Brittany Shinay

A native of Boston, Brittany Shinay trained with Jamey Leverett and Tim Draper at the Draper Center for Dance Education in Rochester, NY, as well as with Fiona Fairrie, Parker Esse, Leslie Browne, Edward Ellison, Alla Nikitina, and Marie Welch.

Coached by Ms. Leverett, Shinay competed in the 2007 YAGP NYC Finals where she earned a Gold Medal with Jim Nowakowski leading to an invitational performance at the 50th Anniversary of the Festival dei Due Mondi “Gala Di Danza” in Spoleto, Italy. There, she and Nowakowski performed alongside ABT’s Paloma Herrera and Gennadi Saveliev, stars of the Vienna State Opera Ballet, and other world-class companies.

Shinay was a 2008 National YoungArts winner and attended Juilliard’s BFA in Dance on full scholarship. She earned a coveted position in Boston Ballet’s Trainee program where she performed in Mikko Nissinen’s The Nutcracker and was honored to work with several of the world’s leading choreographers.

As a principal dancer with the Rochester City Ballet, Georgia Ballet, and guest artist with City Center Ballet, Shinay danced the title roles in Cinderella and The Firebird, Titania in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, the Sugar Plum Fairy and Snow Queen in The
Nutcracker, Medora in Le Corsaire, and the lead role in Jeff Tyzik’s Bravo! Colorado accompanied by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.

Upon moving to NYC in 2017, Shinay was hired by choreographer, Jason Wise, as associate choreographer for Mamma Mia!, the inaugural production of the equity theatre, A.C.T. of Connecticut founded by Broadway’s Daniel C. Levine, Katie Diamond, and Bryan
Perri, under the artistic advisory of Stephen Schwartz. She later served as associate choreographer for Ryan Raftery’s The Obsession of Calvin Klein at The Public Theater.

For the past 12 years, she has taught ballet and choreographed for prominent dance education programs at the Draper Center and other schools throughout the United States while teaching and coaching students for national and international competitions. In 2024, Shinay graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in History where she performed in Jeremy McQueen’s Kinetic with the Columbia Ballet Collaborative. She earned her Master’s degree in Dance Education and ABT Ballet Pedagogy from American Ballet Theatre and New York University in 2024.

Shinay is an ABT National Training Curriculum Certified Teacher in Pre-Primary through Level 7 and currently holds faculty positions at American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, Bay Ridge Prep, and Princeton Dance & Theater Studio. We are pleased to welcome her to PDT’s faculty.