Meet The Editors

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and first started dancing in my best friend’s kitchen when I was 3. She and I would put on 10 pairs of socks each so we could trade off trying on her mom’s pointe shoes (her mom, Susan Tripaldi, was my first teacher). I continued learning tap, ballet and jazz when my parents enrolled me at the California Academy of Performing Arts in Moraga, CA, when I was 9. By then I was totally hooked on dancing and performing. It was a whirlwind into San Francisco Ballet School before I moved to NYC. (I was one of eight girls chosen by Baryshnikov to study fulltime at American Ballet Theater’s School of Classical Ballet!) At 16, I auditioned for San Francisco Ballet and got a contract. After five fab years there dancing with amazing people, I joined American Ballet Theatre where I danced with more amazing people! Now, I love working at Dance Spirit! Brianne, Lauren, Alison and Lauren are zany, smart and savvy, and we have so much fun putting together the magazine for you (the best readers ever!) each month.

I started tap lessons when I was 4 years old and was immediately put into competitions. Over the years, I picked up jazz, ballet and lyrical, and I continued competing with my studio in Ohio all the way through high school. At Kent State University, where I was majoring in journalism, I took lots of modern and ballet classes and got a chance to meet some amazing teachers and dancers. My junior year, I decided to try out for the Cleveland Cavalier Girls dance team and made it! I spent one year dancing on the NBA court, then switched over to arena football for my last year in school. After graduating, I picked up and moved to NYC where I now edit and write lots of dance articles for Dance Spirit--the perfect combination of my two passions, dance and journalism!

When I was 2 ½ I asked my mom if I could take dance classes in New York City. She told me that if I stopped wearing diapers, I could sign up for ballet class. That was all it took—I was forever potty-trained and forever a dancer. I moved to Westchester, NY, at age five and continued to take jazz, ballet, tap, and hip-hop dance classes. I was the captain of my high school’s varsity dance team both junior and senior year. I performed in a total of seven high school musicals as a primary dancer (my favorite memories were singing and dancing “I like to be in America” as Anita in "West Side Story" and playing Gladys in "The Pajama Game"). During my college years at Syracuse University, I danced in and choreographed a hip-hop piece for a performance put on by the student-run organization, Danceworks. But this dancer is also a fashionista! Before coming to Dance Spirit, I interned in the fashion departments at New York, Jane, and Elle and also at Elite Model Management. I love to spot trends both on the streets and in the studios.

Growing up in West Palm Beach, Florida, the beach was the most exciting activity for most kids. But for me, it was always dance! I started training in jazz and tap when I was four, and by age 8 was performing with a youth troupe called Show Biz Kids (totally cute, right!) in shows like The Wiz and Cats. Then, at 13 I also added more serious ballet training and attended Ballet Florida Academy, where I performed with the amazing and diverse Ballet Florida company in the yearly Nutcracker. In high school, I added theater and voice lessons and started attending big name workshops over the summer like Broadway Theatre Project, Boulder Jazz Dance Workshop and Boston Summer Dance Festival. I also performed in local musicals like Bye, Bye Birdie and Fiddler on the Roof. In college at the University of Florida, I danced in two jazz companies and straight after graduation, I hit NYC! Since moving up north, I've danced in modern and jazz companies in the city, as well as in musicals at regional theaters, like Evita at the Fireside Theatre. I swirled writing into the mix a couple years back, and now I'm lucky enough to get to work on DS!

My mom signed me up for my first dance class when I was four and I was instantly addicted. I danced everywhere, leaping through the aisles at the grocery store (come on, who hasn’t done that?!) and making homemade dance videos with my best friend in my basement. Eventually I started competing at Concord Dance Academy in Concord, NH, spending every winter weekend competing in tap, jazz, musical theater, open and lyrical. I spent almost 30 hours a week in the studio and I never got sick of it. I thrived on competition for eight years until I went to college as a journalism major at Quinnipiac University, where I was also the captain of the university’s Kickline team. We won first place in the college division at the Scholastic Kickline Championships and now, with a massive trophy and a diploma under my belt, here I am, keeping the online world of Dance Spirit up-to-date for you, writing lots of articles and shooting and editing tons of videos from all of our photo shoots (check 'em out!).