Cherilyn's School of Dance... Meet Out Staff

Dance Teacher / Owner

Cherilyn

Cherilyn has been studying dance since the age of three. Classes that she has studied include: jazz, tap, lyrical, pointe, ballet, modern, hip hop, modeling, gymnastics, and baton. She has performed at many different locations throughout the United States including; Atlantic City, Orlando, Boston, Connecticut, Long Island, and Manhattan. Cherilyn has also competed in numerous regional and national competitions where she has taken many titles. She has performed at the ‘Duke Theater’ on 42nd Street during a tap festival and in “No No Nanette” with the Tri-Arts company. She has studied with Brenda Buffalino, Jennifer Hart, Tony Waag, Israeli Hoofers, Mary and Michele Ribble, David Rider, Leslie Feliciano, Chio and others. She has completed many intensive training programs with the American Academy of Ballet. Cherilyn also models and has completed a seven day modeling workshop in Orlando, Florida in 2005. She has won the title of ‘Miss U.S Model’ and has appeared in the February 2004 issue of Supermodels Unlimited Magazine. She has been awarded “Best Female Clogger”, “Miss Valentine”, and “Best Runway Model” at national competitions. She has also appeared on many talk shows/runway modeling events for Time Warner Cable. Cherilyn graduated from the Barbizon School for modeling and has modeled for several designers including: Anthony Mark Henkins, Magic Jordan, Ellie Cristoff, Parsons School of Design, Volkswagen, Sears, JC Penny, and Seventeen. Cherilyn has an Associate’s degree in Humanities and Social Sciences from Dutchess Community College and a Bachelors degree in Psychology from Mount Saint Mary College. Cherilyn has completed intensive dance teacher training programs and continues to learn today. Currently in addition to teaching, she also works as a Medicaid eligibility worker at Dutchess County Department of Community and Family Services. Cherilyn is enthusiastic about passing along her passion and love for dance to all of her students. She feels that a dance classroom should not only be a place where we learn, but a place where students can build lasting friendships while growing their technique and most of all having fun! Cherilyn plans on continuing her dance training in order to offer the best experience possible to all of her students here at Cherilyn’s School of Dance.

Samantha

Dance Teacher / Competition Director

Samantha has been dancing for 21 years and has been teaching at Cherilyn's school of Dance since its doors opened in 2003. Her love for the arts started at a very young age. Her training in ballet, jazz, tap, and hip hop started at the age of two, at The Sarisino Dance Academy in Brooklyn New York. She has been trained by many top professionals in dance such as: Elizabeta Supria (Broadway, Janet Jackson Backup dancer), Jennifer Hart (New York American Ballet Company),Michelle Ribble, Mary Ribble, Andrea Long (Principle Ballet dancer), Bev, Chio, Frank Hachett and many others. Samantha has performed and competed in various regional and national competitions such as L.A Dance Force, The NYS, Dancers Of America, The Pulse Competition, Bravo, Dancers Inc, just to name a few. She has been lucky enough to take many titles and high score awards in the jazz and hip hop categories in many of the competitions she has performed in. She continues to pursue her training in Manhattan at Broadway Dance Center and continues to attend many workshops in NYC. Throughout her teaching career, Samantha’s unique visions and style of choreography has been recognized regionally and nationally. Her students thrive under her direction and have and ranked in the top percentile of prestigious dance competitions, as well as taking home many top overall high scores and platinum awards. Samantha knew from a very young age dancing was her passion, and always envisioned sharing that passion with others. She is planning on getting certified with Dance educators of America in fall of 2014. Samantha currently lives in Poughkeepsie with her husband Ivan.

Corey

Dance Teacher

Corey White was born in Upstate New York and began dancing and performing at a young age. She studied ballet and modern at Skidmore College before moving to Oakland, California where she studied at the Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. In the Bay Area, Corey discovered a love of modern release style and gymnastics. She had the opportunity to perform with Raisa Punki in Punki-Co’s production of Pick Cells. In addition to her work in dance, Corey is also an accomplished fire dancer. (And yes, she spins real fire). Best known for her groundbreaking work in fan manipulation, Corey has taught workshops from Kiev, Ukraine to Portland, Oregon and everywhere in between. She has performed in Canada, various music festivals throughout the north-east and many local events in her upstate New York home. She enjoys fusing dance and flow arts in her artistic direction and choreography. Corey continues her creative education and is working toward a full length theatrical flow arts production. Corey is excited to join the team at Cherilyn’s School of Dance and she is looking forward to fueling more creative minds and bodies.

Maggie

Dance Teacher

Isabella

Dance Teacher

Isabella O'Connell began dancing at the age of 6, learning styles such as ballet, tap, lyrical, and Irish step. Around age 10, she began to primarily study Irish step dance at Solas an Lae,and then later the D'amby project and has performed at numerous Irish festivals including, Hooley on the Hudson and festivals in New York City and Boston. She has also danced with renowned Irish musicians, like Dylan Folley, at numerous Irish Festivals.She has presented contemporary choreographic work at, "Choreography on the Edge," for the past three years, and at Wappinger's Falls, Earth Day Festival, in 2015, and at Duchess Community College's Fall preview show 2018. Her choreography for her competition dancers, has been rewarded with many first place trophies and special awards, however her primary focus is on teaching her dancers to better their performance each time on the individual and group level.

Isabella has been teaching Irish step and contemporary classes for the last five years at Cherilyn's School of Dance and for the last three years at Dutchess School of Performing Arts. She currently studies at Dutchess Community College, where she plans on receiving her associates in Performing Arts.

Maile

Dance Teacher

Maile has been dancing since the age of 3, studying at several studios in the Hudson Valley. She has trained in many styles of dance - focusing heavily on - ballet (Vaganova Method), jazz, tap, hip hop and lyrical. Instructors that influenced her most include; Kendrick Jones III, Michele Ribble, Mary Ribble, Elisabetta Spuria, David Rider, Florence Pellegrino, Cherilyn Herriman-Raab and Kerry Teator. Maile has danced for Estelle and Alfonso’s Russian Ballet Company, Michele Ribble’s Metronomes, Tap City’s Tony Waag and the Radio City Rockette’s Experience. In addition to her dance training, Maile is a certified USA Gymnastics Instructor. Maile began choreographing her senior year of high school as captain of the Our Lady of Lourdes dance team. She continued her dance journey in 2015 as a teacher at Cherilyn’s School of Dance and has not stopped since! Maile teaches 3/4 ballet and tap, flip hop and lyrical. She is thrilled to be coaching the Itty Bitty jazz team beginning in 2019. Outside of dance, Maile holds her Bachelors in Psychology and is a preschool teacher in Millbrook. She is actively pursuing her Masters in Early Childhood Education with a Montessori credential from the College of New Rochelle.

Dance Teacher

Madison

Coming Soon

Dance Teacher

Amber

Amber has been dancing since the age of 8. She’s been trained in the styles of hip hop, jazz, tap, ballet, pointe, lyrical, contemporary, modern, acro, musical theatre, and kickline. She competed in regional and national dance competitions for 7 years, winning various awards. She’s attended 2 different studios, including Cherilyn’s School of Dance. She featured in and co-choreographed for Jake Mason’s music video “Invisible.” She’s been to numerous dance conventions and master classes at Artists Simply Human, Knicks City Dancers Intensive, Stage Door Workshops, where she was taught by Tokyo, Skooj, Karla Puno Garcia, Jessica Castro, Alyssa Quezada, Lisette Bustamante, and Braham Logan Crane to name a few. She decided to enroll in the Performing Arts program at Dutchess Community College, where she received her associates degree and gained even more training in dance and acting. She’s been an assistant and substitute teacher at Cherilyn’s School of Dance for a few years now and is excited to be teaching her own classes!

Dance Teacher

Arianna

Arianna Noble has been moving and grooving since birth but did not start her dance training until age 13. She began taking classes here at Cherilyn’s School of Dance in hip hop, jazz, lyrical, contemporary and musical theater and eventually joined the competition team. She

furthered her dance studies at Dutchess Community College and eventually transferred to Hunter College in the Spring of 2017. At Hunter, she branched out to other forms of dance such as Afro-Carribean, Bollywood and multiple forms of Latin dance. Recently she attended a week long workshop with Movement Research entitled, “The Sounding Body: Voice as Movement”, instructed by Peter Sciscioli to explore using the voice in practice and performance. As a vocalist, Arianna hopes to integrate what she learned from this workshop into her future choreographic projects. This past year, Arianna danced and Assistant stage managed in multiple dance productions at Hunter and appeared in the musical, “Us, Abundantly”, as a Magic School Bus Dancer. Throughout the past semester at Hunter, Arianna performed in Lecture/Demonstrations at multiple public schools across NYC to promote the power of dance and to answer questions from students in regards to college and dance as a career path. Expecting to graduate in December, Arianna will be living in Brooklyn and working at AbunDance Academy of the Arts as well as commuting back to Poughkeepsie once a week to instruct here at Cherilyn’s School of Dance.

Office Manager

Blair

Coming Soon