EDUCATION & COMMUNITY

“A force for good in the ballet world” (Wall Street Journal), Tom Gold is the founder and director of Tom Gold Dance. A 21-year member (1987–2008) of New York City Ballet where he rose to the rank of soloist, Gold has also performed with THARP!, New York City Opera, Donald Byrd/The Group and many other companies throughout the United States. At City Ballet, he performed leading roles in works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Lynne Taylor-Corbett, and William Forsythe. In 2002 Susan Stroman created the ballet Double Feature for Mr. Gold. In demand internationally as a guest artist, choreographer, and instructor, Gold has created more than a dozen original works for Tom Gold Dance as well as for Vassar College, the Bermuda Arts Festival, Oregon Ballet Theater, the New York City Ballet Choreographic Institute, and many other dance academies, companies, festivals, television, and special events, including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Bravo series Odd Mom Out starring Jill Kargman, and the New York City Fringe Festival for which he won the 2016 award for Overall Excellence for his work in the Joey Variations: A Play With Dance. Gold has collaborated with composers John Zorn, Augusta Reed Thomas, and Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini, as well as numerous scenic and costume designers. He is the featured performer and choreographer of the 2wice Arts Foundation’s DOT DOT DOT, an interactive iPad application designed by Abbott Miller of Pentagram. Gold has been called “as fine a choreographer as…he was a dancer – perhaps better” (Critical Dance). He “sees dance, as Balanchine or Neumier, as a way to innovate and explore the boundaries of classical dance, pushing the envelope in a manner that is true to the fundamentals of the technique” (NYC Dance Stuff).

For more information visit his website at www.tomgolddance.com

Erich Yetter began his ballet training in Texas under Ingeborg Heuser (Staatsoper Berlin), and later with Fernando Schaffenburg (Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo) at Texas Christian University, and at the Houston Ballet Academy under Ben Stevenson, O.B.E. (Royal Ballet). He studied in New York City with David Howard and Maggie Black and Marjorie Mussman, and subsequently danced as a principal danced in London with Dance For Everyone, and also in Cork, Ireland with The Irish National Ballet. Upon returning to the states Yetter performed with Ballet Memphis in Tennessee for twelve years, after which he retired from the stage. During this time, he finished a Bachelor of Music cum laude from the University of Texas at El Paso.
After Memphis, Yetter served ten years as Artistic Director of Peoria Ballet in Illinois, working with international guest artists and building that company's national reputation. After earning a Master's of Science in Higher Education from Kaplan University in Chicago, Yetter accepted a position as Visiting Faculty Lecturer in Ballet at The University of Akron, where he taught Advanced and Intermediate Ballet technique, Pointe technique, Ballet History, and a general education course for non-majors entitled Viewing Dance. He also wrote articles for the Chronicle of Higher Education including an extensive interview with Jennifer Homans, who wrote the bestselling book on ballet history, Apollo's Angels.
Yetter has choreographed and directed over 70 works, from full-length ballets to small chamber dances. In addition, he has collaborated with and created movement for theaters, opera companies and symphony orchestras. As a dancer, he performed standard classical ballet repertoire as well as ballets by contemporary choreographers such as George Balanchine, Domy Reiter-Soffer, James Clouser and Trey McIntyre. In 1999 Yetter was awarded the Tennessee Commission for the Arts Individual Fellowship for Choreography and subsequently his dance work, Asturias, was featured at the American Choreographer's Showcase in Guatemala. For seven years he adjudicated on the Dance Grant Panel of the Illinois Arts Council, as well as the 2009 Federal Arts Jobs Preservation Grant Panel, dispersing government stimulus funds. In 2010, Yetter received a Challenge America Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for his production of Romeo and Juliet.
In addition to teaching ballet at Case Western Reserve University, Yetter serves on the ballet faculty for Cleveland School of the Arts and the Board of Directors of OhioDance. He has taught master classes for VERB Ballets, The American College Dance Festival, Ohio Northern University, Youngstown State University Dance Festival and the Dance Institute at the University of Akron. He lives in Akron with his wife, Mary Ragna Yetter, and their three children Evan, Clara and Jacob.

A Minneapolis native, Mr. Sewell moved to New York and studied at the School of American Ballet with David Howard, and began performing with ABT II. He was a lead dancer with Feld Ballets/NY for six years and has performed as a guest artist with the New York City Ballet, Zvi Gottheiner and Dancers, and Denishawn. He has choreographed more than 70 ballets for companies in the United States and around the world. Projects include the New York City Ballet's Choreographic Institute, the New York State Council on the Arts grant to create "Independence In Dependence" for Feld Ballets/NY; "Aida" (1998) for the Minnesota Opera and 11 other opera companies; James Sewell Ballet's "Amahl and the Night Visitors" (1995); "Musical Toys" (1996) and "Nutcracker: The Untold Story" (1997) for the Minnesota Orchestra; and "She Loves Me" (2005) and "1776" (2007) for the Guthrie Theater.