Artistic Staff

RORY HOHENSTEIN (Ballet Master) was born in Washington D.C., where he began dancing at the age of 6. Hohenstein furthered his training, from the age of 12, at the Kirov Academy of Ballet. At 17, he joined Le Jeune Ballet de France in Paris. In 2000, he joined San Francisco Ballet as a member of the corps, being promoted to soloist in 2006. In 2008, he moved to New York joining Christopher Wheeldon’s company, Morphoses, performing in its home seasons at New York City Center and at Sadler’s Wells in London. He spent a season dancing with the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company before joining the Joffrey Ballet in 2011, where he continued to be a leading artist with the company through the 2018/19 season. Some personal highlights include dancing the roles of Romeo in Krzysztof Pastor’s Romeo & Juliet, Riff in Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story Suite, Levin in Yuri Possokhov’s Anna Karenina and in Wayne McGregor’s Eden/Eden. This is Hohenstein’s third season as ballet master at Atlanta Ballet.

ROMAN RYKINE (Ballet Master) joined Atlanta Ballet from Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet School in 2016. He graduated from the Rudolph Nureyev State Ballet Academy in his hometown of Ufa, Russia, and he was a principal dancer with Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, English National Ballet, and the Bashkir State Opera and Ballet Theatre. Rykine won the gold medal and first prize at the International Ballet Competitionin Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1993, and the bronze medal at both the International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1994, and the Rudolph Nureyev International Ballet Competition in Budapest, Hungary, in 1993. He holds the honorary title of Artist of Merit of the Republic from the Government of Ufa, Russia. During his career, Rykine toured extensively in Europe, Asia and the United States and was a guest artist with various ballet companies. He retired from the stage in 2010 and began teaching. Rykine was a guest faculty member at the Boston Ballet School before joining the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School in January 2012.

CLAUDIA SCHREIER (Choreographer-in-Residence) has directed and produced for dance, opera and film across the U.S. and internationally. She has been commissioned by Miami City Ballet, Boston Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Vail Dance Festival and Juilliard Opera, among others. Pleiades Dances (2021) is the second of three ballets Schreier has created for Atlanta Ballet. Her first, First Impulse, was named a 2019 Standout Performance by Pointe Magazine, and her third, Fauna, premiered in February 2022. In 2021, she released Force of Habit, a film commissioned by Guggenheim Works & Process and co-presented by Atlanta Ballet. She has contributed to programs at the White House, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center, including the Kennedy Center Honors. Her work is the subject of two documentaries, most recently PBS’s Emmy Award-winning “Dancing on the Shoulders of Giants” (Capital Region). She is a recipient of the Princess Grace Award, Toulmin Fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, Lotos Prize, and Suzanne Farrell Dance Prize.