Away," was otherwise engaged, but her mother, Pat, stopped by to chat, crediting Irine with providing the foundation for Kristine's very successful Broadway career. "You can't build a house without a foundation," she said.  "Irine was the instructor who challenged her the most."

Carol Rioux, who danced for Irine in the early 1960s, recalled a Fokine ballet, Bacchanal,  in which she was required to jump from a platform into the arms of four men. "I was scared to death," Rioux said.  "I said, I can't. Irine said 'jump.'  I jumped."

For the benefit of  the crowd, Rioux, dance historian Andrew Wentink, and Dance Magazine Editor Wendy Perron recalled their favorite Fokine ballets and the fun they had performing in them in those early years. 

Perron recalled Irine telling them, "When you are on the stage, even if you are not on center stage, you must remember people can see you."

"Irine taught us not just dance but about theater," said Suzie Winson, a Fokine student of the 1970s who originated the role of the nun who wanted to dance in Broadway's "Nunsense." She also appeared on Broadway in "Annie" and in Tommy Tune's "My One and Only."

Winson now has her own studio in New York, teaching circus arts, including trapeze, and starts her students with a ballet class each day at 9 a.m.  "And they have to show up no matter what," she said, echoing her one-time mentor.