Breathing Life Into Dance

A Common Sense Approach to Studying, Training, Performing, and Teaching the Art of Dance Breathing Life Into Dance, is based on the Robin Sturm’s life as a student, professional dancer, teacher and choreographer. This book serves as a loving guide to anyone who has a desire to explore the performing arts, whether professionally or for personal artistic fulfillment. Sturm’s lifetime of experience has given her a fresh perspective of how to teach this beloved and highly respected art form and to perpetuate a legacy of integrity and a passion for excellence. This book is not a memoir, nor a biography of another dancer’s life. It is not a “how-to” that touts a new style or specific technique that will assure a dancer’s acceptance into a professional career. Instead, it is a revelation borne of endless training, dancing, performing, teaching, and relating to every imaginable motivation and personality.

Author Biography

Robin Conrad Sturm began her ballet training at seven and a half years of age with Mary Day, and went on to become a graduate of the Academy of the Washington School of the Ballet. She was a full-scholarship student at the American Ballet Theatre School and the School of American Ballet in New York. She was a founding member of the Washington Ballet, when it became a professional company, and rose to a principal dancer there until the birth of her first child. Ms. Sturm is currently a principal dancer and Co-Director of the Asaph Dance Ensemble, which has appeared at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and various other theaters in the Washington, D.C. area. She was also a soloist in Jerome Hines’s opera, I Am the Way, at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Ms. Sturm was an adjunct instructor in the dance department of the Ameri-can University in Washington, D.C. and was the Artistic Director and principal ballet teacher of the Northern Virginia Dance Academy, as well as a former teacher at the Washington School of the Ballet. Ms. Sturm and her husband, Bob, have three grown children, Jeremy, Rebekah, and Samantha. They live in Manassas, Virginia, where they co-direct the Asaph Dance Ensemble.