I have been studying ballet since I was four years old. My training began with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, where I studied under many professional instructors including David Holladay, Janet Popeleski, Colleen Pratt and Patricia Wilde. While at PBT I learned from a variety of teachers who taught a combination of styles, including Cecchetti, Vaganova and quite a bit of Balanchine. I began working en pointe when I was 11 years old, and have continued to practice pointework for the past 13 years. I performed with PBT many times during my 14 years in their Student and Pre-Professional Divisions, including but not limited to 10 seasons in Balanchine’s The Nutcracker (where I played just about every student role in the show).


In the Dance Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I continued to hone my skills with four years of somatically-rich ballet emphasizing a deep understanding of how the body moves and functions. During the summers I attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, where I studied with dancers from Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet and learned to reach a very real, true place of personal expression through the movement vocabulary of ballet. During my junior year at college, I tutored a friend in Petite Allegro when she expressed her desire to achieve a greater lightness and speed.


When you meet with me for help in ballet, we will work one-on-one to address your individual strengths and weaknesses, both overall and in specific steps and aspects of class. I will work with you to encourage a greater sense of ease, joy, and freedom, and to help you become more comfortable working within the vocabulary of classical or contemporary ballet. I will also tutor in pointework, though only if I believe the student has developed the additional strength that pointework requires, and (preferably) has already begun working en pointe in class.