Jennifer Schwartz Bell-Grey

Artist, Educator/Teacher, Parent, Performer

Jennifer teaches, directs and choreographs dance for over twenty years on Kauai. She is a Royal Ballet School graduate and holds a teaching degree from the Royal Academy of Dancing. For over two decades she has taught students of all ages and abilities from three years old to elders in their 90s, beginners through to professionals. She has trained teachers and has a amassed of over 2000 videos to provide instruction for dance on Vimeo and published 5 “How To Dance” instructional DVDs for Children, Adults, and teachers in the Anatomy of Ballet Volume 1,2,3 video series, ballet dancing for children, beginner pointe, ballet barre workout that can be found on onlinedancecenter.com As a performer she was awarded People’s Choice award for best dancer in 2006. She has performed as a guest soloist twice with Ballet Hawaii in the Nutcracker at the Kaua’i Community College Performing Arts Center in 1998 & 1999. Soon after Jennifer began choreographing works on her students and dedicating herself to full time teaching. Her first choreographic works premiered at the Princeville Hotel Ballroom in 1999 and included music of Samual Barber, Aaron Copland, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye and a fusion of music and array of dance that was unique and rich in variety. The show was based on environmental awareness and caring for the earth before the term “Green” and “Enviornmentally friendly” became main mainstream. Jennifer has spoken on Hawai’i public radio about fusing of dance with a new way of showcasing traditional ballet. School children across Kaua’i came to the Theater on special school excursions in to see the eighty to one-hundred performers of all ages and abilities performing together in a celebration of “World Inner Motion”. Jennifer co-wrote the Adventures of Nani and Koa and self published the educational children’s book featuring Kaua’i’s island birds, ballet terms and movements, alongside geographic locations on Kaua’i in an adventure book carried by Island Heritage Press. Jennifer speaks Thai and loves languages. Her parents moved to Kauai in 1972. Her father was from Brooklyn NY and her mother was born in Mindanao in the Philippines. She was born in Califoria and grew up on Kauai until age three years, attending Pre-school in Hong Kong (in the local Cantonese school in Kowloon Town) and Junior school in Bangkok Thailand at the Thai school “Mater Dei”. She moved to London, England at age eight and attended her first boarding school for classical ballet training at Royal Tombridge Wells under the tutelage of Anna Lendrum, a classically trained professional dancer and teacher. Miss Lendrum was a direct pupil of Nicolas Legat of the Imperial Ballet School in Russia, and the teacher of Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova. Jennifer was the last pupil of Anna Lendrum and remained in touch with her mentor until her death in 2008 at the age 102. Jennifer’s ballet training started in Hong Kong with Betty Kot, a Royal Academy of dancing teacher in 1982. In 2004 Jennifer invited her former teacher to give workshops in class ballet to Kaua’i students. Several international dance teachers on Jennifer’s invitation have visited and given workshops in Mather Graham modern dance and classical dance. Jennifer’s professional training continued at the Royal Ballet School. The patron of the school was Queen Elizabeth II, at White Lodge in Richmond Park, Surrey. She was awarded a full scholarship two years into her training and she continued through graduation for a total of eight years of study. She graduated with a degree in Classical Dance and a Teaching Degree in Classical Ballet, and European folk dance, Jazz, Contemporary, and modern Dance.

Dance! Ideas! People!

Dance, Fitness