Mari Mori
Director of CVB
Mari Mori began her ballet training at the Yasuko Miyashita Ballet School in Kyoto, Japan. She studied with Hideo Fukagawa and subsequently joined his ballet company. She furthered her studies with Madam Nora Kiss (Paris, France), Jean Clould Ruiz (Strasburg, France), Finis Jhung (New York City), and Zvi Gotheiner (New York City). Mari has been a member of the American Repertory Dance Theatre and the Covenant Ballet Theatre in New York. She has also appeared as a guest artist with numerous ballet schools and companies in California, New York, and Japan. After moving to the East Coast, she taught at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Wake Forest University, and the North Carolina Dance Festival.
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Mari moved to Lynchburg, VA, in 2009 to teach ballet at Sweet Briar College and the Virginia School of the Arts (VSA). Upon the closure of VSA, she founded the Central Virginia Ballet in 2011 to continue to provide instruction to her Lynchburg-area students. She is also working with Charlottesville Ballet’s professional company and serves as an Artistic Associate since 2014.
Amberlee Downen
CVB Dance Teacher
A passionate dancer of 18 years, Amberlee Downen is a classically trained, pre-professional ballerina and experienced dance instructor. Her childhood was spent in the studio studying classical ballet, jazz, tap, modern, contemporary, and theater. She went on to rigorously train in ballet, with an emphasis on technique and performance quality, for four years in Yokohama, Japan, and later pursued the competition world through her local dance team in Nashville, Tennessee. While back in Tennessee, Amberlee completed a choreography and dance education course, scoring in the top 1% of participants globally. She has deeply enjoyed being a dance teacher in Lynchburg, VA, for the past two years; she continues to exercise her love for dance through her newest teaching position at the Central Virginia Ballet.
Brianna Merritt
CVB Dance Teacher
Brianna Merritt began her ballet training at the age of three in Oklahoma. She has attended multiple intensives in New York with the American Academy of Ballet, Giordano in Chicago, and the Tulsa Ballet in Oklahoma. Brianna has performed in roles as Clara, Snow Queen, Arabian Princess, and the Flower Fairy, as well as corps de ballet pieces from The Nutcracker and Swan Lake.
Certified in the Nan Giordano Technique, Brianna currently teaches at Central Virginia Ballet and Amherst Dance Academy.
Lillian Merrit
CVB Dance Teacher
At the age of two, Lillian Merritt began taking dance classes and after moving to Virginia in 2015, she continued her traditional ballet training under the expert leadership of Mari Mori at Central Virginia Ballet. Lillian has attended multiple intensives with Tulsa Ballet in Oklahoma, as well as with the American Academy of Ballet and Giordano. She has performed multiple productions of the Nutcracker as well as performing the Gamzatti Variation from La Bayadere, Jewels from Sleeping Beauty, and one of the four dancers in the Pas de Quatre ballet. Lillian currently teaches ballet at Central Virginia Ballet.
