Tap & Jazz

AMY REUSCH CHIBEAU

Artistic Director

Amy Reusch/Chibeau began her training with Paris Opera trained Germaine Pacaud and her husband Roger Pacaud with whom she headlined the ballet company resident for decades at Radio City Music Hall.  At the age of 11, Amy transferred to New Jersey School of Ballet, the official school of the professional company New Jersey Ballet.  There she studied with teachers who had been soloists with American Ballet Theater, The Joffrey Ballet, Roland Petit’s Ballets des Champs Elysees, Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, Iranian National Ballet, Vienna State Ballet and The Australian Ballet. In high school, she taught young children in her basement to raise money for pointe shoes. As a dance major at SUNY Purchase, she studied with principals and soloists of New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater, as well as with dancers and repiteurs from the Martha Graham company, Jose Limon company and Merce Cunningham company.  She studied Improv with Mel Wong and Composition with Kazuko Hirobayashi. After college she continued to study ballet in New York City, at David Howard’s, NY Conservatory of Dance, Steps and Ballet Arts.  Realizing that a 5’10” woman faces an unlikely professional ballet career, she transitioned from pursuing a professional performing career into capturing dance on video.  She worked as a NABET generalist for TimeWarner in their Manhattan Cable television studio.  While living in Philadelphia, and working as the company videographer for Pennsylvania Ballet, a former classmate brought her in to teach and choreograph ballet at Ballets des Jeunes.   She has shot dance all over the country (NY, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, Lexington, Kansas City, Hartford, Stamford), working as house videographer for Pennsylvania Ballet, Ballet Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the National Doris Humphrey Society, as well as many many smaller companies and independent choreographers.  She was awarded a Pew Charitable Trust National Initiative to Preserve American Dance grant to preserve 5 Humphrey masterpieces which was reviewed by the NY Times, and was honored to shoot several coaching videos for the George Balanchine Foundation’s Interpreter’s Archive. She never stopped studying ballet, continuing to take class at The Rock School of the Pennsylvania Ballet, The Ruth Page Foundation, The School of the Hartford Ballet, and in New York.  She takes class when she travels, and so has studied in Boston, Seattle, London and Paris.  Amy has taught ballet continuously here in Connecticut since 2007.