The Quiner Sisters: Six ballerina siblings from Jersey find social media fame

American Repertory Ballet has 22 dancers. Three of them have the same last name: Quiner.

Michelle, 24; Savannah, 21; and Rachel Quiner, 18, are sisters, ballerinas, and YouTubers who all work for the same New Jersey ballet company. Michelle and Savannah have been dancing there for a few years. Rachel joined in January as an apprentice.

They will be performing with American Repertory Ballet this weekend in a program called “Classic Beauty,” featuring excerpts from Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. Savannah will dance Odette, she and Michelle will each dance the Lilac Fairy, and Rachel will dance the White Cat and Florine.

Joining a company as an 18-year-old can be intimidating, but Rachel took classes here last February and in the fall.

“It’s nice having a sister here before you join,” Savannah said. “Because they know all the barre spots,” meaning places a new dancer can stand at the beginning of company class without stepping on a more senior dancer’s toes.

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There are three more dancing Quiners. Older sister, Jillian, is a dance teacher, and teenagers Caroline and Elliana are pre-professional students at American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, which Savannah and Rachel also attended.

The six sisters, their two non-dancing brothers (Bradford and David), and their parents all live together in Washington Township, Morris County, where many of their videos are filmed.

The Quiner Sisters YouTube channel has more than 500,000 subscribers. It shows the sisters dashing from classes to rehearsals to performances. They not only studied ballet on a high level but also participated in conventions and competition dance, an unusual combination.

The competition dance serves the three professionals well now, said their boss, ARB artistic director, Ethan Stiefel (who famously drove a motorcycle on stage in the movie Center Stage). It helps if a company that is neither in Philadelphia nor New York goes for something a bit different. Stiefel opts for “accessible sophistication, relevant to today ... but not watered down.

“And the Quiners fit into that, because they’re so adept and fluid in terms of whether we want to call it contemporary, modern, commercial dancing, musical theater,” he said, “but they [also] have a great command and passion for classical ballet.”

All three dance differently, Stiefel said. Michelle described herself a performer, Savannah said she focuses on the technical side of ballet, and Rachel noted that “people have told me that I move like water.”

Dancing in a company of this size also means Rachel, as an apprentice, can do soloist roles, and Savannah, who joined in 2022, can perform Odette, the white swan. In a larger company, “they still may be five, six, seven years from even just learning it, let alone performing it,” Stiefel said.

The videos follow the sisters to countless Nutcracker performances, once as many as 16 in a single weekend, shows them on shoots modeling dancewear, and take you into their home, where they do workouts in between ballet classes and rehearsals, celebrate birthdays and holidays, and prep meals to take to the studio.

“There’s a lot of us girls,” Rachel said. “We kind of take over the kitchen.”

It was Rachel who was eager to start the YouTube channel five years ago and is still the driving force. Their mother is their manager and plans out the filming schedule. With so many sisters in so many locations, they have two Canon vlogging cameras, a GoPro for underwater shots when they are swimming, and they also film on their phones.

The Quiners started dancing when Michelle was tiny.

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“Our mom was a gymnast,” Michelle said. “She took a couple ballet classes, but she didn’t like it. But we had a studio growing up that was like three minutes from our house. So she was like, ‘Oh, they’ll be cute in tutus.’ She put me and my older sister [Jillian] into classes. And then I think when she kept having more girls ... she wouldn’t want to drive us all over to different places.”

From the local competition school, which focused on big group numbers that got to be too much, they moved to a school that focuses more on classical dance, Hunterdon Hills Ballet, run by former Philadelphia Ballet dancer Elaine Matthews, in Annandale. But they continued to compete as soloists.

They also spent a year in Jenkintown, when their father got a job in Pennsylvania. They attended the Metropolitan Ballet Academy for a year before moving back to New Jersey.

“We had all six sisters,” said Lisa Collins Vidnovic, artistic director of the Met. “They all are a delight. Hard working, talented and fun.”

These days Michelle, Savannah, and Rachel drive an hour and 15 minutes each way to rehearsal in the former Westminster Choir College Talbott Library in Princeton. Caroline and Elliana’s commute to New York City six days a week can be that long or more, depending on traffic. Michelle and Savannah also teach at Hunterdon Hills Ballet, 40 minutes from Princeton, where Jillian also teaches.

Michelle also has a fourth job as ARB’s social media content manager, where former Philadelphia Ballet principal dancer Julie Diana Hench is executive director. All three sisters also choreograph solos for students, including their sisters.

Ultimately, being one of six was a benefit, they said.

“The competitiveness helped us,” Savannah said. “We all had each other to work with.”

“Especially during COVID,” Rachel said. “We were constantly taking classes in our basement. We fought a lot but we got a lot better.”

American Repertory in Classic Beauty. Friday through Sunday. New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, 11 Livingston Ave, New Brunswick. Tickets are $35-$45. arballet.org/event/classic-beauty 732-745-8000.

The Quiner sisters are scheduled to dance the following roles:

Friday at 7 p.m., Savannah will be Odette and Michelle will be performing Four Swans and the Lilac Fairy.

Saturday at 2 p.m., Michelle will be in Four Swans, Rachel will be Florine, and Savannah will be the Lilac Fairy.

Saturday at 7 p.m., Rachel will be a Cygnet and the White Cat, and Michelle will be one of the Four Swans and Emerald.

Sunday at 2 p.m., Savannah will be Odette, Rachel will be a Cygnet, and Michelle will be one of the Four Swans and the Lilac Fairy.