Alumni

Charles “Lil Buck” Riley

Lil Buck started his dance training at New Ballet at age 17, bringing Memphis Jookin to the global stage. In just two years, his quick rise to fame began after director Spike Jonze captured him performing New Ballet’s The Swan with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. After going viral, Lil Buck became a coveted dancer, performing around the globe. He has toured with Madonna, danced with Wynton Marsalis at Lincoln Center, appeared in publications including The New York Times, Vogue, and Dance Magazine, and performed at the Vail International Dance Festival and with New York City Ballet in Les Bosquets. Lil Buck has been interviewed by Tavis Smiley, Katie Couric, Steven Colbert and Wynton Marsalis and is a recipient of the Wall Street Journal’s 2014 Innovator Award. He is co-founder of the nonprofit, Movement Art Is (MAI) with John Boogz and producer of the new Netflix series, “MOVE”. Lil Buck, the Real Swan has premiered worldwide. Memphis Jookin: The Show, an ode to his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, opened at the Orpheum Theatre and is touring the U.S. on its way to Broadway!

Maxx Taylor Reed

Maxx Reed is a professional dancer and choreographer based in New York. At age 14, he received a scholarship to New Ballet, where he received extensive training in classical ballet and modern styles including Horton, Graham and Forsythe. Growing up in Memphis, he danced with many local hip-hop crews, molding his abilities as a street dancer. Reed gained a place in New Ballet as a Teaching Artist in 2006, creating and debuting roles in ballets such as Romeo in our version of Romeo and Juliet, as well as the Rat King, The Hero and The Cavalier in NutRemix™.

Professionally, Maxx has appeared in the ABC primetime special “Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann” and in staged productions of Cats, West Side Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and Beetlejuice. He has also performed live with Usher in the 2011 American Music Awards and has appeared in Michael Jackson’s biopic “This Is It”, and his music video “Hold My Hand.” Other credits include commercials for Knott’s Berry Farm and Virgin Mobile and the music videos for Beyonce’s “Who Run the World (Girls)” and The Saturdays’ “Notorious.”

Today, his choreography can be seen in ballet companies, award-winning competition studios and music videos. Maxx is on the teaching staff of STEPS in New York City and continues to return to New Ballet as a visiting Master Teacher.

Frankie Fernandes

Frankie Fernandes is the head of people at Imaginary Ventures, where she serves as a people operations resource for portfolio companies and provides support across talent, culture and human resources. Frankie previously honed her people operations and communications skills at Warby Parker, Rockets of Awesome and LoftSmart. In these experiences, she launched culture initiatives, coached leadership, and built and supported teams across various business functions.

Frankie has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. After graduating, she apprenticed with McArthur Genius Grant recipient Kyle Abraham’s dance company, Abraham In Motion. There, she contributed to the development of repertory evening-length work “The Watershed” and the short piece “Continuous Relations” at Association of Performing Arts Professionals and Jacob’s Pillow and provided set work on the dance department at Princeton University. She served for three years as dancer and associate director for Carol Mendes & Artists, creating and performing the evening-length work LANOTTE+VERSO. Though she no longer dances professionally, Frankie credits her New Ballet training to her ability to foster creativity and value diversity and inclusion throughout her work in the venture capital landscape. Find her on LinkedIn.

Kamryn Vaulx

Kamryn is a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance with a concentration in choreography. She began her dance training when she was three years old, studying jazz, contemporary, hip hop, tap, ballet, modern, African and flamenco.

Kamryn is currently part of a New York hip-hop company, Creative Genius, and a Los Angeles-based dance company, The Motus Company, under Diana Matos. Kamryn has previously danced with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. She has also worked with notable choreographers, such as Ronald K. Brown, Anthony Burrell and Fredrick Earl Mosley.

With her versatile dance background, Kamryn aspires to share the intersections that are within dance styles and cultures with the dance community and the rest of the world. She hopes to forever inspire those coming behind her to continue to share the love of dance and movement and wants to leave a global footprint in the world that exemplifies the power of creativity and the arts. Instagram: @kamrynvaulx.

Breana Moore

Breana is a Memphis native and graduate of Vanderbilt University, holding a degree in Human and Organizational Development and Sociology. Breana is also a graduate of the Ailey School’s Certificate Training Program and has had the privilege of performing works by Alvin Ailey, Kirven Douhit-Boyd, Norbert De La Cruz, Darrell Grand Moultrie, Yusha Marie-Sorzano and Judine Somerville. Breana performed with The Ailey School in Merce Cunningham’s 100th anniversary tribute show at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

In August 2019, Breana was awarded the EVIDENCE Dance Workshop Series Beth Young Scholarship and later joined Ronald K. Brown’s EVIDENCE as an apprentice, performing for the Joyce Theater season in February 2020. Breana made her debut performance as a company member of EVIDENCE at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in October 2021.

Breana enjoys cultivating spaces to explore creativity, growth in self-confidence and awareness of the community through art. She says her time at New Ballet provided her a space to begin her ballet training as a young teenager and built her confidence by seeing teaching artists who looked like her. Her New Ballet experience gave her the opportunity to perform alongside her peers and professionals, prepared her for a career in the arts and gave her the space to meet lifelong friends.

Molly Walker

In 2021, Molly graduated from Loyola Chicago’s BFA program where she also holds a master’s degree in dance education. As part of her undergraduate studies, Molly interned with Hubbard Street Dance Company and performed in works by Randal Newsom, Matthew Rose, Sandra Kaufman, Gina Wrolstad, Masha Bandouli, Gerald Arpino, Allison Haussler, Abagail Darrow, Skylar Summerson and Shannon Shahinian. Since 2016, Molly has frequently returned to New Ballet to lead summer programming as an intern.

Katlyn Hurst

As the founder and first president of the New Ballet Student Board, Katlyn coordinated community service activities, produced a student performance alongside her peers and facilitated student-centered conversations with New Ballet leadership. Katlyn was able to rely on her New Ballet mentor, a Memphis physician, as she pursued a biology degree at Duke. There, Katlyn gained extensive international experience in Spain, Kenya and Guatemala and research experience in Duke’s Rheumatology and Immunology Lab and Motivated Cognition and Brain Aging Lab. Katlyn graduated from Duke in 2021. She currently assists in infectious disease research at FHI360, a nonprofit human development organization, and is the executive assistant at iAM Financially Poised.

Chyniece Matthews

Chyniece Matthews refers to her New Ballet experience as having laid the foundation for her artistry as well as changing the trajectory of her life. She graduated from Central High School in Memphis, attending Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, where she received dual bachelor’s degrees in dance with a concentration in media and business with a concentration in fashion marketing. Since graduation, she has worked in fashion, marketing and advertising and is currently studying software development with hopes of pursuing a career in software engineering. Chyniece performed as an alum in NutRemix’s 20th anniversary and is working part-time with New Ballet to support marketing and communications.

Matthew Best

One of the first students to study at New Ballet, Matthew was among the original cast of NutRemix when it premiered in 2002. After graduating high school in 2007, he attended the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and earned a degree in journalism and electronic media. He is currently the executive director of the Change Center, a nonprofit in East Knoxville that provides first-job opportunities for high school students and serves as a safe space for youth and young adults to find fun and recreation.

Matthew began his career with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for seven years before joining Emerald Youth Foundation, where he primarily served high schoolers in East Knoxville. He later joined Johnson University’s Future of Hope Institute as its first director of Multicultural Student Affairs and earned a master’s degree in Ethics and Leadership.

Applying what he learned as a New Ballet student through the school’s creative youth development curricula, Matthew is committed to community development and spends much of his spare time looking for ways to invest in his neighborhood. He spends his time coaching and mentoring young men and raising support for local schools. He feels blessed to share his life with his wife, Yona.

Matthew says his time at New Ballet exposed him to a level of excellence and training that has affected the way he approaches nearly everything in his life. He’s grateful for the opportunity to appreciate various kinds of art and that outlook will be with him forever.

Triniti McNeal

Triniti is a Memphis native, a graduate of New Ballet Ensemble and School and a student and choreographer based in New York City. Her time spent as a student at New Ballet afforded her many opportunities to perform and work with great artists and mentors, including a study abroad with Jessica Castro and Fatima Robinson, leading her to where she is today.

She credits New Ballet for preparing her for college by supporting her dreams and guiding her to understand that she could achieve those dreams through hard work, “I’m truly grateful for that early experience”! She was awarded a work study position at the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater during her freshman year at Marymount Manhattan College where she is currently studying sound design with a minor in dance.

Seen as the “Rat Queen” in the twentieth anniversary performance of NutRemix™ at the Cannon Center, Triniti regularly returns to New Ballet to perform alongside and mentor the next generation of youth dancers. As she dives more deeply into her career, she hopes to expand her artistry through teaching and harness her profession in extraordinary ways.

Ava Vining

Ava started dancing with New Ballet in 2012 and continued until graduating from Westminster Academy in 2022. Throughout her 10 years with the organization, she danced in various productions, including Family Night; Springloaded; SummerDance; and NutRemix™, dancing the role of Clara in 2021.

Outside of dancing with New Ballet, she attended various summer training courses at Orsolina 28 (Moncalvo, Italy); Joffrey Ballet (Chicago); Sarasota Ballet (Sarasota, FL) and Oklahoma City Ballet. From 2022-23, she attended Texas Christian University’s School and majored in classical ballet. She is currently a professional trainee at the English National Ballet School in London.

While a student at New Ballet, she served as a teaching assistant at the Grace St. Luke’s satellite program and was an Align TEAM Mentor. She also volunteered at the Building Brighter Futures Luncheon and community events with the Special Olympics, MLK Arts Unite and the Mariposas Collective. New Ballet’s teachers and courses impacted her dance training by teaching her the foundations of dance — from classical ballet and Horton technique to traditional flamenco and West African. Ava credits New Ballet with preparing her for the future by teaching her the importance of being consistent and organized. She believes dance rewards discipline and teamwork. To her, one of the most rewarding feelings is when a difficult step or sequence comes together.