About

Rita Martinez Corridon grew up in Miami, FL., where she studied ballet, flamenco, modern and jazz at Ballet Concerto School with teachers from the National Ballet of Cuba. She attended New World School of the Arts High School. As a student she attended summer workshops at The School of American Ballet, The Joffrey San Antonio Workshops as well as The Joffrey Ballet Summer Intensives.

At 17, she was a junior semi-finalist at The Jackson International Ballet Competition, and that summer she was invited to join the Joffrey II dancers. She joined the main company the following year, and danced there for 7 years, where she performed many leading roles including Clara in The Nutcracker, Frivolity in Leonid Massine’s Les Presages, Blue girl in Frederick Ashton’s Les Patineurs as well as many Gerald Arpino ballets. She did extensive touring with them, performing around the world with Billboards, a full length evening ballet to music by Prince.

Upon leaving the professional ballet life, she focused on raising her 4 kids, earning personal training certifications through the American Council on Exercise (ACE) and The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), as well as courses on Nutrition at NYU.

She taught the New York City Ballet Workout in NYC.

While living in London for 2 years she worked as a private personal trainer and at a private gym, and while living in Paris for 3 years, was a teacher at the Academie Americaine de Danse de Paris, and taught creative movement classes in the children’s program at The International school in Paris.

Mairead is from Iowa City, Iowa.  She started dancing at age four and began her pre-professional ballet training at age fifteen at Nolte Academy in Coralville, Iowa under the tutelage of Grace and Tad Snider.  After high school, she continued her training at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music where she where she studied under Carla Körbes, Kyra Nichols, Sarah Wroth, Christian Claessens, Sasha Janes, and Michael Vernon.  She graduated in 2022 and earned a Bachelor of Science in Ballet with an Outside Field in Exercise Science.  Throughout her training years, she attended summer intensives at Interlochen Arts Academy, Houston Ballet, Miami City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Texas Ballet Theater, Cincinnati Ballet, and the Chautauqua Institution.

After college, Mairead began her professional performing career at Connecticut Ballet and now freelances in the New York City metropolitan area and across the country.

Clarissa has trained in France at the National Superior Conservatory of Paris and Lyon with prestigious instructors from Paris Opera Ballet. She graduated from the University of Lyon with a Bachelors degree in performing arts.

She has had an extensive career across France and the US including the Junior Ballet of Lyon, the Opera Ballet of Avignon, the Connecticut Ballet and Renversons Ballet company.

She has worked with acclaimed choreographers including Carolyn Carlson, Isabelle Lopez-Ochoa, Marc Ribaud, Ruth Childs (for Lucinda Childs)and Ioannis Mandafounis, and has performed in many classical ballets such as Tchaikovsky Pas de deux, Paquita, Concerto (Kenneth MacMillan) Alice in Wonderland, and the Nutcracker.

Her journey has taken her to the rewarding role of teaching at the Conservatory of Paris and multiple other schools in France, New Jersey and Connecticut and now to the vibrant Darien School Of Dance.