Janice moved to White Hawk Ecovillage in Danby with her spouse and two young daughters in March 2020 (it was perfect timing). Global health pandemics aside, she always finds the best place to move and dance as soon as she arrives somewhere new.
Read Janice’s full bio
She has over 30 years of dance experience, having danced semi-professionally in Boston, Jerusalem, and Miami. Initially a jazz dancer, she began her ballet training in earnest in 1994 with Zabelle Margosian and David Drummond at Copley Square Ballet learning the Legat technique, while continuing her jazz dance training with Adrienne Hawkins at Impulse Dance in Boston. After receiving a scoliosis diagnosis in 2002, she began studying Pilates and Alexander Technique to supplement her dancing. While pursuing her PhD in applied social psychology in CA (2004–2010), she continued working on Alexander Technique with Meg Jolley and studied Pilates with Sally Leabhart. In 2010, Janice became a GSDTA-certified West Coast Swing teacher under Skippy Blair’s guidance, the “First Lady of West Coast Swing”. In 2014, she became a certified Pilates mat instructor while training as a ballet fitness instructor under the tutelage of Maria Teresa del Real (former Prima Ballerina with the English National Ballet, former owner of Barrebox studio in Miami). Since then, Janice has taught classes in Ballet Fitness, Ballet Boxing, West Coast Swing, Ballet, Jazz, and Pilates at various studios and colleges in both Miami and in Lexington, VA. In 2018, at about 9 months pregnant, she opened her own in-home ballet fitness studio, aptly named My Mini Barre, where she continued teaching until moving to Ithaca. She is incredibly excited to have found a new home to teach at the Pilates Room and is thrilled to share her passion for building strength and grace through ballet and Pilates practice.
