Cyndie Bellen-Berthézène

After studies with some of the world’s leading dance teachers, Cyndie became director of Windham College’s dance department at just 18. 

She danced professionally in New York and Paris, and then turned to opera, studying with Alberta Masiello, Rita Patane, Adele Addison, Eugene Kohn, among others.

Combining opera theory with doctoral work as a Fellow in Slavics at Penn and Columbia. Cyndie received numerous awards and fellowships in both disciplines. She was an Opera Fellow at Aspen, taught Russian at the University of Pennsylvania, studied extensively in the former Soviet Union, writing and presenting musicoliterary scholarship at conferences in the US and the USSR, and also holds a Diplôme de langue from the Alliance française-Paris.

Like the critics who have praised her – “The voice has a mercurial quality that fascinates,” “Commanding,” said The Denver Post, “Affecting” and “Effective,” The New York Times – Time In students love being up-close to a compelling operatic voice and a passionate, generous teacher.  

Cyndie spent Summer 2018 as an Equal Justice Resident in Opera at the Santa Fe Art Institute.  The residency culminated in her installation and performance work, I sleep in a garden of 100 dresses.

In the field of early childhood education, Cyndie is a proven innovator, having developed an interdisciplinary pedagogy suited to the multi-sensorial learning style of very young children.

Cyndie’s extraordinary programs – Opera ‘N Art and Arty Readers: An Operatic/Literary Journey through Manga – are an engaging marriage of high and low art forms for children from 3K-Grade 5. For her groundbreaking work in arts and education, Cyndie was the recipient of the very prestigious 2007 Maxine Greene Award.

Huffington Post’s 2015 Woman of the Year in Art, Cyndie is the creator of studio-art based classroom materials for over two dozen operas, ballets and symphonic works and was the Creative Director and Author of Scholastic’s Kidsketch.

Through her unflagging commitment to equality, opportunity and access for at-risk public school children, Cyndie has successfully changed the lives and learning of nearly 3000 of New York City’s youngest and most at-risk public school children from Harlem, East Flatbush and the South Bronx.

For her extraordinary commitment to children in disadvantaged communities of color, Cyndie was a 2018 honoree of  Strong Non-Profits for A Better New York and an inductee into the Outstanding Women in Human Services Hall of Fame.