Heather grew up in Phoenix, where she attended the Phoenix School of Ballet and South Mountain Center for the Performing Arts. By her early teens, she was performing with Eurasian Jazz Dance Company, Brataya Naytum Dance Co, Ballet Arizona, and Lydia Torea Spanish Dance Company. She received a BFA at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, where she worked with Milton Myers, Pat Thomas, Ruth Adrienne, LaVaughn Robertson, Roni Koresh and the Koresh Dance Company, Barbara Sandonato, Ginger Farley of Hubbard Street, Gabriel Mason and Eddie Taketa of Doug Varone, Ashley Roland and Andrew Pap. Heather went on to study with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater with Elaine Commendador, Frank Hatchett, and Judith Jamison. Heather stayed in New York for several years to dance and work, eventually coming west to take a break in the mountains … and never left! Heather now owns the Downtown Dance Collective in Missoula, a place for instruction of adults and children in performance and visual art. The DDC was created to build and unify the dance community in Missoula. She also stays very involved in the community at large, performing and giving lessons in a variety of capacities. In the summer of 2009, Heather had the pleasure of choreographing Best Little Whorehouse in Texas for the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, choreographing for Missoula Children’s Theatre’s Performing Arts Camp, and teaching at Teresa Waldorf’s Summer Theatre Camp and the UM Opera Camp. She performs and choreographs for the Leather Forever Show and Festival of the Dead each year and in the spring of 2009 was voted Best Dancer by the readers of the Missoula Independent. (She is still not sure about that title, but it gives her a giggle anyway.) Heather has enjoyed the last ten years in Missoula immensely and is looking forward to shaking up the next ten!