Curriculum Vitae Dance

Ballet

  • Two semesters of Ballet training as a child with Emma Mae Horn in Houston, Texas. While the other kids made faces and goofed around, Sharon knew from her first step into the studio –  with the beautiful Mrs. Horn, live piano music, pink leos, white tights and pink ballet slippers – that dance was for her.
  • UT Austin, studied with Barbara Barker, formerly of Ballet West in Salt Lake City.
  • UT Austin, Igor Youskevitch, formerly a principal of American Ballet Theatre.
  • Austin Ballet Theatre – studied for one year with various teachers.
  • Barbara Carson, who founded Ballet Austin and who formerly danced with Balanchine and NYCB.
  • Pam Pribisco – Zena Rommet Technique in NYC. Pam is former principal dancer with Cleveland Ballet and was dance master and rehearsal mistress for Ballet Trocadero. An amazing and precise teacher.

Modern Dance

  • At UT Austin, Sharon studied modern dance with the amazing Sharon Vasquez. She also studied with Yakov Sharir for 3 years.
  • Studied with Dee McCandless and Bobbi DeAngelis, Dee McCandless studio in Austin, TX (Dee danced with Laura Dean in NYC before setting up shop in Austin).
  • Classes with Kate Fisher and Kay Francis Braden at Dance Associates in Austin.
  • Workshops in Bella Lewinsky technique with Bella, a West coast choreographer. Ms. Lewitsky studied and danced with Lester Horton.
  • Master Classes with Martha Graham Dance Company dancers.
  • Workshop with Bill Evans – guest teacher at UT Austin. Evans has worked internationally in the field of somatics-based dance technique and began to integrate of Laban Movement Analysis, Bartenieff Fundamentals with modern dance technique in 1976.
  • Summer workshop with Robert Small, choreographer and former dancer with Murray Louis Dance Company.
  • Lynda Davis, former Bella Lewinsky principal. Professor Emeritus FSU. Studied with Ms. Davis in several workshops, including a two week one at TWU Denton, Texas 1981.
  • Performed for two years with Austin Repertory Company.
  • Westbeth NYC. The Cunningham Studio – Cunningham technique – 1982.
  • Soho NYC. Ruth Currier and teachers – Limon technique.

Contemporary Dance

  • 1980 – Austin, Texas Workshop with Deborah Hay when she was working with “playing awake” strategies and practices of cellular awareness.
  • 1981 – Austin, Texas – Workshop with David Gordon 1981.
  • 1982 Moved to New York.
  • Early ’80’s in NYC – Improvisational investigations and practices with Simone Forti during a period when she was studying animal movements. We used imagery, including animal imagined movements, to create movement within group improvisational classes.
  • Early ’80’s – NYC – Improvisation workshop with Dana Reitz at Movement Research.
  • Mid- 80’s – NYC on Leonard Street – Studied with Nancy Topf for 3 years. Her work then was still developing from her time with Lulu Sweigard, Barbara Clark, who studied with Mabel Todd, and Nancy’s friends a collaborators – John Rolland, Marsha Paludan and Mary Fulkerson. The basis of Nancy’s work was imagining anatomical shapes, structures and joints as the impetus to move. In her classes, individually and as a group, we improvised to explore these deep anatomical connections, the breath, with the life and mind of movement. Much of the work was loosely based on developmental patterns, similar to that of Bonny Bainbridge Cohen, one of her contemporaries (though Nancy would have never said it like that.)