Erika’s background centers heavily on classical ballet.
She started her studies with Martha Mahr School of Ballet when she was 6: classes started right on time and students marched into the room with a polonaise, nobody spoke between exercises and you were expected to work your hardest from the first plies to the final fouettes. Soon, performing The Nutcracker with the pre-professional company Miami Ballet* became an annual holiday tradition.
When international ballet companies came to Miami on tour, she was occasionally called on to perform childrens’ roles, which typically did not tour (this was the case with The Royal Ballet). Within a couple years she started attending Summer Dance Intensives with some of the most prestigious and elite schools in America: The School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center in New York City; American Ballet Theatre’s program in Detroit, MI; and The Juilliard School (also in Lincoln Center) in New York City. She minored in ballet at SMU.
Her focus may have since shifted to theater, storytelling and Shakespeare, but dance is one of those life affirming things that when you love it, you love it, and you never truly let it go.
*The Miami Ballet is now The Thomas Armour Youth Ballet.
Erika Diane 