About
I was not a born performer.
In fact, I was a heroically unathletic child with almost no formal dance training and two very busy working-class immigrant parents.
The upshot of this is that I both know what it is like to start learning something physical from scratch as an adult. I know what it’s like to try climbing a set of silks for the first time and think “I’ll never be able to do that,” or have trouble touching my toes, and I definitely know what it’s like to be the least coordinated person in a dance class. I can connect with my students over that struggle because I remember that very same struggle 5 years ago when I decided to take a leap and learn to dance.
At the time, I was finishing my final year of college. I’d spent most of my 20s as a sponsored athlete racing fixed gear bicycles in the US and Europe (something I also picked up from scratch as an adult who could barely ride without training wheels and certainly didn’t know how to change a tire, but that’s a whole separate story) before breaking my pelvis, which ended my cycling career. Bored, I convinced my partner to sign up for a beginner swing dance class and found that, when I decided to go in with no expectations and try my hardest, I actually really LIKED learning new things and surprised myself with how much of a difference patience and practice made over time. This led me to sign up for a beginner burlesque workshop (full disclosure, I am NOT naturally sexy, so this was more of a challenge than I anticipated.) Then, at one of my first shows, I saw a performer do an aerial hoop act and BAM— I decided I just had to try getting off the ground.
The summer after graduating college, I started hunting for jobs in Biology (my major), but had become so dedicated to aerial silks and hoop that a local gym offered to let me teach a class a week. I had so much fun and increasingly positive feedback from my students that I wound up picking up more classes until I abandoned biology job-hunting all together in favor of my passion: learning to defy gravity and sharing the experience with others.
Fast forward to now, where I now teach full time and perform across the Bay Area and beyond. I’ve been featured in commercials and even a music video, and continue to both impress and gross out my friends by putting my toes on my head. At some point on my journey, I started embracing my frantic energy and the unusual shapes my body makes (I refer to it as “embracing my inner gremlin”) and have developed a unique, dynamic and gooey aerial style. I enjoy encouraging my students to experiment and, above all, appreciate and express their own unique bodies.
My specialties: Lyra | Aerial Silks | Trapeze | Chair Acrobatics | Flexibility