NEB Selects Two Assistant Artistic Directors: Richard Gatta & Melissa Barr

Richard Gatta

I am thrilled to be joining Northeast Ballet Company this year as Assistant Artistic Director. Northeast Ballet was a very important institution for me as a student and gave me the training which allowed me to achieve the goals which I had set for myself as a professional performer. As Assistant Artistic Director, I am excited to be able to help younger students develop their performing craft in hopes that they too will reach their future performing goals. Richard’s Bio: Richard hails from the town of Niskayuna and began his ballet training with Northeast Ballet Company at a young age, performing in the annual Nutcracker at Proctors Theater in Schenectady. After training at the University of Buffalo as a BFA musical theater major, Richard was cast in the Asian international tour of GREASE, the musical. In 2007, he performed in the Macau International Music Festival and since then has performed with various theater productions in the USA as well as around the world. Richard served as the Associate Choreographer for the USA and Brazil touring companies of the Tony Award-winning musical BILLY ELLIOT. Currently he is working as the dance captain for the upcoming Broadway musical BRIGHT STAR, written by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. BRIGHT STAR will opening this December at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC and will continue on for a New York City Broadway opening on March 31, 2016. 

Melissa Barr

Many of the parents, students, and patrons of Myers/Northeast Ballet have seen me around the studio for years, and in many ways I have grown up here. As a ballet student, I came to Myers while in high school and under the guidance of Miss Myers, continued dancing through my years at Union College and into adulthood. Over the course of these years, I often say I have seen generations of dancers grow up at Myers. Many of us who trained here at this school and Company have returned in some capacity as teachers, dancers, and rehearsal assistants as adults. I am proud to be one of those who have seen this School and Company flourish and thrive over the many years and I am proud to have been a part of it in some small way. When Miss Myers asked me to consider this new role, the magnitude of what she was entrusting me with was certainly not lost on me. Darlene Myers is an artist in the truest sense of the word, first and foremost. This School and Company is her life’s blood, her greatest creation, and the wisdom she has bestowed upon her students, dancers, and staff over the course of both organizations’ histories is priceless. I simply cannot imagine the Capital Region without our school where the very highest level of instruction and training is available to anyone who is willing to learn, or without Northeast Ballet, a Company that Myers has nurtured with every ounce of her energy for over twenty five years and has established itself as one of the foremost arts organizations of the Capital region. Myers has most generously and graciously taken myself and Richard Gatta under her wing as Assistant Artistic Directors, and I could not be more honored. I am also acutely aware of how much I need to learn. I was and have always been a student of Miss Myers, and will continue to be so. My hope is to serve this Company to the best of my ability and continue its tradition of classical ballet of the highest quality. My greatest thanks to Miss Myers and the Board of Trustees. Cheers to another wonderful Nutcracker season!