Speaker Series:

Amy Moorhead

choreographer

"Dance: Past and present"

Mar. 24

Doors open at 5pm

talk at 5:30pm

Amy Moorhead, Piedmont High school’s Dance Director, will be the guest speaker in the Piedmont Center for the Arts’ ongoing Arts Speaker Series. Amy's talk, entitled "Dance: Past and Present", will explore dance history, as well as current trends in choreography and their connection to our past and present.

Friday, March 24.

Doors open at 5 p.m., and the talk begins at 5:30 p.m.

Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for students. 

Amy Moorhead has been dancing since the age of five and has always shared her love for dance and theater with her close-knit family.

Her early training included scholarship studies at San Francisco Ballet School where she danced the role of Clara in S.F. Ballet’s Nutcracker for two years, and private lessons with renowned Russian ballerina Madam Alexandra Baldina of the Mariinsky Theater, St. Petersburg and Diaghilev’s Les Ballets Russes. Rooted in classical ballet, Amy expanded into musical theatre, jazz and modern dance while in her teens. While pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature at UC Berkeley, she discovered a passion for teaching at Berkeley City Ballet where she developed the curriculum for the school’s youngest students, ages 3-7. She later served on the faculty at Berkeley Ballet Theater and Shawl Anderson Dance Center.

Her professional performing credits include Chamberdance and Dance Through Time, both in San Francisco, American Stage Festival (East Coast summer stock), many productions at Woodminster Summer Musicals in Oakland, and was a member of the National Tour of The Phantom of the Opera from 1995-1999.  A member of Actors’Equity Association since 1992, her choreography credits include A Little Night Music, a benefit performance with the cast of Phantom, Western Civilization: The Complete Musical (abridged) for the Reduced Shakespeare Company at the Kennedy Center in 1999.

She has also choreographed many musicals at Encinal High School in Alameda, and at Woodminster Summer Theater in Oakland. She has been on the faculty of Piedmont High School since 1994 as director of the dance program, a member of the English department, and director, choreographer, and producer of the annual musical.  In spite of years of dance training in some very exclusive settings,  Amy promotes inclusion in her popular program