Melissa
Corr, Ballet Mistress, Instructor
Melissa Corr, a native New Yorker, has been a leading figure in the
training of classical dancers in our region for over 20 years. Her rigorous
Russian based training system provides her students with the discipline,
technique and motivation to pursue professional careers in dance.
Melissa
is currently the advanced and company teacher at Canyon Concert Ballet
and the advanced level instructor at Colorado State University, where
she has staged several classic works.
Jessica Freestone, Creative Director for The Nutcracker
Jessica’s dance training began in Fort Collins at the age of six. At a young age, she was accepted as a performing member of both Canyon Concert Ballet and the Dance Connection. Jessica has pursued her love of dance across the country, attending summer intensive courses in Boston, Aspen and Durham, North Carolina. She has appeared in Portland, Oregon and the San Francisco Bay Area as a guest performer with Oslund and Company, Benicia Ballet, and Peninsula Dance Theatre.
Jessica has been a member of OpenStage Theatre & Company since 1992 and was honored to serve as a Producing Artistic Director for openstage etc from 2002-2007.
Since 1999, Jessica has been a member of IMPACT Dance, performing the exciting and groundbreaking dance theatre created by Judy Bejarano.
In 1995, Jessica was honored to assist CCB as interim director for their production of The Nutcracker. From 2000-2003, Jessica co-created Turtle Island, an original dance theatre collaboration with Cary Morin of the Atoll and Gina Yowell Cochran.
Jessica is an avid performing artist, appearing as a dancer and actress in numerous live productions and on television, film, and radio. She is an accomplished producer, choreographer and occasionally a director for several local arts groups, including The Dance Connection, OpenStage Theatre, openstage etc and Canyon Concert Ballet.
Since 1978, she has been involved in over 150 regional dance and theatre productions, contributing as a dancer, choreographer, director, actress, producer, light board operator, and stagehand.
Some of her favorite roles and experiences include: Performing with Canyon Concert Ballet in their 25th Anniversary Gala, where she was able to re-visit a favorite role in Feiffer Dances; Joan of Arc in OpenStage Theatre’s Saint Joan; Alice in OpenStage Theatre’s You Can't Take It With You and three years as The Sugar Plum Fairy in Canyon Concert Ballet’s The Nutcracker.
Currently, Jessica splits her time between her many jobs: as a director for Canyon Concert Ballet’s The Nutcracker, as a dance instructor, as a Certified Massage Therapist and, most importantly, as mother to her fabulous family unit!
Amber Mazurana, School Director
Amber Mazurana graduated in 1999 with a B.A. in dance pedagogy from Butler University, and in 1995 she graduated from North Carolina School of the Arts. Amber was a member of the Hannah Kahn Dance Company from 2001- 2004, and before that danced as a soloist with Peter Sparling Dance Company in Michigan. She has been dancing with IMPACT Dance Co. since 2006.
She has studied under the direction of talented dancers such as Bill Evans and Melissa Hayden, as well as with Ballet Internationale, Dance Kaleidoscope, Boston Ballet, and the Pennsylvania Ballet. Amber also studied African drumming and dance at the University of Ghana, West Africa for two summers. She has been teaching in Fort Collins since 2001 and is delighted to be joining CCDC!
Judy
Bejarano, Instructor
Judy Bejarano is an instructor and guest choreographer for Canyon Concert
Ballet. She is well known for her innovative evening length productions
as the artistic director of IMPACT DANCE.
Bejarano
received her Master of Fine Arts from C.U. Boulder in dance with an
emphasis in choreography. Throughout her career she has been the recipient
of many awards including most recently the 2004 Arts Alive Fellowship.
Judy had
served on the faculty at Colorado State University for several years
and as a guest instructor for several organizations including the
University of Northern Colorado, the Colorado Dance Festival and
Desperate Figures Dance Theatre in Wiesbaden, Germany. She is delighted
to once again be working with Canyon Concert Ballet.
Nicole Blyth Darnell, Instructor
Nicole began my ballet training at the age of four here at CCB and have not stopped since. Through out the years Nicole moved her way up through the levels of ballet; participating in the aspirant program and ending up with the company. She also participated in numerous productions at CCB. At the age of nine, Nicole continued her range of dance by training in modern, tap, hip-hop, and jazz.
She choreographed three musicals at Windsor High School: Cinderella, Wizard of Oz, and Little Shop of Honors. Nicole also choreographed a ballet piece for a University of Northern Colorado dance production. She just recently completed her minor in Dance at the University of Northern Colorado and working on completing my bachelor degree. She plans to continue teaching and participating in ballet the rest of her life.
Rachel Blyth-Marlan, Instructor
A native of Fort Collins, Colorado, Rachel has been dancing since the age of four. She is a former student of Canyon Concert Ballet. She has attended the Vail International Summer Dance Festival where she studied with teachers from the Bolshoi Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet. She also attended the University of South Carolina Summer Conservatory, Snowy Range Dance Festival, and the Kansas City Ballet Summer School.
She continued her training with a dance scholarship at the University of Northern Colorado where she earned a B.A. in Dance with an emphasis in dance science. While she was there, she was awarded Departmental Scholar for three years and made the National Dean’s List. For the past three years, she has been performing professionally with the Manassas Ballet Theatre in Virginia and teaching at various studios.
Theresa Borak, Instructor
This will be Theresa’s 6th year teaching at CCB but she has a long history here. She grew up dancing at CCB and enjoyed performing 6 seasons of the Nutcracker from 1990-96 with the company as well as other productions.
She graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota with a double BA in modern dance and French in 2001. Over the past few years she has had the opportunity to perform and choreograph for multiple regional groups in ballet, jazz, modern, and musical theater.
Mallory Buffer, Instructor
Mallory started dancing at the age of four with the Boulder Dance Department. She is Russian-classically trained in the Vagonova method of ballet, and exclusively trained for thirteen years. Mallory has also trained in New York under Illia Gaft who danced with the Bolchei Ballet. Her professional performances include: Sleeping Beauty with Boulder Ballet, The Four Little Swans, the Sleeping Beauty fairies, and Paquita. The past eight years she has continued her training in ballet as well as jazz, hip-hop, tap, and modern dance through Grace Studios, the Boulder Expressions Dance Company and Colorado State University.
She has taken part in many dance workshops and competitions such as Dance Caravan, Starlight, Co. Dance, West Coast Dance Explosion and Encore. Mallory is currently a junior in the Dance Program at Colorado State University, and she has had the privilege of working with companies and choreographers such as Kim Neal Nofsinger, Hannah Kahn, Hubbard Street 2, and the Saint Petersburg Classic Ballet Theatre. She looks forward to continuing her dance education and performance opportunities as well as continuing to educate others through the art of teaching dance.
Kim Carter, Instructor
Kim Carter is the Executive Director and an instructor for Canyon Concert Ballet and Dance Center. She graduated from CSU with her degree is dance. Kim has taught, choreographed and performed in Colorado since 1993. She started dancing at age 8, and continues to study ballet, modern, hip-hop, cultural dance and jazz. While attending Colorado State University, she received several Creative Performing Arts Scholarship Awards.
After graduating from CSU with honors in December of 1993 with a Performance Art degree, she began working with the Canyon Concert Ballet as a teacher, company stage manager, administrative associate and choreographer. In February of 1996, she started her own company, High Performance Dance Theatre, a non-profit educational organization. She is the Artistic Director of High Performance Dance Theatre. Currently Ms. Carter teaches jazz, modern and hip-hop, as well as setting choreography for competition and performing groups in Northern Colorado.
Lee Cooper, Instructor
After receiving a degree in Theatre and Dance from the University of Colorado, Lee Cooper toured and performed with The Colorado Dance Theatre Ensemble. She was then offered a teaching opportunity at Mesa State College, where she taught for three years and continued to develop her musical theatre work. Afterward, she moved to Washington and taught ballet for Dance Theatre Seattle and later returned to Fort Collins, Colorado to start The Dance Connection, a modern dance company based on body/mind connection.
Teaching in the dance field has always been her passion as she joined the faculty at Colorado State University and developed a pedagogy curriculum, which she later taught at the University of Northern Colorado as well. Lee continues to be an advocate for dance education and has presented three papers on the national level for the National Dance Education Organization. At this point in her career, the most exciting turn of events has led her into the Pilates field where she is able to apply her teaching as well as her passion for the study of kinesiology and body/mind work.
Having received her training through Physical Mind Institute, she has found a compatible venue for the application of Pilates to dance, which has led to exciting work with dancers and opened up a new approach to presenting movement. Her greatest inspiration lies in teaching Pilates and Ballet to every age and level.
Randy Downing, Instructor
Randy Downing grew up in Fort Collins, and makes his living as a sports massage therapist. Although he enjoys all forms of dance, tap is definitely his favorite.
Randy studies tap with Broadway veteran Gene GeBauer, and has performed in various musical theatre productions including: A Walk With Gershwin, Oklahoma!, An Evening of Percussive Dance, Dancers at an Exhibition, Brigadoon, Lifetime of Love and The Nutcracker.
Neyla Driscoll, Instructor
Neyla has a bachelor of Arts in drama and speech communications from Colorado State University....she is married to Mark and has raised three children and now has a granddaughter, Jaidyn, one years old. Neyla has worked extensively in the Poudre School district as a music para-assistant and accompaniest, and also done choreography for various school productions; she also spent many years as an assistant director with the Childrens Centennial Chorus, as a choreographer and drama coach.
Neyla has enjoyed tap dancing for more than forty years and most recently danced in a production at the Rialto in a tap show featuring Gene GeBauer and The Big Noise from Boulder, Colorado. In 2006, Neyla tap-danced in Front Range theater's production of Anything Goes, and has performed in percussive dance productions at the Lincoln Center for two years, as well as various outdoor venues in Boulder. Neyla and husband Mark are very active in the community and supporters of the Colorado State University Rams! She enjoys sharing the art of tapdancing with adults and children and has taught at CCB for the past five years.
Elena Estanol M.F.A., M.S, Instructor
Ms. Estanol is a ballet and kinesiology teacher, choreographer, performance psychology consultant and a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology. She received her early training from the RAD in Mexico City and The National Ballet of Cuba from Laura and Fernando Alonzo in Cuba. Additionally she trained at the Ballet West Conservatory with the late Mr. William Christensen, prior to attending the University of Utah where she received both her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in teaching, choreography and kinesiology, while performing with the resident company Utah Ballet.
Over the past few years she has been working on her doctorate in psychology where her research interest lies in discovering the risk and resilience factors that contribute to the prevention and emergence of eating disorders in dancers. She has continued to teach ballet, Pilates-based conditioning and choreographing for Intermountain West Ballet a small regional company in Sandy, UT, where she has set and re-choreographed the Nutcracker, excerpts of the Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Coppelia, as well as her own contemporary ballets. She is thrilled to be here in Fort Collins and teaching for Canyon Concert Ballet.
Erica Schlei, Instructor
Erica Schlei has danced at CCB for 17 years, and has performed in more than 30 CCB productions. She is in her sixth year of teaching at CCDC. She has trained under numerous well known dance instructors such as Gabriella Komleva, of the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Galina Yordanova, resident guest teacher and choreographer for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Canada.
Erica has also studied many forms of dance besides ballet including Jazz, Modern, Contact Improvisation, Spanish, Swing, Salsa, Character, Tap, and Hip-Hop. When she is not teaching, running rehearsals, or dancing herself she also enjoys photography, scrapbooking, reading, and working in floral design.
Gretta Smith, Instructor
Gretta grew up in a small town in northern California. At age eight, she began dancing with Dianna Soto at Tinsel Town. Gretta took classes in jazz, acrobatics, tap, ballet, lyrical, hip hop, modern, Fosse, and Brazilian. At age12, Gretta began teaching children’s combination and jazz classes.
Once Gretta started high school, she began dancing in the Tinsel Town Performance Troupe. Some of the performance opportunities included, dance competitions, performances at Great America theme park, retirement home shows, Travis Air Force Base performances, dancing with Rod Stewart and Jimmy Buffet cover bands, El Dorado County Fair shows, and annual recitals.
After graduating from high school, Gretta moved to Fort Collins, Colorado to attend CSU as a marketing major. Since 2005, Gretta has been a dance instructor at Canyon Concert Ballet, where she teaches ballet, tap, and jazz to children and adults. Gretta owes her love for dance to her wonderful dance teacher, Dianna Soto. Performing is Gretta’s passion and she enjoys sharing her love for dance with all of her students!
Jillian Wachsmann, Instructor
Jillian Wachsmann has studied dance at CSU, Colorado Mountain College, and The Mountain Dance Center, and has continued her education by frequently traveling to various dance conventions. In 2001, she received her certificate to teach yoga at the Yoga Institute of Texas.
Jillian has taught at The Vail Valley Academy Of Dance, Colorado Mountain College, Mountain Dance and has coached the FCHS Tower Dancers. Currently she enjoys teaching at Canyon Concert Ballet and Dance Center. She has been a member of the High Performance Dance Theater for over five years.
Sidares Washington, Instructor
Sidares Washington was born and raised in Denver CO., where he fell in love with the original hip-hop culture through fellow dancers who served as mentors for him/me. After enjoying studio sessions throughout high school Sidares proceeded to train in New York City at BLADE dance academy after graduation.
His teaching and dance style originates from his days in New York which incorporates technique and discipline into hip-hop style while maintaining an energetic atmosphere. Sidares believes that growth for dancers is a lifetime quest and invites you to join him in exploring your creative expression through hip–hop dance.
Ixchel Whitcher, Instructor
Ixchel Whitcher grew up in Casper, Wyoming but has been living, dancing, teaching and choreographing in northern Colorado since 1990. She has had the benefit of training with numerous master teachers including Conrad Ludlow, Yi-Qi and Li-Chou Cheng, and Lorita Travaglia.
Following high school, Ixchel studied ballet at the University of Utah, after which she danced with Ballet Oklahoma, the Charleston Ballet Theatre, and the Lexington Ballet before moving to Colorado. Here she has performed with the Boulder Ballet Ensemble, Canyon Concert Ballet, and Classical Dance Theatre, among others.
Ixchel’s choreography, ranging from solos to the full-length Firdbird, has been performed on many stages across northern Colorado. She has been teaching ballet for over 17 years and has worked with students of all ages and levels, but primarily with intermediate to advanced pre-teens and teens. Interests outside of dance have led Ixchel to complete a Masters Degree in Botany, teach pre-school at River Song Waldorf School, and spend time raising her young son Orion.
