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Scottsdale's Best Dance Education
7609 E. Pinnacle Peak Rd. Suite C18 Scottsdale, AZ 85255
480-284-6440
Class Schedule
Call 480-284-6440 with any questions regarding registration, class schedule, or class availability. Our new schedule for the 23/24 dance season is live NOW! We are also currently placing new students who want to try out for our Company Dance groups. Call to set up an evaluation.
Programs of Study
Creative Movement Program
Creative Movement Program
Creative Movement Program
The Creative Movement Program introduces children to the art of danceby promoting the exploration of creativity and expression through movement. We offer:
MOM/TOT: AGES 18-36 MONTHS
CREATIVE MOVEMENT, AGES 3-5
Recreational (5-18yrs)
Creative Movement Program
Creative Movement Program
DCDA Recreational program follows a carefully designed curriculum with levels of study. Formal training begins at the Youth Level where the foundation of classical technique is delivered to beginning and intermediate classes in Jazz, Ballet, Tap, Hip-Hop, Drama, POM, and Tumbling/Acro.
Company Program (6-18YRS)
Creative Movement Program
Company Program (6-18YRS)
Our Performance Company groups follow a rigorous, pre-professional curriculum that is level based and technically trains dancers in ballet, jazz, tap, and theater arts. Our company groups are divided by level and ability and include Mini Company, Apprentice Company, Junior Company, and Elite Company. These groups train multiple days a week and are for dedicated and focused students wanting to train in a professional environment.
*Evaluation and Invite Only
Faculty
Christie Wieger - Owner/Instructor
Ms. Christie has been dancing for 34 years and was classically trained in Jazz, Ballet, Tap and Musical Theatre. She was Captain of Phoenix Country Day School POM Team and danced for Westmont College’s Hip Hop Crew, NSTEP. She has danced professionally in numerous stage shows such as Seussical the Musical, Alice in Wonderland, and for many corporate and gala events. She has instructed kids through adults and opened DC Dance AZ 10 years ago in order to bring back quality dance training to Arizona, like she experienced when growing up. Her dream is to inspire students of all ages to love the classical art of dance. Christie is the mother of two and has a BS from Westmont College.
Trisha Folk - Artistic Director
Ms. Trisha is a native Phoenician with a strong family legacy in the arts community with over 30 years of teaching experience in performing and visual arts programs. Ms. Trisha was classically trained in ballet, tap, and jazz. She has performed professionally in TV commercials, toured nationally in musicals, industrials, and concerts, danced ballet for Ballet West and Houston Ballet and was an NFL Cheerleader/Captain. She is a certified member of the Royal Academy of Dance, Progressing Ballet Technique, National Dance Education Organization, American Alliance for Theatre and Education, National Art Education Association and Screen Actors Guild. She has choreographed, produced, and directed for major entertainment companies such as Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, NBC, Atlanta Olympics, NFL, NBA, Universal, Lion King Productions, Warner Bros., Charlie Daniels, and ZZ Top, to name a few. Former students have gone on to work with the Rockettes, Alvin Ailey, Cirque Du Soleil, Disney, Nickelodeon, Paul Taylor, Broadway, San Francisco Ballet, Houston Ballet, Ballet AZ, Dancing with the Stars, World of Dance, NFL cheerleaders, NBA dance teams, ABC, Royal Academy, Theme Parks, Cruise Lines, and Las Vegas. Trisha has written and currently writes dance, acting, and visual arts curriculums for national teaching programs and several professional ballet companies. Trisha’s artistic direction, expertise, experience, exceptional master teaching, and commitment to training dancers and performers are unsurpassed in the valley. As an advocate for families affected by autism, she has been the Arizona recipient of the Star Award and Champion Award for bringing awareness through the arts. Ms. Trisha is also the recipient of an AriZoni award. She attended the University of Arizona for General Fine Arts and is the mother of 15-year-old twins Anna and Bradley. This is Ms. Trisha’s tenth year as artistic director, company director, and teacher at DCDA.
Amber Olson - Studio Director
Ms. Amber Olson is the Studio Director of DC Dance AZ. Amber became a part of DCDA through her daughter starting dance at the studio over 8 years ago. Her involvement grew when she assisted the studio in its moving locations and expansion during the Covid 19 shut down. Amber passionately supports the studio and all it does through marketing, hiring, organization, event planning, business planning, communication and management. Ms. Amber studied theater and political science at Wesleyan University and The University of Nebraska. She loves sharing her passion for Theater Arts with our students and seeing them gain confidence in speaking, acting, and performing on stage. Her ultimate goal is to make DCDA a warm, welcoming, family-type environment for all dancers who enter the studio doors, to have it be their home away from home as they learn technical dance skills, grow in physical and personal strength and gain confidence through performing.
Amber is the mother of 3, Annabelle who is 13 and 8 year old twins Sam & Henry. She enjoys traveling, concerts, theater, being with friends and family and her golden-doodle Posy.
Cali Everitt - Company Instructor
Cali has been dancing for 17 years and has been trained in multiple art forms including ballet, tap, jazz, hip-hop, modern, lyrical, contemporary, musical theatre, and show choir. She briefly attended Arizona School of the Arts and had the opportunity to be classically trained in ballet, jazz, and modern under ballet masters at Arizona Ballet. She has been apart of the seasonal Christmas ballet Nutcracker at Symphony Hall through the Arizona Ballet company as well as performed competitively around the country for 6 years. She was choreographer of the top choir at Horizon High School for 2 years starting her journey into choreography at the young age of 16. She was also apart of her high school’s nationally titled Pom team for two years and choreographed for them. She has been teaching since she was only 14 years old and has continued to share her passion with this new generation of dancers ever since. Her love for dance and teaching has blossomed since she started at DC Dance AZ 5 years ago. She hopes to continue to train and inspire these young dancers for many years to come!!
Devyn Rigo- Instructor
Devyn has been dancing since she was 3 years old and has danced with DC Dance AZ for 9 years both dancing and teaching! She was on her high school pom team, and is trained in ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop, & tumbling. Devyn is currently an Occupational Therapy Doctorate student at Northern Arizona University at the downtown Phoenix location. She wants to work in a pediatric outpatient clinic in her future! She is dedicated, enthusiastic, supportive, and passionate about dance and making sure her students have fun! She is so excited to be continuing teaching at DC Dance this season 💗
Maggie McClain- Pom Coach
Maggie’s background in dance consists of 15 years of competitive dance, and 4 years on her high school pom team. She trained in ballet, tap, hip hop, jazz, contemporary, and modern. Maggie currently coaches for Mountain Ridge’s Game Day team and recently finished coaching for a junior all-star dance/pom team where her teams competed at top level competitions. She is so passionate about teaching and supporting these dancers. She is so excited to be teaching at DC Dance AZ.
Kayla Bower - Instructor
Kayla was born and raised in the small town of Puyallup, Washington, located right outside the city of Seattle. She began dancing at the young age of three years old and continued until she graduated high school in 2019. She is highly trained in ballet, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, musical theater, hip hop, and tumbling. She was a part of her studios competition team and competed in dance competitions for many years. Kayla has been apart of several national award winning pieces over the years and has performed on stage for as long as she can remember. Kayla moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 2019 to attend Grand Canyon University, and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design and Advertising in 2022. She now works full time as the Social Media Manager and Graphic Designer for Press Coffee here in Arizona. Kayla loves to bring creativity to her everyday life, from designing, to dancing, and hopes to inspire others to be passionate, creative, and positive in everything they do.
Katie Rafferty- Creative Movement Instructor
Ms. Katie Rafferty will be teaching our tiniest dancers in our Creative Movement and Mommy and Me classes. Ms. Katie is a mom of four and started at DCDA with her girls in the Mommy and Me classes years ago! Ms. Katie danced from a young age through high school and college. She loves working with children and previously worked in speech therapy with early childhood and elementary students. She is also a Pilates enthusiast and certified in mat Pilates. Ms. Katie loves dance and looks forward to sharing the fun of dance with all her students!
Susan Sunseri - Tumbling/Acro Instructor
Ms. Susan Sunseri has had the pleasure of coaching gymnastics for 3 decades. Most of those years were spent in the competitive realm as either an assistant or head coach. The range of her coaching experiences spans from qualifying gymnasts to various levels of the US National program to teaching cartwheels to special needs children – and everything in between! Susan has a small dance background, in that she minored in dance at Oakland University (Michigan). Susan is married with 3 awesome kids and is very excited to share her love of gymnastics and acro with the students at DC Dance AZ.
Hope Sunseri - Tumbling/Acro Instructor
Hope recently retired as a Level 10 gymnast after a 12-year competitive career. Her gymnastics titles include State Champion Beam 2016, 2017, 2022, State Champion Bars 2016, 2017, 2021, Regional Champion Beam and Bars 2016, 2017, Level 8 Regional Team Member, and USAG Most Outstanding Level 8 2017. She ended her career by qualifying for the USAG Level 10 National Championships in Oklahoma City. Ballet has always been part of her gymnastics training and is something she would love to do more of in her free time. Hope has coached gymnastics up through Level 8 and had the recent pleasure of being invited to coach at AZ Super Camp in Prescott. She is also studying to become a gymnastics judge. Hope is looking forward to working with the acro program at DC Dance AZ while also pursuing an engineering degree at ASU.
Megan Linch- Creative Movement Instructor
Ms. Megan Linch started dancing at the young age of 3. Immediately she knew she loved being on stage and performing! She started training in tap and jazz, then added ballet as well as many cultural dances. She has also trained in theater, stage production and choreography. While performing, Megan discovered that she also have a love for teaching! Megan has a degree of Science in Education from Northern Arizona University. She has been teaching elementary school for 10 years, and was named “Teacher of the Year” by Cave Creek Unified in 2021! She brings her knowledge of child development to the dance studio and teaches creative movement, as well as beginning ballet and tap! Megan still loves to perform, as well as spend time with her family and friends!
Alma Schnell - flamenco instructor
Alma Schnell's background hails 30 years of experience as a director, choreographer, professional dancer, and flamenco, tap, and Mexican folk dance teacher. Alma studied flamenco and Mexican folk dance in Guadalajara, Mexico. By the age of 16, she was professionally dancing with Jose Luis Esparza in Guadalajara, Mexico. Her extensive study of various dance forms with renowned flamenco dancers: Jose Luis Esparza, Luis Triana, Ketty Clavijo, Mario Maya, Dini Roman, Lydia Torea, and renowned tap dancers: Glenda Folk, Charles Goddertz, led her to become the director of Alma Performing Arts, a multicultural dance studio in Scottsdale, Arizona.
In addition to her extensive dance background, Alma has worked with numerous corporate cultural diversity groups in the valley, such as America West Airlines, Society of Hispanic Engineers, Boeing, Best Western, Motorola, Free Scale, Paradise Valley Community College, Scottsdale Community College, etc., for many years. Through her dance company, Alma always gave back to the community through community service with organizations like Friends of the Orphans, De Colores, Brazo Abiertos, and American Cancer Society. She understands culture is an important part of people's identity and worked with the City of Phoenix to develop a program that helped Hispanic children be proud of their heritage through her passion of the arts.
Maddie Anyaji - Instructor
Maddie is originally from San Diego, California where she began dancing at the age of 3. She started training in various styles of dance under award winning choreographers and notable SoCal instructors such as Erika Leedy, Lynnrae Hiers Serra, Amanda Kerby, and Kevin Frey. By age 15, she had signed with Go2Talent Agency and most recently performed in the SuperBowl 57 halftime show. Maddie attended college at Arizona State University where she had the opportunity to be part of the nationally ranked ASU Dance Team. Along with performing at football and basketball games, she was selected to the competition team and is a two time national champion. In her time on the ASU dance team, she choreographed numerous halftimes, timeout routines, and their gameday competition routine alongside her co-captain. She is currently in her first year as the JV coach and Varsity Assistant with the Pinnacle High School Pom team, where she will be taking JV to nationals for the first time in program history. Maddie is excited to bring her knowledge and passion for dance to students across the valley!
Best of Scottsdale
Exciting News!
We are bursting with pride to share the news we have been voted “Best Dance School“ by Best of Scottsdale for the 2nd year in a row! We are so proud of our staff, students, programs and the families that make up our studio! Come dance with us and be a part of something spectacular!