Staff - Administration
Valeria Sinyavskaya - Artistic Director & Ballet MistressBertina Dew - Executive Director
Support Staff:
Karen Buck - Receptionist
Denise Hendon - Bookkeeper
Bertina
Sixto Dew is Executive Director of Kingsport Ballet. She formed the Parents
Coalition in 1999, which transformed Kingsport Guild of Ballet into a
non-profit, and merged it with State of Franklin Dance Alliance
resulting in Kingsport Ballet. In 1999 she designed a capital campaign,
which raised funds to renovate a new facility downtown with three
studios and a mini-theatre. Ms. Dew was in charge of Kingsport Ballet’s
search committee in 2001, recruiting Valeria Sinyavskaya, artistic
director and ballet mistress from Russia by way of Tokyo, Japan. Ms.
Dew has been instrumental in organizing numerous collaborations between
regional arts and non-arts organizations between 2000 and 2006. Ms. Dew
is grant writer and fundraiser for the organization, in addition to
being costume and set designer for such ballets as Swan Lake, Sleeping
Beauty and Nutcracker. She was involved in the coordination of the art
and the artists for the first “Evening With the Arts,” a yearly event
with the Downtown Kingsport Association. She has been active in the
implementation of the DANCE CO project (Developing Artists and
Nurturing Cultural Education through Community Outreach), which works
with non-arts, community organizations such as Boys and Girls Club,
Girls, Inc. and area elementary schools serving at-risk children to
provide classical ballet instruction at no cost to the students. Ms.
Dew secured a $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant for fiscal
year 06-07 for the outreach program. Prior to her becoming executive
director, she specialized in oil portraits and murals, and worked in
Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Augusta, GA. She received a Masters
degree in Art Therapy from the George Washington University and
Bachelors in Art Education from Florida State University. She is
originally from Uruguay and currently lives in Kingsport, Tennessee
with her husband Michael and three daughters. Ms. Dew has served on the
Arts Council of Greater Kingsport’s board of directors for several
years.

