Cyndie Bellen-Berthézène
Cyndie Bellen-Berthézène’s diverse artistic gifts and academic accomplishments – in modern dance, opera, languages, the visual arts and as a published children’s book author and creative director – support and energize the innovative arts-based pedagogy of Time In. After studies with some of the world’s leading dance teachers, Cyndie became director of Windham College’s dance department at just 18. She danced professionally in New York and Paris, and then turned to opera, studying with Alberta Masiello, Rita Patane, Adele Addison, Eugene Kohn, among others. Combining opera theory with doctoral work as a Fellow in Slavics at Penn and Columbia. Cyndie received awards and fellowships in both disciplines. She was an Opera Fellow at Aspen, taught Russian at the University of Pennsylvania, studied extensively in the former Soviet Union, writing and presenting musico-literary scholarship at conferences in the US and the USSR. In the field of early childhood education, Cyndie is a proven innovator. She developed a unique, interdisciplinary pedagogy suited to the multi-modal learning style of very young children. Cyndie’s extraordinary programs – Opera ‘N Art, Arty Readers: An Operatic/Literary Journey through Manga and CosiTV – are an engaging marriage of high and low art forms for children from Pre_K-Grade 5. For her groundbreaking work in arts and education, Cyndie was the recipient of the very prestigious 2007 Maxine Greene Award. Huffington Post’s 2015 Woman of the Year in Art, Cyndie is the creator of studio-art based classroom materials for over two dozen operas, ballets and symphonic works. She was the Creative Director/author for Scholastic’s Kidsketch. Through her unflagging commitment to equality, opportunity and access for at-risk public school children, Cyndie has changed the lives and learning of over 2000 of New York City’s youngest and most at-risk public school children from Harlem and the South Bronx and brought a decade of meaningful work to up-and-coming artists in New York.
Residency/Fellowship
Equal Justice 2017/2018
Website
Location
New York, NY USA