Oleg Briansky was born in Belgium
and received his early ballet training with Leonide Katchourowsky in Brussels. He
pursued his
studies in Paris, London
and New York.
He began his professional career with the Ballet de Paris Roland Petit
and had
also been a principal dancer with the Ballet des Champs-Elysees, London
Festival Ballet, the Royal Opera House in Antwerp,
the Prinzregentheater in Munich, Germany,
the
Metropolitan Opera Ballet and the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet.
Mr. Briansky is the founder and
director of the Briansky Saratoga Ballet
Center, a summer ballet
program in Saratoga Springs,
New York. He has
also taught for the Dance Theatre of
Harlem, the School of American Ballet, the Teatro Communale (Florence, Italy),
Danceworks (London), Conservatoire
National de
Musique de Paris, Universal Ballet Company (Seoul,
Korea), Teatro
Municipal (Rio de Janeiro), the Third
International Training Course
in Ponte l'Abbe, Brittany (France),
and Rosella Hightower's Centre de Danse Classique (Cannes, France).
From 1990 to 1991 Mr. Briansky was
associate director of the Universal
Ballet Academy in Washington, DC.
Mr. Briansky is currently co-artistic director of the Lehigh Valley PA
Youth
Ballet in Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania.
Mr. Briansky has also appeared as
Madge in the Universal Ballet company's
production of La Sylphide and has appeared as a guest artist
with
regional ballet companies in the role of Herr Drosselmeyer.
Mr. Briansky's ballets are in the
repertoires of London Festival Ballet and
many regional ballet companies and opera companies in the United States, including his new
productions of Scheherazade
and Firebird for Ballet Memphis and the American premiere of Romeo
and Juliet by the Charleston Ballet in West Virginia. In 1993 Mr. Briansky
created
the choreography for the world premiere of the opera, Petticoat,
in Washington, D.C.
In 1994 Mr. Briansky restaged Scheherazade for the Southern
Ballet
Theatre (Orlando, Florida) and created the
choreography for
the off-Broadway production of Ballet Russes. In 1995, Mr.
Briansky
choreographed the world premiere, Country Moon, for the
Charleston
Ballet, set to the recordings of Country and Western star, Patsy Cline.
Country
Moon has also been re-staged for Ballet Mississippi and the Lehigh Valley PA
Youth
Ballet. Mr. Briansky's A Furtive Tryst was given its world
premiere at
the Detroit
Music Hall
as part of the gala program,
An Evening of Ballet Stars, and danced by Christina Fagundes and
Charles
Askegard of American Ballet Theatre. He also created Death and the
Lumberjack
for Valentina Kozlova and David Kierce for the French
Institute/Alliance
Francaise's Tribute to La Fontaine.
Mr. Briansky was artistic director
for The Children of Theatre Street,
a feature documentary on the Vaganova Choreographic Institute in Leningrad, which
was
nominated for the Academy Award in 1978. He has also translated Classes
in
Classical Ballet by Asaf Messerer and One Hundred Classes in
Classical
Ballet by Vera Kostrovitskaya. He has also been a panelist for the
New
York State Council on the Arts and has served on the jury of the Prix
de
Lausanne International Ballet Competition. In 1994 Mr. Briansky was the
recipient of the Nijinsky Award for his ballet, Scheherazade,
in honor
of Mr. Briansky's efforts to educate and inform audiences about the
life of
Nijinsky. Mr. Briansky has also been a Chair of the National Honorary
Committee
for the USA International Ballet Competition.
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