Timothy Rinehart Yeager (Ballet Technique) is currently serving as ballet master for the Nashville Ballet and Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance. Prior to that he spent one season as ballet master for Charlotte’s Moving Poets Theatre of Dance after having performed with the North Carolina Dance Theatre for ten years. While with NCDT, he starred in ballets by Salvatore Aiello, Alvin Ailey, George Balanchine, Agnes DeMille, David Parsons and Paul Taylor among others. He has been a guest artist with the Dancer’s Ensemble, the Chautauqua Ballet and the Tampa Ballet. Mr. Yeager received his training at Sally Miller Dance, Third Street Music School Settlement, Syracuse University and the North Carolina School of the Arts. He has taught master classes and led intensive arts residencies throughout the eastern United States and is also an agent of the Salvatore Aiello estate, having staged Aiello’s works since 1996. In 2007 he helped to found “Nashville In Motion” a contemporary Summer dance company.
Heather Maloy (Ballet Technique) began her career as a choreographer shortly after joining the North Carolina Dance Theatre as a dancer in 1989. A graduate of NCSA, Maloy began her association with Salvatore Aiello, then director of NCDT, while still a student. He hired her at 17, making her at that time the youngest full company member in NCDT’s history, and she stayed for 13 years, dancing principal and soloist roles. She was featured in works by such choreographers as Aiello, George Balanchine, Alonzo King, David Parsons, Paul Taylor, William Forsythe and Alvin Ailey. She began choreographing on the company at the age of 19 and created a total of six works for NCDT. Maloy has created works for the Chautauqua Ballet and the Nashville Ballet, participated in Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet’s Choreoplan and set a work for NCSA’s Summer Performance Festival in Manteo, NC. In 2008, Maloy finished first in round one and third overall in the Ballet Nouveau Colorado 21st Century Choreography Competition and created a work for the Universtity of North Carolina School of the Arts’ Spring Dance performance. This Fall she created new works for the Wake Forest Dance Department and the Jacksonville Community College Dance Department. She has been living in Asheville, NC since 2003, where she founded the multimedia dance company Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance, acting as the artistic director and choreographing the majority of the work performed by the company. Heather Maloy is a full time faculty member of Center Stage.
Bat Abbit’s professional career began with the Nashville Ballet followed by the North Carolina Dance Theatre where, as a soloist he performed leading roles in works by Paul Taylor, David Parsons, Peter Pucci, and George Balanchine. He also performed works by Salvatore Aiello, most notably Fritz in The Nutcracker, and Miles in The Turn of the Screw. When leaving North Carolina Dance Theatre, Mr. Abbit was given a royalty free license for Tarantella by noted New York City Ballet ballerina Patricia McBride for whom the legendary George Balanchine created the ballet.
In 2000 Mr. Abbit joined the American Repertory Ballet under the direction of Graham Lustig. During this time he performed the role of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cadenza, Borderlines, Paramour, Urban Tangos, Autumn in Cinderella, and created roles in Silkscreens, as well as the roles of Fritz and the Nutcracker Prince in Graham Lustig’s The Nutcracker. Mr. Abbit joined the Artistic Staff of the American Repertory Ballet in 2003 as a Ballet Master.
He has choroegraphed several works for American Repertory Ballet including two for young audiences Jump, Frog, Jump! and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Vertical Time, a site-specific work performed at the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey Worlds End, Worlds Begin created together with Graham Lustig, and has just completed a new work Catch Me this spring.
He has assisted in the staging of Salvatore Aiello’s Rite of Spring, Evening and Cinderella, both by Graham Lustig, for Singapore Dance Theatre, mounted his own production of Coppelia for Ann Brodie’s Carolina Ballet, and choreographed Bending Towards the Light, A Jazz Nativity for audiences in New York and New Jersey. His pas de deux, Into the Light, won the Nashville Dance Project’s Choreographers’ Competition.
As a teacher Mr. Abbit has served on the faculties of the School of the Nashville Ballet, Vanderbilt University, Western Kenutcky University, DancePlace the official school of the North Carolina Dance Theatre, the American Repertory Ballet’s Princeton Ballet School, and Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. He has been on the faculty of the Snowy Range Summer Dance Festival at the University of Wyoming. Mr. Abbit holds a BFA from Western Kentucky University.
Joseph Curry (Director of Outreach) has danced professionally for the last fifteen years, performing nationally and internationally. Mr. Curry spent five years with North Carolina Dance Theatre followed by eight years with Moving Poets Theatre of Dance, both based in Charlotte NC. His experience has allowed him to choreograph for the school of the North Carolina Dance Theatre as well as the Moving Poets. He has also had the opportunity to work with Opera Carolina both as dancer and choreographer.
Curry has dedicated his life to working with children by creating and leading dance outreach programs for a number of schools and dance companies such as the North Carolina Dance Theatre, Roanoke Ballet and Savannah Dance Theatre. In addition to the outreach efforts Curry has been involved in, he has also worked with young students choreographing for the schools of the Fairfax Ballet, Roanoke Ballet Theatre, the Charlotte School of Ballet, Savannah Dance Theatre and the School of The North Carolina Dance Theatre. Joseph and his wife Miranda have recently begun a new chapter in their lives with the birth of their son Cyrus James. Finding Asheville an ideal place to raise a family, Curry is looking forward to continuing his involvement in the community and has enjoyed the warm welcome he has received in the past. He looks forward to returning to Asheville and Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance with great enthusiasm and appreciates the opportunity to help usher in a new era of dance education in the region.
more bios coming soon!