Summer Intensive Faculty

​

Caroline Calouche,  has taught contemporary dance, Pilates, Gyrokinesis and ballet at UNC Charlotte, Winthrop University, The Belmont School of Ballet, Gaston Dance Theatre and The School of North Carolina Dance Theatre. Her dance and fitness teaching background has allowed her to become a sought after aerial dance instructor. Not only has Caroline developed a safe method and syllabus of teaching Aerial Silk, Sling, Trapeze, Lyra, Corde Lisse and Spanish Web, she is able to teach students how to incorporate floor work with their apparatus to seamlessly move from the ground up and back again. With her strong anatomy and physiology background, Caroline focuses on proper alignment in the air and on the ground to prevent injury and promote efficient movement. Caroline’s aerial and dance training is diverse. In the air, she has worked with Juliana Hane, Nicole Merman, Elsie and Serenity Smith, Christine van Loo, Caroline Wright, Jamie Hodgson, Tanya Burka, Cheetah Platt, Kevin O’Connor, Allie Cooper, Nancy Smith and Susan Murphy. While on the ground, Caroline’s influential teachers range from Leah Cox (Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company), Elizabeth Corbett (Forsythe Composition), Libby Farr (Ballet), Andrew Harwood (Contact Improvisation), Fernando Bujones (Ballet), Elizabeth Gillaspy (Ballet), Susan Douglas Roberts (Contemporary), Brenda Daniels (Modern Dance) to name a few on an endless list of amazing teachers!

​

Lauren Suflita Skrabalak graduated cum laude and earned her BFA in Ballet (Performing and Teaching Emphases) from the University of Utah in 2002. While on scholarship, her undergraduate performing career includes a guest artist role with Ballet West and dancing with the Utah Ballet. This allowed for an opportunity to travel abroad to Taipei, Taiwan performing a soloist role in Balanchine’s famed ballet Concerto Barocco. She also danced on the Medals Plaza stage during the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics. After graduation, Skrabalak danced professionally, choreographed and taught for Bodiography Contemporary Ballet in Pittsburgh. As a principal dancer, she was privileged to have worked with choreographers like Ze'eva Cohen, Emeritus Chair of Princeton University’s Dance Department, Tony nominated Lynne Taylor-Corbett, and former principal dancer for the American Ballet Theatre, the late Johan Renvall. During her seven year stay with the company, she was promoted to Rehearsal Director as well as the Assistant Director of the conservatory. Her works have appeared at the Byham Theater, Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, Patricia McBride & Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Center for Dance, as well as Winthrop's own Johnson Theatre, and she has extended her teaching talents to the following schools: University of Utah, Point Park University, Carnegie Mellon University, West Virginia University, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Washington & Jefferson College, McDaniel College, La Roche College, and Northwest School of the Arts where she was invited to be part of a choreographic residency for their 2nd Annual Repertory Scholarship Concert. Skrabalak earned her MFA in Dance (Performing Arts) from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and graduated Spring 2013 with honors. Currently, she resides in Charlotte with her husband and two sons, is on faculty for the Charlotte Ballet Academy, teaches at Iron Butterfly Pilates, and is the Rehearsal Director for Bodiography Contemporary Ballet- Charlotte.

​

Skyla Caldwell, A.R.A.D. trained at the Charlotte School of Ballet under Gay Porter Speer and The Point Park Conservatory in Pittsburgh, PA as a scholarship student under the direction of Robert Munoz. Skyla has danced for NCDT as an apprentice under Salvatore Aiello and Jerry Kumery. Caldwell has also danced at the National Ballet of Cuba under Laura Alonzo in Havana, Cuba, and is associated with the Royal Academy of London. Caldwell has danced with the Moving Poets Theater of Dance for the last eight years and is currently serving as the Ballet Mistress of the Union County Youth Ballet.

​

Jill Scheidt began her aerial career in 2005 performing swinging trapeze, static trapeze, spanish web, and chairs with the Triton Trouper Circus in Chicago, IL.  She is a founding member and past President of Dragonfly Aerial Arts Studio in Knoxville, TN, which consists of an education mission and a performance troupe.  As part of Dragonfly Jill provided tailored instruction in fabric and trapeze for children, teens and adults to help meet each student’s expression, technique, and fitness goals. She has choreographed and performed trapeze, rope, aerial cube, and multiple apparatus ensemble pieces for civic events, corporate functions, fundraising galas, and Dragonfly’s Annual Circus Extravaganza.  Jill continues to refine her performance and teaching skills studying with other aerial artists including Elsie Smith, Rebekah Leach, Molly Graves, Caroline Wright, Rain Anya, and Janie Bernasconi and has earned her Teaching Certification in Fabrics from Nimble Arts. Jill holds degrees from Texas A&M and the University of California, Berkeley plus a culinary degree in pastry arts. She is excited to share her love for aerial arts with her new home town.

​

April Skelton is an aerialist, educator, and dance trapeze evangelist based in Asheville, NC. Born and raised in the land where Appalachia melts into the Deep South, April has been working in aerial arts since 2005, after beginning her own training at Canopy Studio in Athens, Ga., under the direction of Susan Murphy. Her training and experience as a movement educator includes her background as a physical therapist assistant, working as a longtime instructor at Canopy, a teacher trainer for Born to Fly, and serving as education director at one of the nation’s foremost aerial dance schools, Frequent Flyers, in Boulder, Colo.  She has performed and staged work across the country with the international Aerial Dance Festival, for which she is also a recurring faculty artist, for Apogee Aerial Dance Festival in Seattle, and for companies and clients including Flight Collaborative (NYC and Boulder), Aerial Estuary (Charleston, SC), Asheville Aerial Arts, The Georgia Aquarium, Hotel Indigo, and Harrah’s Casino. Among others, she has studied under Aimee Hancock and Elsie Smith of NECCA, Rain Anya of Paper Doll Militia, and her mentor, Susan Murphy.  April has choreographed and performed works on aerial silks, bungee harness, invented apparatus, static trapeze, pole, and lyra, but her favorite work is on the dance (aka single-point or low-flying) trapeze. Out of the community of artists at Canopy Studio, April adopted and helped develop the particular dialect of dance trapeze she speaks most fluently: a merging of vertical skills borrowed from aerial fabric and sling with the dynamic precision of static trapeze. She is currently a faculty member at Empyrean Arts in Asheville and travels regionally and nationally to teach and perform. 

​

More teachers to come!