Ruth Wiesen, Director, Thomas Armour Youth Ballet 

Ruth Wiesen has been the Executive Director of the Thomas Armour Youth Ballet since 1989. The school uses ballet to take children to college by giving them the opportunity to succeed in an area that requires discipline, focus and delayed gratification. They try to remove obstacles and work with students to get into an "A" high school, then on to college. The program recruits students who would not have a chance to participate in ballet outside of school classes. Many alumni are dancing professionally and 100% go on to college. In high school, the most advanced students participate in special summer programs.

Ms. Wiesen's biography follows:

RUTH WIESEN, Director, received her BFA in Dance from University of Florida/New World School of the Arts. Ms. Wiesen trained at the Miami Conservatory with Thomas Armour and Robert Pike and with Judith Newman and Gerard Ebitz at New World School of the Arts. She performed as a soloist with the Miami Ballet and New World School of the Arts. Ms. Wiesen joined the faculty of the Miami Conservatory in 1984. She progressed from instructor to Ballet Mistress of the Junior company and assumed the Directorship of the Thomas Armour Youth Ballet in 2003. In 1989, Ms. Wiesen founded the Thomas Armour Youth Ballet Scholarship Program which under her direction has grown from 20 students to over 500 students at five locations. In addition to her directorship of the TAYB, Ms. Wiesen is a member of the dance faculty of the New World School of the Arts. Ms. Wiesen has been honored by the Arts and Business Council for her contribution to encouraging diversity in the world of dance in Miami-Dade County and for the impact she has had on the lives of so many talented, underprivileged students. Dance is Ms. Wiesen's second career. Prior to returning to her first love, dance, Ms. Wiesen held a variety of positions as a Registered Nurse, including Director of the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Duke University Medical Center.

The history of the Thomas Armour Youth Ballet follows:

The organization was founded in 1951 as a school of classical ballet named The Miami Conservatory and a not-for-profit performing Company called The Miami Ballet. In 1988 a scholarship program was instituted for training in the school. In 1996 the performing Company was re-named The Thomas Armour Youth Ballet in honor of the organization's founder, and added to its mission an emphasis on community outreach, ballet education, and making the world of ballet accessible to under privileged youth both as audience members and as performers.

In 2004 the Thomas Armour Youth Ballet received an extraordinary, $1 million gift from an anonymous donor, which made it possible to absorb The Miami Conservatory ballet school and purchase the historic South Miami building in which it is housed. In addition to the South Miami center, Thomas Armour Youth Ballet now operates satellite community outreach centers in Morningside/Little Haiti (established 2001), the Redlands (established 2004), West Coconut Grove (established 2004) and Homestead (established 2008).

The Thomas Armour Youth Ballet now provides ballet training to over 1,000 students annually, with nearly 400 on full scholarship at our satellite locations and an additional 120 on full or partial scholarship at our main site in South Miami. In addition we provide the means for advanced students to take advantage of summer intensive trainings across the country and present performances to over 10,000 audience members each year. A college assistance program was added in 2006 to aid our high school graduates in their quest for higher education, and summer programming was augmented in 2007 to include classes in tap, ballet history and vocabulary. The success of the Summer 2007 addition of tap classes has carried over into the regular school year, where we continue to offer tap in addition to classical ballet instruction.