About Us
Prima Princessa Productions is a mere two-person operation, the brainchild of two moms from New Jersey, Mary Kate Mellow and Stephanie Troeller. During a play-date with their kids, the duo hatched a unique idea for a children’s dance-along series featuring world-class ballet. Prima Princessa brings high arts to young children through inexpensive and accessible multi-media platforms that kids use everyday. Attending a live ballet performance is costly and time-consuming. Ballet has been steadily losing its audience in this era of new media with downloads, web-casts, web-browsing, all free and immediate entertainment. Prima Princessa understands this trend and embraces new media by letting children experience the art form of classical ballet on their own terms in their own homes and schools. Prima Princessa Productions has created 3 one-hour shows available on DVD, Public Television, NETFLIX, and on Safari Montage for school libraries. Prima Princessa also has a comprehensive interactive ballet website and blog, and a ballet resource book “Ballet for Beginners”, all with the goal of inspiring kids to get up off the couch and dance.
Prima Princessa offers an interactive viewing experience that contains both world-class ballet and innovative dance-along ballet lesson montages. An animated fairy ballerina, Prima Princessa, is the guide, narrating the ballet and between acts she invites young viewers to join in the dance lessons demonstrated by students from the New York City Ballet’s official academy the School of American Ballet (SAB). During the editing process, all shows are methodically tested on focus groups of children 3-10 years old to ensure that the programs really hold their attention while encouraging them to dance and learn key ballet concepts. Children often run to get their favorite tutus before watching and dancing along to the show.
On Air coverage:
“Prima Princessa Presents Sleeping Beauty” and “Prima Princessa Presents The Nutcracker” are distributed by NETA for American Public Television stations. Prima Princessa has broadcast on more than 252 stations in 44 states, airing in 42 of the top 50 TV Markets in the USA including NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco, Boston, Washington DC, Houston, Detroit, Tampa, Miami, Denver, Tucson, Kansas City, and Prima Princessa has also aired on Statewide Public Television in the following states: New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maryland, Maine, Delaware, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Idaho, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, Hawaii and Alaska.
Prima Princessa Website:
Prima Princessa’s ballet website, www.PrimaPrincessa.com is a complete ballet resource for families. It contains a ballet dictionary, extensive listing of ballet schools and retail stores, educational pre-school games, parent/teacher study guides for all 3 shows and printable ballerina coloring book pages. Prima Princessa’s TutuZone.com blog features ballet news, crafts for children, photos/videos of fans dancing along to the shows and reviews by parent bloggers who have been instrumental in spreading the word about Prima Princessa.
In 2010 traffic to PrimaPrincessa.com was 100 visits a month and since the premier of “Prima Princessa Sleeping Beauty” in Spring of 2011 traffic jumped to more than 13,000 unique visits per month with more than 25,000 pageviews. Families go to PrimaPrincessa.com after viewing the shows to continue the fun and to learn more about the world of ballet.
Producer Biographies:
Stephanie Troeller
Stephanie is a former dancer. She studied and performed in Paris France at the L’Ecole Internationale de Theatre de Paris, Marcel Marceau and then as a student at Martha Graham in New York City. She then earned her BA in Political Science from Barnard College, Columbia University in 1989. Putting her extensive knowledge of Machiavelli and Hobbes to work, Stephanie then pursued a career in comics. She has under her belt 15 years cartooning, managing, directing, and product design experience with Hanna Barbera, DC Comics, and Warner Bros. Studio Stores. Stephanie is the writer and creator of her comic strip “Relationstrips” which appeared for 5 years in many alternative weekly papers nation wide. Stephanie is also the proud mother of four young children, two boys & two girls.
Mary Kate Mellow
As a former small business entrepreneur, Mary Kate understands how creative talent coupled with hard work and determination, are crucial ingredients for building a business. Just a few years out of college and with no formal training as a jewelry designer, Mary Kate started a jewelry business. She quickly jumped from craft fairs to selling into premier retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Pea in the Pod, Dallas Museum of Art Shop, Harold’s Catalog and many other upscale boutiques. Her jewelry has appeared on the cover of Seventeen Magazine and in Women’s Wear Daily. Mary Kate Mellow has garnered additional sales experience as an account rep at Butterfield & Butterfield, a premier art auction house and at TVData, one the world’s largest suppliers of television data to newspapers. Mary Kate Mellow graduated from Wesleyan University. She is the mother of two young children, a boy and a girl.
