Meet the Faculty
LENORE PAVLOKAS MORALES (Ballet) Ms. Morales is a native of Brooklyn, NY and an alumna of The Juilliard School, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dance. Her professional career includes Eglevsky Ballet, Maryland Ballet & Eugene Ballet prior to joining The Dance Theatre of Harlem under the direction of Arthur Mitchell. Ms. Morales advanced quickly in the company, achieving the rank of Soloist then Principal dancer. In her 11-year career with DTH, she worked with distinguished masters such as Fredrick Franklin, John Taras, Suzanne Farrell, Jacques D’Amboise and Geoffrey Holder. Featured roles include Waltz Girl in Balanchine’s “Serenade”, Medea in Michael Smuin’s “Medea”, Desdemona in Jose Limon’s “Moor’s Pavane”, Princess of Unreal Beauty in John Taras’s “Firebird”, and Myrta in Fredrick Franklin’s staging of “Creole Giselle”. In addition to performing, she served as assistant rehearsal director to the company and Master Teacher for their “Dancing through Barriers” outreach program both domestically and internationally. During her career she also performed as guest artist to various companies in the US. Ms. Morales was a featured model for Capezio ads and has appeared in publications such as Oprah, Mademoiselle, Pointe, and Dance Magazine as well as Italy’s Io Donna. After concluding her performance career Ms. Morales took on the role of Director to The Harkness Youth Ballet @ 92nd Street Y followed by her position as Ballet Mistress for Staten Island Ballet. She was delighted to serve as guest Rehearsal Director to Dance Theatre of Harlem, New York City during their 2021-2022 season. Currently Ms. Morales holds the position of Rehearsal Director at Collage Dance Collective and is honored to have been recognized as one of Memphis Business Journal’s Women Who Lead. She is also a certified teacher of Zena Rommett Floor-Barre® technique. Her teaching experience extends to faculty position at Rutgers - Mason Gross School of the Arts, Marymount Manhattan College, West Virginia Dance Festival, Tallahassee Ballet, Scarsdale Ballet Studio, American Ballet Theatre JKO School, Academy of Dance Arts, New Jersey Dance Theatre Ensemble and Tremaine Dance Convention.
KAYLA ROWSER TAZIK (Ballet) During her 14-year career as a professional ballet dancer, Kayla Rowser performed principal roles such as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and Lucy in Lucy Negro Redux, among others. She also performed featured roles in works such as George Balanchine’s Western Symphony and Serenade, Christopher Wheeldon’s Ghosts, and many original roles created by Nashville Ballet Artistic Director Paul Vasterling. Rowser has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Pointe Magazine, and Huffington Post, and she was named one of Dance Magazine’s “Top 25 to Watch.” She has performed at the Kennedy Center with Nashville Ballet, in the Kansas City Dance Festival, Spoleto Dance Festival, Spring to Dance in St. Louis, and the Big Ears Music Festival with musician Rhiannon Giddens. Rowser has taught across the U.S including master classes at Yale University. Since retiring from her performance career in 2020, Rowser has continued to speak, teach, and mentor students. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications with honors from The University of Arkansas in May 2022 and currently works in corporate marketing and communications.
JULIA EISEN (Ballet) studied ballet, modern, and jazz. She was also a member of the internationally recognized North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble. Her commitment to becoming a professional dancer led her to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, N.C. Following her graduation in 2008, Eisen joined Richmond Ballet as a trainee for two seasons. In 2010, she moved to Nashville to join Nashville Ballet’s second company, NB2. She was promoted to Apprentice in 2012 and became a full Company Dancer in 2013. Eisen danced with Nashville Ballet for thirteen seasons. During her professional career, she also performed with Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance in Asheville, N.C., and danced as a company dancer in the National Choreographers Initiative in Irvine, California. After retiring from the stage in 2023, Eisen was named Artistic Director of Dance at Harpeth Hall School, where she continues to share her passion for dance across all genres with the next generation of young dancers. Eisen has choreographed works for Nashville Ballet’s Main Company, NB2, and the Professional Division. In 2022, she was selected to participate in the University of North Carolina School of the Arts Choreographic Initiative, where her choreography was featured in the school’s Summer Intensive Program.
BANNING BOULDIN (Contemporary) Banning is a dancer, choreographer, producer, and community organizer based in Nashville, TN. She received her BFA from the Juilliard School in 2002, and spent the next decade performing internationally—working with Aszure Barton, Cullberg Ballet, Camille A. Brown, Mats Ek, Johan Inger, Hubbard Street, Lar Lubovitch, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Alexander Ekman, Jacquelyn Buglisi, Wen Wei Wang, and Robert Battle. She was a soloist and choreographic assistant during her tenure with Aszure Barton and Artists from 2003-2010. in 2007, she began to research her own contemporary technique practice—developing an improvisation and non-binary partnering syllabus which she taught for two years at the Theatre de la Danse and Studio Harmonic in Paris. During that same time, she joined a small group of fellow Juilliard graduates to form Rumpus Room Dance, based in Portland, Oregon and Goteborg, Sweden. Together they co-created and performed two evening length site-specific dance works and were nominated one of Dance Magazine’s “Top 25 to Watch” in 2010. In the Fall of 2010, Banning returned to her hometown, Nashville, where she was engaged as an instructor and choreographer for the Nashville Ballet and Vanderbilt University, developing the contemporary dance curricula for both training programs. In 2013, Banning formed New Dialect—responding to Nashville’s need for a professional contemporary dance company and community-centric resource that would support dancers, teaching artists, and choreographers, while providing new opportunities for local dance artists to collaborate and contribute to the larger national dance ecology. As a community organizer and director, she since has nurtured the creation of numerous dance programs and productions in Nashville. Through her leadership of New Dialect and significant contributions to contemporary dance in the South, Banning has received several honors and awards, including a two-time nomination for the United States Artist Fellowship. As a freelance choreographer, she has been commissioned to create works for Visceral Dance Chicago, Springboard Danse Montréal, Northwest Dance Project, Whim W'Him, SALT Contemporary Dance Company, the Juilliard School, Gibney Dance Company, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing & Visual Arts (Dallas), Groundworks Dance Theater, the Fine Arts Center Greenville, Middle Tennessee State University, and New Dialect. She has been featured in articles and interviews for Dance Magazine, The New York Times, Dance Teacher, and Dance Spirit magazine. Banning is currently a research artist for the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron, where she is investigating new frameworks for supporting dance through NCCAkron’s Creative Administration Residency (CAR). Her essay Causing a Scene: How I Helped Build the Contemporary Dance Ecosystem in My Hometown, details her experience forming New Dialect and will be published by the University of Akron Press in September 2024.
ALEXANDRA (ALEX) WINER (Modern) is a Nashville based dancer, choreographer, and educator. She received her Bachelors in Dance from Franklin & Marshall College and continued on to earn her MFA from London Contemporary Dance School. Alex has faculty roles at Middle Tennessee State University and Nashville Ballet, and works as a freelance dancer and solo artist. Most recently, Alex has performed and taught with local companies PYDANCE, FALL Dance, New Dialect, Shackled Feet DANCE, Amanda Reichert, and Kindling Arts Festival. Alex has also been commissioned to choreograph for DancEast Collective, DancEast Youth Ensemble, MTSU Theatre productions, and had solos commissioned for Oz Arts Nashville’s 10th Anniversary Bash and inaugural Brave New Works Lab.
DANIELLA PARISOT (Progressing Ballet Technique), originally from southern Connecticut, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ballet Pedagogy and Dance Performance from The Hartt School at the University of Hartford. During her formal pedagogy education, Daniella was closely mentored and studied under Stephen Pier, (Hamburg Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet, José Limón Company, Company Wayne McGregor, the Julliard School and many more), Carol Roderick, (who was a member of the professional division faculties of Boston Ballet School, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, The HARID Conservatory, Tulsa Ballet School, The Hartt School Community Division and who credits her formal pedagogical training of former Bolshoi Ballet’s the late Jürgen Schneider and the Kirov/Mariinsky’s Gabriela Komleva). Daniella credits them, as well as her other pedagogy mentors, Hilda Morales, (American Ballet Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet/Philadelphia Ballet), and Debra Collins-Ryder (Hartford Ballet) for having a major influence on her passion and style of teaching. She was on the ballet faculty and the office administrator for the Hartt School Community Division before moving to Nashville in 2019 to work closely with the growing dance community as a freelance choreographer, dancer and teacher. While in Nashville, she has been on faculty for Harpeth Hall and currently teaches and choreographs for the Centennial Youth Ballet at the Metro Parks Dance Division. She is a certified Progressing Ballet Technique © instructor.
MELANIE SWIHART (Yoga) Melanie Swihart received her 200-hour yoga certificate through TaraMarie Perri while living and working as a freelance dance artist in New York. Through her training she is certified to teach alignment-based, breath-focused yoga through the Mind Body Dancer® curriculum (founded and developed by TaraMarie Perri), where energetic and anatomical imagery and themes are paired. Melanie taught Mind Body Dancer® at Steps on Broadway, Dance New Amsterdam, and privately while in New York, and taught vinyasa classes throughout her graduate career in the Department of Dance at The University of Iowa and HotHouse Yoga. Since her first training in 2012, Melanie has become certified in Yin Yoga and received a second 200-hour yoga teacher training at Peachtree Yoga Center in Atlanta, GA. Her classes explore anatomical, sensational, and emotional awareness, and the plethora of possibilities within the ‘Self’, through thoughtful thematic and anatomical development. She continues to be inspired and rejuvenated by her students’ hard work and dedication to their practice and strives to cultivate a community of nurturing, inspiration, and kindness.
WINDSHIP BOYD (West African) was born in France of American parents and grew up in the US. Initially a professional ballet dancer, she moved to France where she created her company Itchy Feet. She was the choreographer-in-residence in her city Vaulx en Velin and choreographed for Lyon’s Biennale de la Danse for seven seasons. During her time in France, she also worked extensively in West Africa. Since she received a grant from UNESCO in 2004, she has toured, taught, choreographed and learned dances in Senegal, Burkina Faso and Guinea. Back in Nashville, she continues to exchange, create works and take people over to West Africa to discover dance and music. She co-founded AfricaNashville with the saxophone player Jeff Coffin, and in partnership with drummer and African Yeli Ibro Dioubate, promotes cross cultural relationships between celebrated African and American artists and providing hands-on artistic and educational exchanges from their respective cultures through music and dance. AfricaNashville aspires to train the upcoming generation of dancers & drummers within the Nashville community and help African music find its rightful place in Music City.
TANTSOVA GRUPA (Folk Dance) (Bulgarian for "dance group") is a Nashville-based musical ensemble created in 2009 to accompany the Nashville International Folk Dancers (www.nifddance.com). The band's repertoire includes village dances from Armenia, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Israel, Macedonia, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Current musicians are Mary Lou Durham, violin; Tim Murphy, violin, accordion; Amberly Rosen, fiddle and dance teaching; Janet Epstein, recorders and dance teaching; Sam Frazee, guitar; Sara Johnson, violin; Michael Lewandowski, mandolin; Holly Tashian, upright bass; and William Wiggins, percussion.
MICHELLE BURLINGAME (Tap) has been an educator since 1996, receiving her Bachelor’s Degree in French with minors in Dance and Secondary Education from Middle Tennessee State University. As a teacher in Metro Nashville Public Schools, Michelle is dedicated to inspiring students by combining her expertise in the arts and languages to foster creativity and cultural appreciation. For 13 years, Michelle owned and operated Burlingame Studios of Dance, where she taught various disciplines, including Ballet, Tap, Jazz, Contemporary, and Tumbling, building a strong foundation for aspiring dancers. Currently, she serves as the Dance Coordinator at James Lawson High School, where she continues to lead and shape a dynamic dance program. Michelle’s commitment to education and the performing arts has left a lasting impact on her students and the broader school community.
ELIZABETH TILSTRA, PT, DPT (Dancer Health Seminar) is a licensed physical therapist, movement specialist, dance medicine educator, and business owner based out of Nashville, TN. Elizabeth graduated from Belmont University with a B.S. in Liberal Studies, continuing on to receive her Doctorate in Physical Therapy from The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Prior to completing her college education, Elizabeth danced professionally with Cincinnati Ballet, Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, and Nashville Ballet. During her doctoral program, Elizabeth had the opportunity to provide physical therapy services to the professional dancers of the Boston Ballet. Elizabeth’s dance experience gives her a deep understanding of the unique physical demands dancers face and enables her to effectively treat the musculoskeletal injuries they experience.
ANNA PEPPER, M.A. (Supporting Dancer Mental Health) runs From the First Step: Life Coaching for Dancers.
KAYLA ROWSER TAZIK (Ballet) During her 14-year career as a professional ballet dancer, Kayla Rowser performed principal roles such as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and Lucy in Lucy Negro Redux, among others. She also performed featured roles in works such as George Balanchine’s Western Symphony and Serenade, Christopher Wheeldon’s Ghosts, and many original roles created by Nashville Ballet Artistic Director Paul Vasterling. Rowser has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Pointe Magazine, and Huffington Post, and she was named one of Dance Magazine’s “Top 25 to Watch.” She has performed at the Kennedy Center with Nashville Ballet, in the Kansas City Dance Festival, Spoleto Dance Festival, Spring to Dance in St. Louis, and the Big Ears Music Festival with musician Rhiannon Giddens. Rowser has taught across the U.S including master classes at Yale University. Since retiring from her performance career in 2020, Rowser has continued to speak, teach, and mentor students. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications with honors from The University of Arkansas in May 2022 and currently works in corporate marketing and communications.
JULIA EISEN (Ballet) studied ballet, modern, and jazz. She was also a member of the internationally recognized North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble. Her commitment to becoming a professional dancer led her to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, N.C. Following her graduation in 2008, Eisen joined Richmond Ballet as a trainee for two seasons. In 2010, she moved to Nashville to join Nashville Ballet’s second company, NB2. She was promoted to Apprentice in 2012 and became a full Company Dancer in 2013. Eisen danced with Nashville Ballet for thirteen seasons. During her professional career, she also performed with Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance in Asheville, N.C., and danced as a company dancer in the National Choreographers Initiative in Irvine, California. After retiring from the stage in 2023, Eisen was named Artistic Director of Dance at Harpeth Hall School, where she continues to share her passion for dance across all genres with the next generation of young dancers. Eisen has choreographed works for Nashville Ballet’s Main Company, NB2, and the Professional Division. In 2022, she was selected to participate in the University of North Carolina School of the Arts Choreographic Initiative, where her choreography was featured in the school’s Summer Intensive Program.
BANNING BOULDIN (Contemporary) Banning is a dancer, choreographer, producer, and community organizer based in Nashville, TN. She received her BFA from the Juilliard School in 2002, and spent the next decade performing internationally—working with Aszure Barton, Cullberg Ballet, Camille A. Brown, Mats Ek, Johan Inger, Hubbard Street, Lar Lubovitch, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Alexander Ekman, Jacquelyn Buglisi, Wen Wei Wang, and Robert Battle. She was a soloist and choreographic assistant during her tenure with Aszure Barton and Artists from 2003-2010. in 2007, she began to research her own contemporary technique practice—developing an improvisation and non-binary partnering syllabus which she taught for two years at the Theatre de la Danse and Studio Harmonic in Paris. During that same time, she joined a small group of fellow Juilliard graduates to form Rumpus Room Dance, based in Portland, Oregon and Goteborg, Sweden. Together they co-created and performed two evening length site-specific dance works and were nominated one of Dance Magazine’s “Top 25 to Watch” in 2010. In the Fall of 2010, Banning returned to her hometown, Nashville, where she was engaged as an instructor and choreographer for the Nashville Ballet and Vanderbilt University, developing the contemporary dance curricula for both training programs. In 2013, Banning formed New Dialect—responding to Nashville’s need for a professional contemporary dance company and community-centric resource that would support dancers, teaching artists, and choreographers, while providing new opportunities for local dance artists to collaborate and contribute to the larger national dance ecology. As a community organizer and director, she since has nurtured the creation of numerous dance programs and productions in Nashville. Through her leadership of New Dialect and significant contributions to contemporary dance in the South, Banning has received several honors and awards, including a two-time nomination for the United States Artist Fellowship. As a freelance choreographer, she has been commissioned to create works for Visceral Dance Chicago, Springboard Danse Montréal, Northwest Dance Project, Whim W'Him, SALT Contemporary Dance Company, the Juilliard School, Gibney Dance Company, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing & Visual Arts (Dallas), Groundworks Dance Theater, the Fine Arts Center Greenville, Middle Tennessee State University, and New Dialect. She has been featured in articles and interviews for Dance Magazine, The New York Times, Dance Teacher, and Dance Spirit magazine. Banning is currently a research artist for the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron, where she is investigating new frameworks for supporting dance through NCCAkron’s Creative Administration Residency (CAR). Her essay Causing a Scene: How I Helped Build the Contemporary Dance Ecosystem in My Hometown, details her experience forming New Dialect and will be published by the University of Akron Press in September 2024.
ALEXANDRA (ALEX) WINER (Modern) is a Nashville based dancer, choreographer, and educator. She received her Bachelors in Dance from Franklin & Marshall College and continued on to earn her MFA from London Contemporary Dance School. Alex has faculty roles at Middle Tennessee State University and Nashville Ballet, and works as a freelance dancer and solo artist. Most recently, Alex has performed and taught with local companies PYDANCE, FALL Dance, New Dialect, Shackled Feet DANCE, Amanda Reichert, and Kindling Arts Festival. Alex has also been commissioned to choreograph for DancEast Collective, DancEast Youth Ensemble, MTSU Theatre productions, and had solos commissioned for Oz Arts Nashville’s 10th Anniversary Bash and inaugural Brave New Works Lab.
DANIELLA PARISOT (Progressing Ballet Technique), originally from southern Connecticut, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ballet Pedagogy and Dance Performance from The Hartt School at the University of Hartford. During her formal pedagogy education, Daniella was closely mentored and studied under Stephen Pier, (Hamburg Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet, José Limón Company, Company Wayne McGregor, the Julliard School and many more), Carol Roderick, (who was a member of the professional division faculties of Boston Ballet School, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, The HARID Conservatory, Tulsa Ballet School, The Hartt School Community Division and who credits her formal pedagogical training of former Bolshoi Ballet’s the late Jürgen Schneider and the Kirov/Mariinsky’s Gabriela Komleva). Daniella credits them, as well as her other pedagogy mentors, Hilda Morales, (American Ballet Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet/Philadelphia Ballet), and Debra Collins-Ryder (Hartford Ballet) for having a major influence on her passion and style of teaching. She was on the ballet faculty and the office administrator for the Hartt School Community Division before moving to Nashville in 2019 to work closely with the growing dance community as a freelance choreographer, dancer and teacher. While in Nashville, she has been on faculty for Harpeth Hall and currently teaches and choreographs for the Centennial Youth Ballet at the Metro Parks Dance Division. She is a certified Progressing Ballet Technique © instructor.
MELANIE SWIHART (Yoga) Melanie Swihart received her 200-hour yoga certificate through TaraMarie Perri while living and working as a freelance dance artist in New York. Through her training she is certified to teach alignment-based, breath-focused yoga through the Mind Body Dancer® curriculum (founded and developed by TaraMarie Perri), where energetic and anatomical imagery and themes are paired. Melanie taught Mind Body Dancer® at Steps on Broadway, Dance New Amsterdam, and privately while in New York, and taught vinyasa classes throughout her graduate career in the Department of Dance at The University of Iowa and HotHouse Yoga. Since her first training in 2012, Melanie has become certified in Yin Yoga and received a second 200-hour yoga teacher training at Peachtree Yoga Center in Atlanta, GA. Her classes explore anatomical, sensational, and emotional awareness, and the plethora of possibilities within the ‘Self’, through thoughtful thematic and anatomical development. She continues to be inspired and rejuvenated by her students’ hard work and dedication to their practice and strives to cultivate a community of nurturing, inspiration, and kindness.
WINDSHIP BOYD (West African) was born in France of American parents and grew up in the US. Initially a professional ballet dancer, she moved to France where she created her company Itchy Feet. She was the choreographer-in-residence in her city Vaulx en Velin and choreographed for Lyon’s Biennale de la Danse for seven seasons. During her time in France, she also worked extensively in West Africa. Since she received a grant from UNESCO in 2004, she has toured, taught, choreographed and learned dances in Senegal, Burkina Faso and Guinea. Back in Nashville, she continues to exchange, create works and take people over to West Africa to discover dance and music. She co-founded AfricaNashville with the saxophone player Jeff Coffin, and in partnership with drummer and African Yeli Ibro Dioubate, promotes cross cultural relationships between celebrated African and American artists and providing hands-on artistic and educational exchanges from their respective cultures through music and dance. AfricaNashville aspires to train the upcoming generation of dancers & drummers within the Nashville community and help African music find its rightful place in Music City.
TANTSOVA GRUPA (Folk Dance) (Bulgarian for "dance group") is a Nashville-based musical ensemble created in 2009 to accompany the Nashville International Folk Dancers (www.nifddance.com). The band's repertoire includes village dances from Armenia, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Israel, Macedonia, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Current musicians are Mary Lou Durham, violin; Tim Murphy, violin, accordion; Amberly Rosen, fiddle and dance teaching; Janet Epstein, recorders and dance teaching; Sam Frazee, guitar; Sara Johnson, violin; Michael Lewandowski, mandolin; Holly Tashian, upright bass; and William Wiggins, percussion.
MICHELLE BURLINGAME (Tap) has been an educator since 1996, receiving her Bachelor’s Degree in French with minors in Dance and Secondary Education from Middle Tennessee State University. As a teacher in Metro Nashville Public Schools, Michelle is dedicated to inspiring students by combining her expertise in the arts and languages to foster creativity and cultural appreciation. For 13 years, Michelle owned and operated Burlingame Studios of Dance, where she taught various disciplines, including Ballet, Tap, Jazz, Contemporary, and Tumbling, building a strong foundation for aspiring dancers. Currently, she serves as the Dance Coordinator at James Lawson High School, where she continues to lead and shape a dynamic dance program. Michelle’s commitment to education and the performing arts has left a lasting impact on her students and the broader school community.
ELIZABETH TILSTRA, PT, DPT (Dancer Health Seminar) is a licensed physical therapist, movement specialist, dance medicine educator, and business owner based out of Nashville, TN. Elizabeth graduated from Belmont University with a B.S. in Liberal Studies, continuing on to receive her Doctorate in Physical Therapy from The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Prior to completing her college education, Elizabeth danced professionally with Cincinnati Ballet, Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, and Nashville Ballet. During her doctoral program, Elizabeth had the opportunity to provide physical therapy services to the professional dancers of the Boston Ballet. Elizabeth’s dance experience gives her a deep understanding of the unique physical demands dancers face and enables her to effectively treat the musculoskeletal injuries they experience.
ANNA PEPPER, M.A. (Supporting Dancer Mental Health) runs From the First Step: Life Coaching for Dancers.
