Ms. Muzio founded the Brandywine Ballet Company in l978. She has served continuously as the company's Artistic Director, and is also founder and director of The Dance Center, the official school of the Brandywine Ballet Company. Ms. Muzio's dedication to the highest standards in training and performance has helped catapult the company and school to the top tier of pre-professional dance institutions in Pennsylvania. This insistence on excellence has made possible Ms. Muzio's staging of such classics as The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Coppelia - all of which have been widely popular and enormously successful among Chester County audiences and critics alike.
Ms. Muzio has strived to establish a company that is proficient in both classical dance and more contemporary forms of movement. To this end, Ms. Muzio promotes a training regimen which offers advanced-level classes in classical technique, supplemented by master classes in the development of individual expression and present-day aesthetics. Previous master class teachers have been carefully selected from such renowned companies as the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Pennsylvania Ballet, and Joffrey Ballet. The ever-growing addition of original works to the company's repertoire by emerging choreographers, such as Matthew Neenan (Ballet X, Choreographer in Residence Pennsylvania Ballet), Ronen Koresh (Koresh Dance Company), and Meredith Rainey (Pennsylvania Ballet) is just one of the many indicators that Ms. Muzio is successfully imparting dancers with a modern mindset firmly rooted in tradition, and presenting regional audiences with cutting-edge ballet performances.
Perhaps most notably, Ms. Muzio's stewardship has lent to an impressive output of area dancers ascending to the upper echelon of dance performance. To date, several students from the Brandywine Ballet Company have gone on to lead professional dance careers in such top ballet companies throughout the United States as New York City Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet, Sarasota Ballet, and Miami City Ballet. And now, with the success of Ms. Muzio's Certificate in Ballet Program through West Chester University and the Brandywine Ballet Theatre (a recently added professional wing of the company), the Brandywine Ballet has established itself as a popular destination for those looking to continue a professional career in dance.
Nancy Page, Ballet Mistress
A native of West Chester, Pa., Ms. Page was a principal dancer with the Brandywine Ballet Company while she still was in high school. She won a full scholarship to The Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts, and subsequently won full scholarships with the Milwaukee Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Richmond Ballet, and the Joffrey Ballet. She apprenticed with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater before accepting a company position with the Florida Ballet. With Florida Ballet she danced Belong, a gold medal pas de deux choreographed by Norbert Vasak. She later became a member of the Tampa/Colorado Ballet, dancing solo and principal roles in contemporary works. Ms. Page then accepted principal positions with the Sarasota Ballet and Ballet Eddy Toussaint USA. During those years, many contemporary ballets were set on Ms. Page and she performed in various classical ballets including Paquita, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker.
While dancing with the Brandywine Ballet Company, Ms. Page and partner Steven Jackson brought life to such works as Phantom, Beauty and the Beast, and By My Side, a pas de deux choreographed by Ms. Page. She danced the title role in the Brandywine Ballet Company’s Cinderella, which premiered in 1994, and performed it in 1995 at The Playhouse Theater in Wilmington, DE. Recently, she was invited to guest dance with companies in Jacksonville and Sarasota, Florida and in Haiti, with principal dancers from Ballet West and the Joffrey Ballet.
In the spring of 2000 Ms. Page premiered Voices, set to the magnificent score, Adagio for Strings, by Chester County's own composer, Samuel Barber. Voices was performed again recently in the fall of 2008. Since 2004, Brandywine Ballet's presentation of Ms. Page's Dracula in October has become an increasingly popular and dependably entertaining component of Chester County's fall arts programming. Presently Ms. Page occupies the position of Ballet Mistress for the Brandywine Ballet Company and Brandywine Ballet Theatre.
