I’m an Episcopal priest today, but my first career was in music and dance education. In the years I was preparing for ordination to the priesthood, one of my jobs was teaching adult beginner ballet at a studio in midtown Manhattan. And as I dove deeper into teaching ballet to adults, the strangest thing happened: I started noticing that the language I used to teach ballet was often - and unintentionally - spiritual in nature. I started seeing how seamlessly the practice of ballet was revealing lessons far beyond the confines of the studio - lessons that had been living in me all along.

I started ballet lessons when I was 3 years old and fell in love with it immediately. Ballet was a language that made sense to me. Something about its beautiful, graceful movement, in the context of a vocabulary of steps, jumps, and turns, felt like my very soul was speaking. Even as my body ages and changes and can’t do everything it used to, the language of ballet still lives in my bones. 

Throughout my priesthood, I’ve had fits and starts of trying to integrate ballet into my lifelong calling. I preached a sermon series several years ago called “Raising the Barre: Faith Lessons from the Ballet Studio.” At one point I taught a community ballet class at my church. But over the years, I’ve met countless people who strongly resonated with the reality that ballet was more than just physical for them. I saw the deep desire for this beautiful art form to be about more than just technique and rigor, but about joy, freedom, self-expression, and - God forbid - fun! 

My driving motivation, both as an arts educator and as a priest, has always been hospitality and accessibility. Whether you’re learning about praying or pirouettes, I want you to feel welcome and whole, uninhibited and unintimidated. Ballet is a language that I am passionate about communicating and sharing, and I would love for you to join a class. Ballet is for every body!