Improvisation/composition teacher Melissa St. Clair has been a company member with Company We Keep, Broadway Dinner Theatre in California, and V. Keith Martin’s Northwest Repertory Dance Company. She was a guest dancer with Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska, touring under a Ford Foundation grant. Ms. St. Clair’s training includes scholarships with Jacob’s Pillow, Repertory Dance Theatre in Utah, Bates Dance Festival, and the Alvin Ailey Dance School. She also trained at Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company.
Ms. St. Clair taught modern dance, improvisation, and choreography at Portland’s Jefferson High School for nearly three decades and served as artistic director of the company now known as JD II. Ms. St. Clair also has taught at Portland State University, the University of Portland, Dancers Workshop, and the Oregon Ballet Theatre school.
Other posts include serving as guest teacher for the Goethe Institute in Kyoto, Japan, and choreographing and producing her own shows as well as setting choreography for the Northwest Conservatory, ARTBEAT, ArtQuake festivals, Tygres Heart Shakespeare Company, Broadway Rose Theatre, the Jefferson Dancers, and the Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Moving Signatures season. Ms. St. Clair has been in Who’s Who Among American Teachers
(1996, 1998, 2006) and has produced her own work with dancers in Portland, Oregon. Some of her works has included CATCH EM IN THE ACT, ST. CLAIR IN COMPANY, AND PRESENT JOURNEY. She also is a certified yoga instructor (Krishnamacharya/ Desikachar) and is a choreographer and visionary of SOAR, a documentary about two gifted sisters (soardocumentary.com).
Ms. St. Clair taught for over six years under John Magnus improvisation/ composition to the students at Portland Festival Ballet and is enjoying the time to work within herself in the movement arts.
