About
The School
Ballet Arts Center for Dance, is a school with a superb curriculum, expert faculty, and rich in ballet tradition. Faculty members are selected for their knowledge and expertise in the field. Guest teachers are selected from the best of the dance profession. With a limited class size, the school facilitates training on a personal level. All the needs of the total beginner, as well as the pre-professional dancer and the adult student, are met. All classes are conducted in a positive environment to promote physical, emotional, intellectual and social growth. Students have the opportunity to grow in appreciation, understanding and enjoyment of dance as a form of personal expression and lifelong learning. Courses offered include childhood introduction to dance programs, ballet, jazz, tap, modern, and Mommy/Daddy&Me programs.
Miss Michelle teaching at Ballet Arts
Michelle Zalewski Ballaro is founding artistic director of Ballet Arts Center for Dance located in Cheektowaga, NY, and has been teaching classical ballet and movement classes to students of all ages for more than 35 years. She is a graduate of SUNY Buffalo and received her M.Ed. degree from Canisius College.
A native Buffalonian, Ms. Ballaro began her studies at the Kaloff School, founded by Alexis Kaloff, and continued her studies in New York City at American Ballet Theatre and Ballet Arts at Carnegie Hall, and in Oklahoma with the Oklahoma Ballet. Her early teaching credits include working for Michael Valentic, David DeMarie, Darlene Braitkus, Mount St. Mary’s High School and Kaloff’s Ballet School of Buffalo.
Ms. Ballaro has been guest faculty at many Early Childhood Education conferences and taught at the Children’s School of Chautauqua Institute. She hosted concerts with the Buffalo Civic Orchestra, the Cheektowaga Community Chorus, and the Cheektowaga Symphony, and has choreographed for many local school performances in the Western New York area.
More recently, in 2006 Ms. Ballaro was recipient of an award for “Meritorious Service in Dance Education for Children in Western New York” presented to her by the National Dance Education Organization. She has worked as rehearsal coach for the Columbus, Ohio Ballet Met production of The Nutcracker in collaboration with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Shea’s Performing Arts Center in 2007 and 2008. She was a judge for the Miss Buffalo Pageant at The Riviera Theatre in 2008, and has coached contestants for Miss Buffalo and the Erie County Junior Miss pageant, as well as dancers for the New York State Summer School of the Arts modern dance program in Saratoga Springs, NY. Ms. Ballaro has been guest faculty at the annual SUNY Brockport Dance Awareness Days conference for the years 2007, 2008, and 2009.
In addition to her direction and teaching at Ballet Arts, Ms. Ballaro is currently on dance faculty at St. Mary’s School for the Deaf, Darlene Ceglia’s Dance Project, and The Little Green House at the Nichols School.
