Robbinsville resident Jonathan Ronen—a dancer since he was five years old—was recently named teen dancer of the year by the Artistic Dance Exchange.
Ronen, 14, received the award at ADE’s national event in Orlando, Florida, at the beginning of July. ADE is the only dance convention and competition in the United States to offer international exchange scholarship programs. The organization is a platform for established, upcoming, and novice dancers to explore their artistic voice.
As part of his award, Ronen gets to train with elite faculty for a year, and he will attend ADE conventions and competition events around the country in 2022 and 2023. He will receive two-night hotel stays in each tour city for the entire tour season.
Ronen, who is a rising freshman at Robbinsville High School, said he feels “incredible blessed” to have won the award.
His mother, Pamela, speaking for her son, said that “It is a dream come true (for Jonathan) to travel to cities for ADE’s 3-day convention.”
During the tour, he will assist the faculty by demonstrating choreography to the hundreds of dancers in attendance.
“For him, this is the best way to spend his weekends—traveling, training in an array of genres with top notch faculty, and being part of a dance community that supports and guides his growth,” Pamela said.
She added: “During non-dancing hours, he gets to learn the ins and outs of what goes on in dance conventions as he helps facilitate dance studios competition line up back stage, assists during award ceremonies and be part of welcoming and finale ceremonies.”
Ronen’s dancer of the year win is the latest in a list of accolades that he has accumulated over the years.
Ronen has been training for the stage his whole life. Pamela said he would dance around as a toddler, and she knew she had to sign him up for lessons once he told her he wanted to do more with dance.
He began his training at age 5 at Dance on Q in South Brunswick, taking classes in everything from jazz to lyrical.
At age 6, he was asked to join the competition team, where he won a number of awards, including the Mr. Junior title award in three of the four competition events. That award is given to a student showing the best stage presence out of everyone in the entire competition—which could be upwards of a few hundred dancers.
Competing and training at one studio wasn’t enough for Ronen, though. A year after he began at Dance on Q, he also started training with Princeton Dance and Theater and Princeton Youth Ballet.
“I went looking for a summer camp for him and came across PDT’s Young Dancer’s camp,” Pamela said. “He went and it was just amazing—he absolutely loved it.”
At PDT, Ronen got to focus primarily on ballet—where the studio is American Ballet Theater certified—but also was able to choreograph and try other styles, as well.
Maura Ryan, assistant director and primary teacher for the Young Dancers summer camp at PDT has said of Ronen: “He is bright and concentrates very hard. His creativity gives him a fearlessness that lets him choreograph without any reservation. There aren’t many students like Jonathan.”
After PDT, Ronen performed in a ballet with PYB in 2014. Since then, he has performed in the December performances of “The Snow Queen” ballet where he got to see how a full-length ballet was put together.
“He loves getting into character and telling a story with his movement,” Ryan said. “He is so expressive and has such great use of his body in order to tell a story.”
This summer, aside from attending his camp at PDT and classes at Dance on Q, Ronen performed in a production of “Anything Goes” at Kelsey Theater.
The dancer first received national attention in 2016, when he was an 8-year-old Sharon School student.
He developed a five-minute choreographed piece called “The Math Dream,” where he created costumes, props and an entire story to explain math equations. The dance starts by showing a student struggling with a math problem. He falls asleep into a dream about numbers. The dream ultimately helps the student solve the problem.
In creating “The Math Dream” Ronen enlisted help from his brothers and parents, filmed a performance of the piece staged in his home and then entered it in the Robbinsville PTSA’s Reflections contest.
Reflections is an arts recognition program for K-12 students, where students can interpret a theme using visual arts, photography, film, dance, music and literature. In 2015-16, the theme was, “Let Your Imagination Fly.”
Ronen won the Robbinsville competition, and scored a Reflections Award of Excellence by the National PTA. He so impressed the national organization, in fact, that he earned an invitation in to receive his award in Orlando, Florida.
He was one of only three students in his grade division to receive the honor, beating out more than 300,000 students from 8,000 schools in the United States.
“I was really surprised when I won,” he said. “It was really exciting.”
Pamela compares her son’s ability to create a story, like he did with “The Math Dream,” to watching the creative process and performing in “The Snow Queen” at PYB.
It helps that Ronen has musical genes—Pamela studied cello seriously throughout her childhood, and still plays. She and husband Asaf—Ronen’s dad—also dance for fun, primarily Salsa and Merengue.
Ronen’s twin brother, Benjamin, and older brother, Elan, are more interested in sports than dancing. They both enjoy mountain biking and hiking. But they, too, enjoy supporting their brother.
In the years since “The Math Dream,” Ronen has continued to be a passionate artist focusing on dance. He trains in the styles of jazz, musical theater, contemporary, tap, ballet and hip hop.
He also continues to create choreography for fun and posts videos on his Instagram account—@jrjustbeyou.
“He feels that nothing recharges me more than creating a story with his dance,” Pamela said.
Ronen’s most viewed choreography is a contemporary piece from Billie Eilish’s Comet song with almost 10K views posted last summer.
During middle school years, Ronen became a member of the Knicks City Kids dance team, dancing on the floor of the Madison Square Garden arena with crowds of 20 thousand during the Knicks basketball team home games.
“Jonathan always felt it was so cool to have a MSG employee badge and getting paid for doing what he loves—dance,” Pamela said.
Ronen has been participating in ADE for a number of years now. The program has two levels—Prodigy and the more advanced Noble. To attain the Noble level, a Prodigy dancer competes at ADE’s national event in Orlando. Dancers who excel over five days of training, competition and auditions earn the Noble dancer title.
Ronen had achieved the Noble level twice before at the Junior level, but he aged out this year, and he needed to demonstrate that he had the skill to be a Noble at the Teen level.
“It was an unforgettable moment when Jonathan realized that not only was he able to renew his scholarship as an ADE Noble at the Teen level, but in addition, he got awarded the coveted title of Male Teen Dancer of the Year,” Pamela said.
She added: “Jonathan is ecstatic to continue in the Noble program because he is continuously inspired by dancing at the highest level, assisting the amazing faculty, networking with other dancers and professionals, and being part of special performances and travel opportunities.”
“We are very proud of Jonathan’s accomplishments in his dance journey,” she said.
Jonathan Ronen of Robbinsville shows off his Dancer of the Year award.,
