Claudia Jill Stoltman is a classically trained dancer, choreographer, visual artist and educator. She began her professional ballet training with Melissa Hayden of New York City Ballet and continued to train with some of the finest teachers in the Balanchine tradition as well as with noted teachers from American Ballet Theatre and the Paris Opera School of Ballet. Her performance credits also include the repertoire of Martha Graham, Jose Limon, Paul Taylor and Carolyn Adams.
She has performed as a featured soloist and presented her choreography at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and Portland Ballet, where she premiered Joyeux, a classical quartet to music by Tomaso Albinoni presented at the annual Capriccio Festival at Ogunquit Playhouse, one of the oldest regional theatres in the country situated in Maine. Additional works include Simple Gifts, which premiered at Jacob’s Pillow Sixty Fifth Anniversary Season; Imminent Voices based on Robert Redford’s film The Horse Whisperer; and Journeys, a work with Shakespearean imagery set to Bach’s Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins.
Her teaching and choreography credits include Brown University, Marymount College, the Masters School and Greenwich Academy. Ms. Stoltman continues to perform as a guest artist, to teach and to choreograph. She performed with the Eberli Ensemble as part of the Meet-the-Composer series at Marymount College. She is a graduate of Brown University, with a B.A. in Art and the recipient of the Susan Culver Rosenberg Award for Excellence in Academics and Dance. She holds an M.A. in Dance and Dance Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and has designed arts-in-education residencies in classical ballet, as well as the inter-relationship between classical traditions in dance and related arts and academic disciplines. She has presented workshops under the auspices of Imagination Celebration grants through the Westchester Arts Council.
A gifted visual artist, she has exhibited her work in New York City and New England galleries.
A mentor of young and developing artists, Ms. Stoltman has served as a consultant, advising the organizational direction of Lake Placid Center for the Arts, the Education Department at NYC Ballet and Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation, where she also taught professional development skills to teaching artists. She has served as a panelist, evaluating arts in education proposals with Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. In the summer of 2012, she was invited to participate in The Arts and Passion Driven Learning with Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project at Harvard Graduate School of Education. A gifted yoga teacher, she has served on the faculty and Leadership Board of Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, where she also mentored teachers and guided the direction and articulation of standards of leadership for the organization. Her work, Egrets and Blue Leaves, was published by UNICEF in Switzerland.
She has a deep love for classical traditions and finds great joy in sharing the art forms with children, as well as through education and performance. Presently she is writing and illustrating a children’s ballet story, dancing, teaching, consulting and developing classically based performance projects, with an educational component.
Claudia Jill Stoltman 