TutuZone: Montclair Times

Thursday, December 27, 2007 the Montclair Times ran an article on us written by reporter TaRessa Stovall. "A Dance for their daughters - Montclair moms create pioneering DVD" ran on the front page of the community section along with our picture. Many thanks to TaRessa for taking the time to interview us and write up our story. Here are a few highlights from the article. If you would like a .pdf of this article just drop us a line and we'll e-mail it to you pronto. - Mary Kate

A dance for their daughters - Montclair moms create pioneering DVD by TaRessa Stovall of The Montclair Times

Like many great enterprises, this was born of maternal frustration.

When Montclair moms Mary Kate Mellow and Stephanie Troeller came up short in their search for child- friendly professional ballet DVDs for their daughters, they decided to create one of their own.

Never mind that neither woman had any film-making experience. Before becoming full-time moms, Troeller who grew up studying dance, was a professional cartoonist, and Mellow was a jewelry designer.

"My daughter, Ana, 5, loves to dance," Mellow said. "My parents had taken her to see the ballet 'Cinderella', when she was about 2 1/2, and after that, she started whirling and twirling all over the house."

Ana's friends, Kimberly Troeller, 6, and Deirdre Troeller, 5, also enjoyed dressing up and playing dress-up, Mellow said.

"We both have boys who are older, and there are a lot of DVDs of moving things for them, but there was nothing for girls that had live performance ballet," Troeller said.

And Prima Princessa Productions, LLC was born.

The friends wrote the script and filmed their daughters and friends having a dance party. "It was wonderful, just the pure joy preschool girls have when they get to dress up and dance," Mellow said.

"We always thought that a major entity would co-produce and finance it," Troeller said. "Then we came to realize we had to do it ourselves."

Their debut production, "Prima Princessa Presents Swan Lake," mixes animation, professional dance performance, instruction and expression.

Troeller put her cartooning expertise to work, creating Prima Princessa, an animated fairy princess, who magically transports a group of pre-school girls (played by their daughters and friends) to see "Swan Lake," performed by the world-famous Paris Opera Ballet.

Prima Princessa narrates the story of the ballet to the girls and between each act, they are transported home where they dress up in pretty tutus and learn a simple ballet step. Each step is mixed into a colorful montage of toys, animals, birds, children and young dancers from the School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center, the official academy of New York City Ballet.

Plunging into the project has proved educational for the two friends, who share co-director credit. "I learned to make a move," Mellow said. "I learned how to shoot and direct, how to hire actresses, how to work with talent. We were both creative women, but we had to learn to write a business plan. And now we're learning how to market."

The 40-minute DVD is already selling well on Amazon, being picked up national retailers, including Capezio's dance stores and Learning Express. It is also available at Sharron Miller's Academy for the Performing Arts on the corner of Bloomfield Avenue and South Park Street, and Minnow children's clothing store on Glenridge Avenue.

"A big part of why we do this is to show the joy of dance movement," Troeller said. "I think there is this sense that ballet is elitist and boring. We want ballet to be fun and accessible to everyone - fun, exuberant, colorful and filled with story.

"We've been pleased and surprised by how many kids love ballet."

Both women agreed that the greatest satisfaction has been finding a way to do something they love, something that challenges them to grow in new directions, while enabling them to work form home and still have time to put their families first.

"As a mom, I wanted to make a statement that we can do better," Mellow said. We can give our kids more, or at least we can try."