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 Theatre’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! Alison, Colleen, Katie, Margaret, Michael and Jo are zany, smart and savvy, and we have so much fun putting together the magazine for you (the best readers ever!) each month.

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 (oh please, everyone does it) and making homemade dance videos in my basement with my best friend. (We loved dancing to anything from the Cats soundtrack, how cool were we?) 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 nearly 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 in Hamden, CT, 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, living the dancer/writer dream working at Dance Spirit.

I’m proud of my “comp kid” past! Dance meant everything to me when I was a kid, and I spent my happiest hours studying ballet, tap, jazz, lyrical and hip hop for 15 years at my local Long Island studio, L.A. Dance Studio, and competing with its company. I majored in journalism at Hofstra University, and save for an early stint with the student-run organization Danceworks, my dance career wound down just as my journalism career ramped up. Most of my attention was soon diverted to my work with the school’s newspaper, student magazine and an internship in NYC. After college, I spent a few years as a business journalist covering the toy and consumer electronics industries and now I’m ecstatic that I’ve found a way back to my first love—dance! As I told all of my friends when I was hired, this job is essentially everything I ever wanted, rolled up in a ball. What could be better?!

When I was 3, I told my mom that I wanted to be a ballerina. She thought I just wanted a tutu, so she made me one—but she quickly found out that I was serious! Two years later I started taking ballet classes, and I’ve been dancing ever since. During high school I attended summer programs at the Chautauqua Institution and Boston Ballet and performed with a small youth ballet. A bad knee injury kept me from auditioning for companies, so I ended up at Princeton University, where I discovered choreography (and hip hop!) in a fantastic student-run dance troupe, diSiac Dance Company. College was also where I fell in love with writing, and after graduation I pursued a master’s degree in journalism as part of New York University’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program (where I met my idol, New Yorker dance writer Joan Acocella). Now I’m lucky enough to be combining all of my passions at Dance Spirit!

I began dancing in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin when I was 5 years old. Like many young students, I started with ballet, but I couldn’t wait to get my little feet into a pair of tap shoes—I always knew I wanted to make a lot of noise! Tap and jazz were soon added to my schedule and I spent nights and weekends at class and rehearsals. Dance also presented fantastic opportunities to travel around the world. I performed in the former-U.S.S.R., Denmark and England with studio groups and studied at Joffrey summer workshops in Texas and Michigan. In high school, I was a member (and senior captain) of the varsity poms/dance team. During my first two years of college, I performed with a local company in Madison called Jazzworks before declaring a Theatre and Drama major, which demanded most of my time. A few years later, after getting a master’s in journalism, I’m so happy to have found my way back to dance!

When I was three, I started begging my mom to let me take dance classes. The next thing I knew I was leaping across the stage to the Mickey Mouse song wearing giant mouse ears—I was hooked. Despite having sickled feet and no flexibility, I loved rocking the stage with an enormous open-mouthed smile and a little too much energy. I spent my childhood in the studio and competing, absolutely loving every minute. After high school I headed to Brigham Young University, where I joined the dance team, the Cougarettes. I served as Dance Captain for two years and still proudly sport my national championship ring. I always dreamed of living in NYC one day, and after marrying the love of my life and joining Dance Spirit, all my dreams have come true!