Loyola Ballet Faculty and Staff
Laura Zambrano
Laura
Zambrano, Director of the Loyola Ballet, began her dance education with
Margarita Grishkevich and Gloria Castro at the Music Conservatory in Cali,
Colombia, where she was first introduced to the Russian method of training.
Returning to the United States to attend high school, Ms. Zambrano was
able to continue training in the Russian method under Gayle Parmelee,
Director of the Loyola Preparatory Program, and was given the opportunity
to perform with the Loyola Ballet. For these prime reasons, she elected
to attend Loyola University and in 1984 received a ballet minor degree.
From 1987 to 1988, Ms. Zambrano was the repetitrice for the children's
corps of the New Orleans City Ballet/Cincinnati Ballet, performing in
The Nutcracker under the renowned artistic director Ivan Nagy.
Ms. Zambrano was the first foreign exchange student of Loyola University to complete a two-year pedagogy program of the Vaganova Russian syllabus at the State Choreographic School of Tbilisi, Georgia, in the former Soviet Union. She trained under Natalia Zolotova, a teacher at the famed Bolshoi School of Ballet in Moscow. During her stay, Ms. Zambrano had an opportunity to visit the Bolshoi School of Ballet as well as the renowned Vaganova Choreographic Institute in St. Petersburg and the State Choreographic School in Perm.
She was awarded a certified teacher’s diploma in 1991, and returned to the United States as company and school instructor for Ballet Iowa, where she was soon promoted to Ballet Mistress. During her six-year tenure, she helped stage ballets such as Swan Lake, Carmen, Petroushka, La Bayadere, Snow White, and The Nutcracker. She has been a guest teacher in Colorado and Texas, where she choreographed and staged several works for the Rio Grande Valley Ballet.
Ms. Zambrano returned to New Orleans and the Loyola Ballet in 1997 as
repetitrice and faculty member of the Preparatory Ballet Program. In the
fall of 1999, she became a full-time faculty member of the university
ballet program and was named Director of the Loyola Ballet.
Gayle Parmelee
Gayle
Parmelee, Associate Professor Emerita, Coordinator of the Loyola Ballet
Preparatory Program, and former Director of the Loyola Ballet (1978-1999),
began her professional dance career in the New Orleans Opera Ballet. In
New York, Miss Parmelee appeared on Broadway in Oklahoma! and
Silk Stockings and was a June Taylor Dancer on the Jackie Gleason
television show. While studying at both the Ballet Russe and the American
Ballet Theatre schools, she also performed in several concert ballet groups.
Returning to the South, Miss Parmelee directed and choreographed for the Louisiana Ballet, the Jackson Ballet and the Savannah Ballet before joining Loyola’s faculty in the fall of 1978. For 21 years she trained many young men and women, including Karen Beck Zollinger, Cheryl O’Sullivan, and Laura Zambrano, in the art of dance through the university’s preparatory and repertory ballet programs. A large percentage of students who obtained a ballet minor from Loyola are professional dancers, teachers and directors. Miss Parmelee skillfully built a ballet program based on the Vaganova Russian syllabus – something many people thought was impossible to do in the United States.
Miss Parmelee retired from Loyola University in the spring of 1999, after having directed 42 consecutive productions for the Loyola Ballet. As the Coordinator of the Loyola Ballet Preparatory Program, her influence on the art of dance will endure for many years to come.
Cheryl
O’Sullivan
Cheryl O’Sullivan, Loyola Ballet Preparatory Program Faculty, currently studies and regularly performs with the Loyola Ballet and the Komenka Ethnic Dance Ensemble, where she is also Co-Artistic Director. Her association with the Loyola Ballet began in 1982. Ms. O’Sullivan has been a faculty member for the preparatory program for the past eight years and she currently teaches the Level II class.
