How we got here…

I’m a highly-organized, queer, Capricorn, middle-child who was born and raised in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I spent my childhood training in a variety of dance styles at a local studio, took a stab at playing upright bass in orchestra, taught myself to play the ukulele and guitar, took piano lessons, sang in many choirs (highlights: training with the MN Opera and arranging an 80’s love medley for my high school a cappella group), acted in community and school theater productions (highlight: playing Penny Pingleton in Hairspray), and eventually realized there was something special worth exploring with tap dance, so I found a home with MN-based youth tap dance companies Keane Sense of Rhythm and Kaleena Miller Dance in my final years of high school. As a young person, I was known for my work ethic, academic success, and ability to tutor/teach my peers (read: very intrinsically motivated, ambitious, cracked-the-code of how to ‘be good at school’)—this has stuck with me and led me to pursue teaching in my adult life.

I moved to NYC in 2019 after my first professional theater contract—Jared Grimes & Michael Heitzman’s re-imagined (and life-changing) 42nd Street at The Ordway—to study Teaching & Spanish at NYU and simultaneously train and work professionally in tap dance and theater. At NYU, I worked at the NYU Writing Center as a multilingual Writing Partner and Senior Tutor, and was a Junior Editor for the Mercer Street publication shortly after graduating. I did a lot of research and work related to teaching students with disabilities, teaching multilingual and ENL students, and did a whole lot of writing—both creative and expository, in English and Spanish. While working toward my teaching degree, I student taught a semester each of middle and high school Spanish in two different NYC public schools, choreographed and danced for NYU Pulse Dance Project, and competed in the 2020 ICCA’s with the NYU Cleftomanaics A Cappella group.

While in school, I worked on a variety of exciting professional performance contracts—most notably, I danced in Ayodele Casel’s tap dance pre-production lab for Funny Girl on Broadway, danced in Jared Grimes’ skeleton-crew for pre-production of the upcoming film The Performance, and made my Off-Broadway and NYC theatre debut in the Encores! production of The Tap Dance Kid at New York City Center (Directed by Kenny Leon, choreographed by Jared Grimes). It was around this time that I officially signed with The Mine Agency. I graduated in May 2022, a year early, Summa Cum Laude, with University Honors and obtained initial NYC DOE Teaching Certification.

Since graduating, I’ve performed in various concert dance and theatre settings. Some of my favorites: I tap danced in a show at Little Island, performed in ATDF’s Rhythm in Motion at Symphony Space, danced with tap dance choreographers Dario Natarelli, Demi Remick, and Naomi Funaki for the Dance Lab NY 2022 Tap Dance Project (Founded by Josh Prince, Directed by Ayodele Casel), danced in a new sound-focused dance work QUARTET at The Southern Theatre in Minnesota with Kaleena Miller Dance, and acted in a staged reading of a new folk/rock musical The Last Days of Victor Greymore with The Emerging Artists New Work Series. I’ve also begun to choreograph my own work for live stage performance (The Craft, Uptown Rising), and for short film (The Glory of Love, The Form). I’ve done administrative work and associate direction & choreography for tap dance short films created by Dario Natarelli and John Manzari and recently was associate choreographer to Richard Riaz Yoder for Bucks County Playhouse’s production of White Christmas. I am an Artist in Residence at The American Tap Dance Foundation for 2023-2024, and am looking forward to developing more of my own tap dance and music work there.

While I continue to fervently pursue live performance opportunities in dance, music, and theatre spaces, you can also find me teaching in a variety of spaces, forms, levels, and frameworks. Since July of 2022, I have been teaching tap dance at Broadway Dance Center, and for the past three years I have been teaching voice and music to children affected by cancer through A Free Bird. I also teach tap dance and musical theatre young children and studio dancers across the tri-state area. I occasionally teach and tutor Writing and Spanish and do a bit of freelance Writing & Editing.

Want to know more? Just Ask.