Well, I guess this whole thing started when I was about three years old and my mom found me in the living room watching a live recording of American Ballet Theatre’s Swan Lake on PBS. I watched an entire 2 hour and 45 minute, roughly, ballet and didn’t budge. She knew then I would most likely end up on the stage at some point. She was right.

Fast forward a few years, I’m eight years old stepping into my first real ballet class. I had taken tippy toe ballet classes at four years old but that didn’t last long and you don’t really start learning the fundamentals until you’re about eight anyway, so I don’t count the tippy toe years. While the tippy toe years may not have been influential on my life that first day as an eight year old changed my life. From that day on I was always in the studio because I was going to be a professional ballet dancer, and I guess in a way you can say I did do that. Unfortunately, a global pandemic and the twists and turns of life caused me to not be able to accept the contract I was offered to become a professional ballet dancer.

But the journey didn’t end there, don’t worry, the “Theatre” was already calling. Thanks to some very influential jazz instructors in my life, some introductory theatre classes taken around age seven, sneaking downstairs after bedtime to watch the dance numbers in the A Chorus Line film my parents were watching, a teenage obsession with the television show SMASH, and the classic 2006 Disney Channel Original Movie High School Musical, the desire for the glitz and glam of musical theatre was there. So, as life went on and I grew into my twenties, my inspirations changed from ballerinas like Lauren Cuthbertson, Wendy Whelan, Megan Fairchild, Lauren Lovette, and Marianella Nunez to female theatre greats like Gwen Verdon, Donna McKechnie, Anne Reinking, and Jessica Lee Goldyn. I decided to go to school to gain a better understanding of theatre and some strength in acting and voice and balance out my, at the time, 14 years of dance training. It’s been such a thrill to make this shift into theatre and I’m very excited for where post graduation will take me with it.

While theatre and dance are my passions being on the stage is not all I like to do in my life. I teach ballet, jazz, and contemporary classes and choreograph for a local dance studio in the area. Alongside that, I am the “In House Choreographer and Dance Instructor” for a new theatre company in Cleveland, Good Soil Theatre Company. When I’m not in classes, teaching, or rehearsing, I love spending time with my family and friends, exploring new coffee shops, reading, looking for new cds and records at second hand music shops, and antiquing.