![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/SDAB-studio-Simone-Gabrielle-1.png\")
<\/a>Photo of San Diego Academy of Ballet \u2013 Courtesy of Simone Gabrielle<\/p>\nGabrielle uses the term \u201cartistic drafting\u201d to describe what\u2019s been happening at the Kearny Mesa dance academy, where students aren\u2019t just auditioning for the world\u2019s most prestigious ballet institutions; they are being actively recruited by them.<\/p>\n
Since taking over in 2021, Gabrielle and the school have placed nearly a dozen dancers at prestigious institutions such as the Paris Opera Ballet School, the Royal Ballet School, SAB (the training academy for the New York City Ballet), American Ballet Theater and the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet.<\/p>\n
In 2025, a 10-year-old from the San Diego Academy of Ballet was accepted to four top programs in the same season.<\/p>\n
San Diego dancers have \u201cnot traditionally been on that map,\u201d Gabrielle said.<\/p>\n
San Diego Academy of Ballet offers about 20 classes a week for kids 3 and up, and Gabrielle said that families travel long distances, with some relocating, to have their children train at SDAB.<\/p>\n
The business of ballet<\/p>\n
SDAB\u2019s teaching methods are informed by Gabrielle\u2019s life, navigating the space between artistic tradition and professional pragmatism.<\/p>\n
Gabrielle grew up in Point Loma and trained under SDAB co-founder Sylvia Tchernychev at California Ballet. She did a \u201cd\u00e9tourn\u00e9\u201d from dance at 17 to attend UC Santa Barbara. When she eventually came back to San Diego, Tchernychev \u2014 who started SDAB in 2001 with her former partner Max Tchernychev \u2014 encouraged Gabrielle to return to her roots.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad I not been trained by the founders, I would not be in a position to impart that training,\u201d Gabrielle said. \u201cI am incredibly sensitive and deferential to that legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gabrielle has built on the classical Vaganova method \u2014 the Russian system that fuses athletic power with soulful artistry \u2014 while reshaping nearly everything else around it into a model that works for her six-member staff and founder Tchernychev alike.<\/p>\n
SDAB takes no outside donors or grants<\/p>\n
Every new student pays a one-time registration fee of $55; full tuition details are listed on the school\u2019s website. SDAB also runs adult classes on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Friday mornings at $30 a class. It\u2019s \u201cSunday Funday\u201d drop-in classes for beginner and intermediate adults start at $15.<\/p>\n
According to its 2025 tax filings, the nonprofit generated $463,381 in total revenue, ending the year with a $36,973 surplus. With more than $105,000 in assets and negligible debt, SDAB is proving that elite artistry and fiscal discipline are not mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n
The school runs year-round, with no summer break.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf kids are off for the summer, I get balls of clay back in September,\u201d Gabrielle said. \u201cI\u2019d rather keep the engine oiled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gabrielle also refuses to run competitions \u2014 a stance that costs revenue but keeps the school\u2019s priorities clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cBallet competitions have created another industry within the art form,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has become the bread and butter of a lot of studios \u2014 get into the competition, train for the competition, require parents to pay for private lessons, costumes, travel. For us, that model does not work. Creating a competitive element to an art form like ballet tends to deviate from the personal development of the dancer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Financial independence means Gabrielle can be a straight shooter with parents about whether their child has a realistic shot at a career. When the answer is no, she says so.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does a kid have at 18 if they\u2019ve paid 14 years of tuition with no real shot?\u201d she said. \u201cThey have unemployment. I won\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are also no free rides for boy dancers.<\/p>\n
In most ballet schools, boys get free or heavily discounted tuition because studios are desperate to keep them. A 2019 Forbes report found that girls outnumber boys in youth ballet by about 20 to 1; a national study found that while 35 percent of girls report dancing as a regular activity, under 9 percent of boys do.<\/p>\n
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and organizations like CareerExplorer and the Dance Data Project, estimates for a \u201cDancer and Choreographer\u201d job category typically show women making up between 75 percent and 87 percent of the industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cI charge every boy full tuition. I don\u2019t care,\u201d Gabrielle said.<\/p>\n
For years, the boys\u2019 program at SDAB struggled with interest and retention under male coaches, so in 2025, Gabrielle took it over herself, and there has been a resurgence of male interest and renewed dedication to the craft.<\/p>\n
Focus and strong landings<\/p>\n
SDAB groups students by technical readiness and potential, not birth year \u2014 a deliberate break from how almost every other school or athletic program operates.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost teaching structures, not just in ballet but in elite sports and traditional child development, are organized by age,\u201d Gabrielle said. \u201cI am committed to ambition and potential instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, a 10-year-old who swept auditions this season had been trained well above her age group for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI treated her training as something much more advanced because she was ready for it,\u201d Gabrielle said.<\/p>\n
The classroom at SDAB is intentionally unpredictable. Gabrielle believes challenge sharpens focus.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf everything is very easy and rote, the brain doesn\u2019t get as much of a holistic investment in the activity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It is with parents that Gabrielle is most blunt.<\/p>\n
She has cut ties more than once with families who try to manage from the sidelines, comparing unsolicited input to a patient offering surgical advice mid-operation. The children who find the most success, she said, have parents who \u201cstay in the wings and let the child captain their own ship.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cChildren need stronger wings, not softer landings,\u201d she said. \u201cIf a parent is always absolving the child of the grit required to get to those apex levels, it won\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond her studio, Gabrielle has a broader vision and has taken some bold stances. She acknowledges personal frustration that San Diego\u2019s professional dance scene is fragmented, with multiple small companies that struggle to pay dancers a living wage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s quite tragic that they can\u2019t organize and unite and form one strong company,\u201d she said. \u201cIt would help eliminate the fragmentation of audiences. As someone who runs a school, I should traditionally be feeding local companies. I intentionally do not do that. Those dancers can\u2019t even survive.\u201d<\/p>\n
So instead, she sends them elsewhere. The French, she noted, rarely pay attention to American schools \u2014 let alone one from San Diego.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t usually care about us,\u201d she said. \u201cBut somehow, we\u2019ve gotten children into the Paris Opera Ballet School three times.\u201d<\/p>\n
She paused on what the full picture of success for her students actually takes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a lot of work to take a ball of clay and not only turn them into a dancer \u2014 which is physically opposite of how humans function \u2014 but to ensure they are \u2018outlier\u2019 enough to turn a head in a room of 50 dancers from all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For centuries, ballet\u2019s elite have emerged from prestigious academies in New York, London, Moscow and Paris. San Diego…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1472,74,81850,76,75],"class_list":["post-324566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-dance","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-ballet","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}