Now enrolling for Fall
About the school
Piedmont Ballet was founded by Jeff Stuart and George Latimer in 1998 who served as artistic directors until 2010. Robin Costa-Gustafson was owner and artistic director from 2010 to 2018. Neela Reed has been owner and artistic director since August 2018.
Although not a Pre-Professional Ballet school, we strive to offer quality training that includes professional etiquette and habits. We value traditional technique but also gentle, progressive teaching, body type and racial inclusivity, and community.
Performance opportunities include Nutcracker in December and our annual recital in the Spring. The school places a value on composition practice and productions, including our innovative Nutcracker, often include student created works.
Piedmont Ballet Academy has been long known in Piedmont and beyond to be a place where children and adults alike can relax, make friends, and grow as dancers. Many families describe our school as one of their child's happiest places.
Olutola Afolayan (adult Afro-Lyrical) is a Nigerian-American artist based in Oakland. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Theater Arts and an MBA. After 15 years as a dancer and wellness practitioner, Olutola is launching "The Belonging to Self Practice", a wellness community of practice initiative powered by "The Belonging Arc". This practice explores Afro-Lyrical and Afrobeat movements for somatic healing. Community members will discover movement vocabulary to practice compassionate self-witnessing and consciousness, using provided movement resources to explore different states of being. Olutola's diverse dance training includes work with notable choreographers and teachers such as Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Naomi Diouf, Nina Haft, Dana Lawton, Reginald Savage, Carla Service, Muisi Malonga, and Neela Reed. Join the community of practice today!
Naila Brown (she/her, Level 1) is a performing artist, instructor, and dancer deeply committed to enriching the dance community through innovative repertory and educational programs. Beginning her dance journey at the age of four with classical ballet training at Berkeley City Ballet, Naila continued her development at Shawl Anderson Dance Center's Youth Ensemble before pursuing a degree in Political Science at Howard University. While at Howard, She directed and performed with the I.Am.We Contemporary Dance Company, where she honed her skills in Choreography and performance.
Naila has taught Ballet, Jazz, and Hip-Hop to youth at the Princess Mhoon Dance Institute, focusing on fostering foundational dance skills in a safe and expressive environment. She later joined the Breathe Dance Project, where she spent over six years as a principal dancer, contributing to the company's acclaimed performances in Washington D.C and beyond. Her extensive experience includes performing in notable productions like "Point of Origin" at Atlas Theater and "Trials to Freedom" at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage.
Passionate about social justice and community healing, Naila continually explores the transformative impact of dance on physical, mental, and emotional health, creating collaborative peices that bridge the gaps between diverse communities.
Lily Gee (she/her, modern and compostition) is a hapa movement artist, arts administrator, and Bay Area native. In 2024, Gee participated in ODC's Pilot 74 Program, choreographed for Shawl Anderson's Youth Ensemble, and completed a RAW Residency with SAFEHouse Arts. Gee has danced with Paufve Dance, Nol Simonese, 46 Minutes Collective, and Blind Tiger Society. Her work has been shown at Runway Dance Festival and Battery Dance Festival. She holds a B.A. from Vassar College in Science, Technology, and Society, with minors in Dance Performance and Mathematics. Lily Gee believes in the integrity of a dancer'spersonhood, practices intentional leadership, and creates art guided by both the heart and the gut.
Molly Levy (level 5) is a performer and dance educator who is drawn to the heart and humanity of dance. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Molly has performed throughout the country and on camera in devised original work, immersive theater, site-specific dance, music videos, and full evening burlesque shows. Her collaborations have included work with Sharp & Fine, Paufve Dance, Post:ballet, Cantankerous Creatures, Undercurrent, Katie Scherman + Artists, Seattle Opera, The Equus Projects, and LROD. In addition to dance, Molly has worked in live theater as a movement director and choreographer creating fluid movement languages and character specific movement studies for adaptations of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet, devised site-specific theater, and The light Princess (a musical). As a dance educator, Molly integrates her background in ballet, floorwork, and body-mind centering to offer a grounded and supportive approach to learning dance with an emphasiss on anatomical alighnement, functional progressions of movement, musicality, and individual expression. Molly often begins her classes with a body-centered meditation and encourages her students to build a safe, supportive, and fun learning environment both with each other and in themselves.
Elena Martins (level 4/5, Jazz) is a dancer, dance instructor, and arts administrator from Boston, MA. She received her early training at Donna Miceli Dancer Center and The Academy of Ballet Arts and went on to graduate from SUNY Buffalo with a BA in Dance and minor in speech and hearing science. She has taught at many prestigious dance schools including The School of Classical Ballet, Jeannette Neill Dance Studio, Dana Hall Upper School, Boston Dance Company, and Berkeley City Ballet. Elena is currently a teaching artist at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, ODC School, The East Bay Center for Performing Arts, and Piedmont Ballet Academy. She has performed extensively with Boston, MA and San Francisco Bay Area based dance companies including Prometheus Dance, Lorraine Chapman The Company, LEVYDance, Sarah Berges Dance, Axis Dance Company, RAWdance, West Edge Opera, and Bellwether Dance Project, among others. Elena is currently a company dancer with Robert Moses' KIN. elenamartins.com
Neela Reed (artistic director, levels 2-4, adults) received her early ballet training from Mary Paula, Ann Derby, and Robert Nichols at the Petaluma School of Ballet. She left Ballet at 16 due to feeling overwhelmed and discouraged by impossible body standards and oppressive ideas of femininity. She holds a bachelor's in French, lived in France for several years, and then was able to approach dance again while working toward a second bachelor's degree in sculpture at UT Austin through a class called "modern for non-majors". A light bulb went off and she began to pursue the study and performing of modern dance. She noticed, however, that ballet was still calling to her. Professionally she had always been a teacher and at the time was loving working with children with cognitive delays and visual impairments.
Upon returning to her native California in 2013 she began studying ballet again more seriously than she had since her adolescence, and decided to become a teacher. She found as an adult a depth and transcedence in the practice that had been hidden by ballet's more shallow aspects. She now works to teach ballet as a vehicle for empowerment and to promote beauty diversity in ballet.
Neela has performed locally with Ballet Afsaneh, Ruth Botchan, Joan Lazarus, and Chingchi Yu. She studied Vaganova Pedagogy with Carol Roderick and is certified in American Ballet Theater's National Training Curriculum levels Pre-Primary through Five, where she studied on scholarship. She teaches adult open classes at Shawl Anderson Dance Center and has been the artistic director of Piedmont Ballet since 2018.
Hannah Varga (Level 5) Hannah loves to solve the body's mysteries, carefully and systematically unlocking tis freest movement potential. Informed by her training as a ballet and modern dancer, Hannah shares the joy and expression of movement as she strives to assist students in their personal goals. She holds an M.F.A. in dance from the University of California Irvine, ansd studied for several years in New York City at Ballet Arts, the Martha Graham School and others. Like many dancers juggling the struggles of life as an artist, she searched for ways to maximize her body's athletic potential and address injuries that arose from that pursuit. This was how she met and fell in love with the Gyrotonic method. The system inspired a more sophisticated connection to her body, and by gently and methodically improving alignment, flexibility, and strength, enhanced her performance and reduced occurrence of injury. After moving to the Bay Area in 2009, she studied at San Francisco Gyrotonic and became a certified Gyrotonic Trainer in 2010. She has held various teaching positions as a ballet instructor for 17 years and has been a Gyrontic Trainer for over a decade. Hannah's teaching style is influenced by all of her experiences as a dancer and lifelong explorer of the body, and she hopes to inspire students to unlock their potential in the most fulfilling and sustainable way.
Amanda Whitehead (Pre-Ballet-Level 2, Level 4) grew up in the Washington Ballet school and company and holds an MA in Dance Education from NYU with a focus on inclusive, democratic pedagogy and the American Ballet Theater National Training Curriculum. In the Bay Area she has performed with FACT/SF, ahdanco, and Nina Haft and Co., and she has taught at Shawl Anderson Dance Center, Washington Elementary School, Berkeley City Ballet, and Ah Lan Dance. Amanda is currently enrolled at Temple University, where she is studying 19th century ballet curricula and how traditions are transmitted in writing across time. Amanda in an ABT Certified Teacher who has successfully completed the ABT Teacher Training Intensive in Pre-Primary through Level 7 and Partnering of the ABT National Training Curriculum.