Hometown Dance & Fitness

413 West Verona Avenue
Ph: 608.235.8888
E-Mail: balletu@tds.net

Master Teacher, Charmaine Ristow, has an extensive performance background coupled with worldwide experience in founding, performing, directing and choreographing for dozens of dance companies. She is also a certified Pilates instructor and personal trainer.

Ms. Ristow started dancing at the age of three and continued her education by studying ballet, choreography, modern, lyrical jazz, and musical theatre with such notable teachers as David Howard, Xenia Chlistowa and Edward Villella. She earned her BS degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has been awarded the Wisconsin Dance Council's Certificate of Distinction.

She has taught at the Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and Madison Civic ballets, as well as the University of Wisconsin-Madison Major Dance Program, Stockholm Academie and Dance Masters of America.

Ms. Ristow gained invaluable knowledge while rehearsing and performing with Rudolf Nureyev in "Les Sylphides" in addition to studying and performing with the internationally acclaimed Jean-Paul Comelin's Milwaukee Ballet, touring throughout Europe with Stockholm's Cullbergballetten as well as dancing in the Edinburgh Festival.

She co-founded, performed and choreographed for the Wisconsin Dance Ensemble, Choreographer's Consortium, Kanopy Dance Theater, Madison Civic Ballet, and MetroDance, Inc. Charmaine's students can be seen performing with numerous major companies such as the Pacific Northwest Ballet and American Ballet Theatre.

Ms. Ristow has recently been
invited to give Master Classes and set choreography at National Taiwan Sport University in 2009.

Ballet University's Community Presence:

Serving as a community health advocate, HD&F's Director, Charmaine Ristow is joining a national awareness drive by working with several Verona organizations to bring education regarding prevention of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and arthritis into local schools. Additionally, a new non-profit arts organization will begin presenting Verona's own annual "Nutcracker Suite" including dancers and local celebrities of all ages, levels and abilities, which is open to participation for dancers from all studios. Auditions will be held the last Saturday of September, with rehearsals scheduled for Saturday afternoons, and according to dancers' availability. Lead roles will feature some of HD&F's professionally recruited dancers as well as giving local scholarship students their first opportunity to learn to dance and perform on stage. A fibromyalgia support group is also in the planning stages.

Ballet University Mission:

Teaching classical ballet to all ages and levels of experience through scientifically, artistically and nurturing methodology by a professionally experienced Master Teacher/internationally acclaimed, award-winning performer in an intimate (maximum six students) environment with ballet barres, mirrors, and sprung wood floors, enhancing personal wellness, and through its outreach programs, community arts awareness.

Class Placement:

Students are placed in the most suitable class by age, experience, motivation, self-discipline, previous attendance, maturity, and physical development. Student's initial class serves as a placement audition. Promotion is based on assimilation of the current vocabulary and mastery of movements for each level, which usually requires more than one year's study. Pointe work begins about age 11 after four year's training. Students are individually evaluated for readiness, and then biweekly attendance is REQUIRED.

Recent Ballet Kudo News:

Our twelve-year old student, Elizabeth Pischel, won the Bronze Medal/Third Place in the Junior Contemporary Division at the Youth America Grand Prix in Chicago on February 6, 2010. Elizabeth has been invited to attend the YAGP Summer Intensive in New York and has been extended several offers from professional company's schools for continued study.

Our graduating seniors, Becca Shulla and Brittany Hammer, have both been accepted at several major university dance programs, including the University of Arizona (Ms. Hammer has elected to attend there this Fall), Butler, Texas Christian and the University of Utah/Ballet West.

Our college graduate/resident professional, Ella Rosewood, will perform her solo concert with commissioned works by several New York choreographers in Madison in December, perform a Janis Joplin piece choreographed by Ms. Ristow on March 15, and is auditioning for several major companies, including Pilobolus, over the next few months.