Post Type Archives: faculty

Mariana, a notorious talent in the world of ballet, embarked on her dance journey at the tender age of 3. Her exceptional aptitude for the art form was evident early on when she secured the highest admittance score among 8,000 aspiring young dancers applying for The Bolshoi Theater School in Brazil. Her formative years at […]

Cassidy Isaacson began training at the age of four in her hometown of Redmond, WA, at Gotta Dance competition school. Cassidy also quickly started her ballet training at Pacific Northwest Ballet in level one, working her way up to level six before training privately with Deborah Hadley for four years. Cassidy joined Grand Rapids Ballet […]

Karina is a classical and contemporary dancer and teacher from the Bay Area. She started her training at Ayako School of Ballet in Belmont, CA, and continued her studies at Milwaukee Ballet II and Colorado Ballet’s pre-professional program. She spent two summers in Madrid studying Forsythe improvisation techniques. She has performed with Ballet Memphis, Colorado […]

Shelley trained from age 5 in the UK’s Royal Academy of Dancing curriculum and system of examinations. She went on to dance with the ballet company of Innsbruck’s State Theater, Austria, Nuernberg’s Civic Ballet Company in Germany and as soloist with the Royal Ballet of Flanders in Belgium.

Originally from Japan, Ayako was a principal dancer with the Tokyo City Ballet Company and the Matsuyama Ballet Company. She has studied with Sulamith Messerer, Aleksei Varlamov and Mikiko Matsuyama. Ayako has performed leading roles in Swan Lake, Cinderella, Nutcracker, Balanchine’s Serenade and many other works. Ayako has been teaching in the United States since […]

A native of the Bay Area, Rika Nina Onizuka trained locally with Ayako Takahashi, Richard Gibson and Zory Karah. She then went on to study at the San Francisco Ballet School, and as a scholarship student at the Joffrey Ballet School and David Howard Dance Center in New York. As a founding member of Smuin […]

Logan Martin (they/them), is a trans non-binary individual from Silverdale, WA. Logan trained at Houston Ballet Ben Stevenson Academy and has danced professionally with Pennsylvania Ballet and Ballet West. In 2017 they stepped away from performing to honor themself and to focus on their mental health. They returned to dance in January 2022, performing as […]