Trained as a dancer and a musician, I have been performing or teaching for most of my life. My undergraduate degree is in theater and music, and for a short time, a long time ago, I danced professionally. I always knew I would teach ballet, so I opened my own school and have been teaching for 35 years. In 1998, feeling burned out and needing a change, I announced plans to retire from teaching and began pursuit of a degree in my other passion -- linguistics. I didn't retire; I'm now comfortably entrenched in both worlds, teaching ballet at my school and linguistics at Wayne State University. Although all aspects of linguistics interest me, I am most interested in language variation and change, socio- and psycholinguistics, and child language development.

My ballet students are now dancing or have danced with the following companies and professional schools: