Robyn Ulibarri

Education and Community Engagement Director

Robyn Ulibarri began her dance training at Southwest Washington Dance Center, and began teaching at age 15. She developed a love for musical theater while attending Centralia College, and has appeared in and choreographed over 20 productions.. Robyn earned her B.A. in dance from Columbia College Chicago in 2004 and has taught for various studios, theater camps, Portland’s S.U.N program, community colleges, and community centers for over 30 years. She earned her Elementary Teaching Certificate in 2022 and is thrilled to support the growth of the Ballet Bridges Program!

Sarah Ward-Brown

Community Partnership Specialist & Teaching Artist

Sarah has been teaching in schools and community settings for the past two decades. She is passionate about sharing her love of movement and dance with students and encouraging them to find their own creative voice through dance. Sarah has taught children and adults of all ages in private studios, preschools, public schools, community centers and assisted living facilities. She has taught in various studios and schools throughout the Portland area and was previously on faculty with Malashock Dance Company School, Malashock Education Outreach, and Chicago After School Matters.

Sarah holds an MFA in Dance from Mills College with an emphasis in choreography and dance education and a BFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah. She performed with the Chicago Moving Company 2002-2004 and as a guest artist with Repertory Dance Theatre in Salt Lake City, Utah. She also performed in the 2002 Winter Olympics Arts Festival. Sarah loves being part of the OBT Education and Community Engagement team and working to make dance more accessible.

Jill Geidt

Teaching Artist

Jill is a passionate creative with a focus on movement, dance and cultural exploration. She holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Directing. In her youth, Jill was a member of the American Contemporary Ballet Company where she trained with Elizabeth Abts. She also studied and performed African dance with Obo Addy.

Jill taught, directed and choreographed musical theatre for over a decade at Park Academy. She currently gets energized teaching Ballet to enthusiastic Portland Public Schools students through the community outreach program with OBT. She also is a resident artist with Young Audience where, through creative movement, she teaches programs that honor the African American experience and the lessons of resilience. She recently began working with the powerful and talented group at PassInArt, who embodies her mission in bringing awareness to the community about the invaluable contributions, history and culture of African Americans’ in the arts.

Kasandra Gruener

Consultant, Teaching Artist, & Former E/CE Director

A native Oregonian, Kasandra began her career as a teaching artist of dance in 1972 after growing up with ballet training in Astoria and Portland. Since that time she performed internationally with San Francisco, CA based Margaret Jenkins Dance Co, developed her own dance company, Henry Harris Green, and toured nationally as an Artist in Schools funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. In the Bay area she taught at MJDC studios and Marin Ballet among others. She received a BA in Dance from Mills College- Oakland, CA, and an MA in Contemplative Education from Naropa University- Boulder, CO. Locally she has received two awards from Young Audiences honoring her commitment to arts integration in the Portland Metro community, and received Oregon Dance Education Organization’s esteemed Lifetime Achievement Award. Ms. Gruener helped start the Northwest Teaching Artist Network and was instrumental in initiating and developing Regional Arts and Culture Council’s The Right Brain Initiative, representing RBI at a national conference held at John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington D.C.

After 29 years as a teaching artist and arts administrator with Oregon Ballet Theatre, Ms. Gruener retired from her position as the DIrector of Education Outreach (now titled Education and Community Engagement) in 2020. During her tenure with OBT she engaged with a full range of students, educators and families. Her work occurred in therapeutic care centers, Head Start centers, public and private schools, after school programs, college settings, and educator conferences. During that time she created performances for student audiences, wrote curriculum study guides for classroom teachers, and mentored a staff of teaching artists who provided dance residencies in schools, primarily Pre-k-5, that aligned with national standards for dance in education and arts integration with school curricula. This work impacted over 30,000 people annually. Kasandra believes that the lifelong study of and participation with dance benefits all humans, allowing each learner the opportunity to integrate one’s body, mind and emotional spirit into a balanced, creative, and powerful whole.

Annabel Kaplan

Teaching Artist

Annabel Kaplan (she/her) began her dance training in Portland Oregon at Classical Ballet Academy under the direction of Sarah Rigles. She then went on to receive her BFA in Dance with a minor in Early Childhood Education for Diverse Learners from George Mason University in Fairfax Virginia. Annabel has had the opportunity to choreograph and perform a variety of diverse works and she will be performing with Portland-based Shaun Keylock Company for their 2023-2024 season.

Annabel has experience teaching various styles of dance to children ages three to eighteen in different communities across the United States. She is passionate about increasing access to dance education and sharing the joy of dance with children of all backgrounds. Annabel is thrilled to be a part of OBT’s Education and Community Engagement team!

Taylor McDougall

Teaching Artist

Taylor McDougall is a Portland native who loves living in the Pacific Northwest. She received her early training at Oregon Ballet Theatre under the direction of Haydee Gutierrez and James Canfield. During high school she became a Jefferson Dancer, and performed all over Portland, as well as Miami, Philadelphia, and parts of France. During this time she studied ballet with Sarah Slipper, jazz with Steve Gonzales, and worked with several internationally recognized choreographers. Taylor is a co-director and dancer with Portland-based TripTheDark Dance Company, working also as a choreographer, and she loves taking classes of all styles around town. She teaches her own pop-culture inspired dance fitness classes and loves showing inexperienced movers that anybody can dance. Taylor also loves sharing her passion for dance with children, and coaxing them to do their very best — she is thrilled to be a part of OBT to show students why dance is so important to our world. She enjoys time with her daughter, large bodies of water, loud music, and fancy food!

Jessica Post

Teaching Artist

Jessica Post holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Michigan (2013) and a BFA in Dance from Cornish College of the Arts (2006). Jessica is a dedicated dance educator with a wide range of teaching experience including Oregon Ballet Theatre School, BODYVOX, Multnomah Athletic Club, Portland Community College, Eastern Michigan University, and Hillsdale College. She performed professionally for five years in Chicago with The Dance COLEctive and Esoteric Dance Project. Her choreography focuses on cross-disciplinary collaborations, which she has presented in Portland, San Diego, Detroit, and Chicago. In addition to dance, she is certified in Pilates and GYROTONIC® and teaches at Kinespirit Circle in Portland. Jessica loves working with dance students of all ages to fine tune their technique, creativity, and artistry.

Beca Rausch

Teaching Artist

Beca began dancing at the age of three, after her clumsiness sent her to the emergency room four times that year. She immediately fell in love with the art form, and has remained in that love ever since. She received her BFA from Missouri State University in 2009, in Musical Theatre with an emphasis in Dance. There she danced with Inertia Dance Company, Tent Theatre, and God and Country Theatre. She began teaching in 2010, highlighting the body’s inherent joy of movement. Beca has taught Ballet, Contemporary, Creative Movement, HipHop, Tap, and Jazz to ages 2 – 18 in various studios, community centers, and summer camps across the Portland Area. In 2019 she started Firefly Dance, a silly – yet structured — Ballet and Creative Movement studio, while running a dance program at Childpeace Montessori School as well as choreographing for the Portland Lesbian Choir. She is elated to join this team of fantastic educators, and happy to report she now has enough grace to keep her out of that emergency room!

Molly Tentarelli

Teaching Artist

Molly began her formal ballet training at Portland Metro Arts Center under the direction of Nancy Yeamans. She continued her dance training throughout High School and was a member of Modern Dance Lab at Jefferson High School under the direction of Melissa St. Clair. Molly also studied Hip Hop dance and was a company member under the direction of Durante Lambert for over 10 years.

Molly has taught Preschool for over 15 years. She is also a musician who toured the world extensively as a background vocalist and traveled to over 18 countries. She is now the Executive Director of the nonprofit Tiny Dance Life. Her afternoons are spent teaching enrichment dance classes for Tiny Dance Life to students primarily Pre-K -5th grade including several SUN Programs.

Linda Besant

Speaker and Ballet Historian

Linda Besant graduated from Lewis and Clark College with a Bachelor of Music degree and taught for several years in the Beaverton School District. She left music education to work in the not-for-profit sector, including co-founding and serving as executive director of Shared Outdoor Adventure Recreation, a therapeutic recreation program for people with physical disabilities. After falling in love with ballet and Oregon Ballet Theatre in 1994, Linda made a lateral shift from music history to dance history. She began volunteering with OBT in 1997, and has worked for OBT as a ballet historian and speaker since 2004.

Brook Manning

Ballet Historian & Teaching Artist

Brook began her dance career with Los Angeles Ballet, training with John Clifford and Irina Kosmovska and performing with the company in Petipa and Fokine ballets. She performed for many years as a soloist with Palos Verdes Ballet and danced solo roles in the works of Donald Hewitt and Arturo Fernandez, and in feature film and music video work.

Brook was awarded a scholarship for excellence in dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and earned her Master’s Degree in Performance Studies. She has taught ballet at Bates College, University of Hawaii and Portland Community College. She has travelled to 25 countries in order to experience dance and theatre in its cultural context.

As a Teaching Artist, she has the pleasure of teaching and talking about dance with all ages during Field Trips to OBT and the PhotoArt Encounter program. She also documents and evaluates the Education Outreach programs in schools.