The Dance Academy is a rigorous pre-professional ballet training program that both honors the great traditions of classical ballet and embraces the new and contemporary.
Students learn masterworks and deepen their understanding of the great tradition of this art form. They also collaborate with the choreographers of today and develop their own creative voices. Our holistic artistic education shapes dancers as thinkers, artists, and performers as they experience life in the cultural heart of a global city.
I love the familial element at Colburn which is cultivated by a variety of insightful teachers who know how to draw out our individuality and artistic voice. It’s inspiring to watch my fellow classmates encourage each other and offer the support needed in this rigorous art form. Chloë Oronoz, Dance Academy student
I love the familial element at Colburn which is cultivated by a variety of insightful teachers who know how to draw out our individuality and artistic voice. It’s inspiring to watch my fellow classmates encourage each other and offer the support needed in this rigorous art form.
The rigorous Dance Academy curriculum is designed to prepare students for careers as dancers, focusing on classical ballet while providing instruction in other styles. By exposing students to choreographic masterworks with coaching by faculty who themselves are leaders in the field, the Dance Academy gives its students the tools they need to find a new richness in their dancing and become successful artists.
Such notable names as Wendy Whelan, Peter Boal, Helgi Tomasson, Mikko Nissinen, and Benjamin Millepied, have led Dance Academy master classes providing unique access and exposure to leaders in the field. As a result, graduates of the Dance Academy currently perform with New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, National Ballet of Canada and numerous other professional companies, trainee programs, and university dance programs.
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Leeav Sofer is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer/arranger, music director and teaching artist with a performance degree in clarinet and voice from the Bob Cole Conservatory of California State University of Long Beach.
In addition to teaching at the Colburn School, Lisa Gillespie is an adjunct professor of dance at Loyola Marymount University and a frequent instructor at the Santa Clarita Ballet Academy.
Gallia has been the concertmaster of the American Youth Symphony since 2016 and has won numerous local, national, and international competitions, both as a soloist and chamber musician.
Yoko enjoys teaching various levels of students, is a freelance accompanist, and has been a ballet accompanist for the Trudl Zipper Dance Institute at The Colburn School since September 2011.