PIEDMONT BALLET - Key Persons
Andrea Gaudet (level 5) was born in Berkeley California and has been teaching all levels of classical ballet for over 30 years. Her training began with Jane Stamps and continued with Grace Doty's Berkeley City Ballet. Ms. Gaudet danced as a soloist with Ballet Idaho and Sacramento Ballet, where she performed roles in Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Don Quixote, The Firebird, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Cinderella. She has had the pleasure of dancing roles in George Balanchine's Allegro Brillante, Rubies, Four Temperaments, Theme and Variations, Prodigal Son, Donizetti Variations, and Concerto Barocco. Ms. Gaudet taught the pre-professionals at Sacramento Ballet and served as Ballet Mistress for the company. She was the artistic director of Berkeley City Ballet and has taught at Marin Ballet, Berkeley Ballet Theater, and San Francisco School of the Arts. She is currently on staff at Ah-Lan Dance Studio, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center and Piedmont Ballet and is the School Principal at Diablo Ballet.
Cookie Harrist (modern technique and composition) is a dancer and choreographer based in Berkeley. She has performed with Joe Goode Performance Group, LEVYDance, Sara Shelton Mann and many others. She teaches regularly at Motion Pacific Dance in Santa Cruz and Shawl Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley. She is a former faculty member at ODC School where she taught professional level contemporary. Her work incorporates improvisation, contact improvisation and release technique. She graduated from Marlboro College in Southern Vermont.
Elena Martins (level 4/5) 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 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, 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, pre-ballet, levels 1-5 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 was able to approach dance again while working toward a second bachelor's degree in sculpture at UT Austin through "modern for non-majors". A light bulb went off and she began to pursue the study and performing of modern dance in earnest and was able to perform with several companines in Austin. 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.
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.