INSTRUCTORS

Trudy McCreanor
Artistic Director
Mendocino Ballet Company & School

Ms. McCreanor is Founder and past Artistic Director of Colorado West Ballet and Performing Arts Center. Trained in Pittsburgh with Charlotte Mady, she also studied with Barbara Weissberger of the Pennsylvania Ballet and Ballet Master, George Zoritch. She was awarded a full scholarship to the North Carolina School of the Arts at the age of 14 and went on to study dance and theatre arts at Stephens College, the University of Missouri and at Columbia College on full scholarship for artistic merit and academic achievement. She also studied with masters Luigi and Gus Giordano in Jazz technique, Finus Jhung and David Howard in Classical Ballet, and Michael Kravitz in Modern Dance, among others.

She has performed with contemporary and classical ballet companies across the country in roles including “The Nutcracker”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Don Quixote”, “Swan Lake”, “Rodeo”, “Napoli”, and “Obsessions”, (a ballet created especially for her). She has taught Classical Ballet, Jazz, Tap, Creative Dance, Contemporary Dance, Ballet Floor Barre, and Gymnastics in New Jersey, Oregon, Missouri, Arizona and throughout Colorado and northern California. She traveled to southern France in 2004 as part of  a cultural exchange project with over 30 dancers from schools north of Paris and in Valence d’Agen in southwest France. She was accompanied by nine dancers from the Mendocino Ballet who attended this workshop where Ms. McCreanor taught Classical Ballet, Pointe, Floor Barre and Broadway Dance and choreographed for the community performance. Dancers from France traveled to Ukiah in the summer of 2005 where they studied with Ms. McCreanor and Ms. Helene Darroman of AVICA Danse in France.  We made two more trips to France in the summers of 2006 and 2008. In October of 2010, Ms. McCreanor set "The Nutcracker" with Ms. Darroman on 40+ dancers and actors from our Ukiah company and French dancers from Nerac and surrounding areas. The summer of 2013, 12 dancers from l'Ecole de Danse du Val d'Albret under the direction of Ms. Helene Darroman joined 12 dancers from Mendocino Ballet under the direction of Ms. McCreanor to study and perform Classical and Contemporary Ballet, Jazz and Modern Dance. In the summer of 2015, and 2019, we again returned to France for additional Summer Workshops.

In addition to teaching, Ms. McCreanor has choreographed and directed several children’s ballets and original productions, restaged many classics from “Les Sylphides” and “Swan Lake” to “Pas de Quatre”, "Cinderella" and "Napoli", coordinated local children in “The Nutcracker” with the Colorado Ballet, Tulsa Ballet Theatre, David Taylor Dance Theatre, the Eugene Ballet and the Aspen/Santa Fe Ballet. She has provided choreography for special children’s productions with the Grand Junction Symphony Orchestra including “Peter and the Wolf”, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Cinderella”, “La Boutique Fantasque”, “Alice in Wonderland”, and many more. She also staged "Peter and the Wolf" for a joint production with the Ukiah Symphony and "Sylvia" and "Tubby the Tuba" with both the Ukiah Symphony and the Symphony of the Redwoods.

She has organized Outreach Programs for Arts in Education Programs and taught movement workshops and dance history throughout the community and school districts of western Colorado and northern California. She also taught Dance Movement and Dance History Workshops at Woodlands Charter School and Tree of Life Charter School in Ukiah and Classical Ballet and Performance classes at Mendocino College. She was a guest teacher and taught Arts Management, Ballet, and Dance History at Mesa State College in Colorado. She has produced and choreographed musical theater productions for the schools and community theater in western Colorado and northern California. She has also received grants to teach dance arts and perform in the schools at Blosser Lane Elementary School in Willits and Frank Zeek Elementary School in Ukiah. Ms. McCreanor has served ten plus years on the Board of Directors for the Arts Council of Mendocino County where she co-wrote a grant to the Mendocino County Office of Education to bring arts of all kinds back into the schools county-wide through the annual "Get Arts in the Schools Program".  She has also made several presentations to county wide Educators and School Administrators on ways to use movement and dance in the classroom core curriculum.

Ms. McCreanor was hired in July 2001 to direct the Mendocino Ballet Company and create the Mendocino Ballet School where she has implemented a comprehensive, professional Classical Ballet training program for the serious dancer and a multi-discipline recreational dance program including ballet, tap, jazz, modern and contemporary dance,  character dance, creative dance, and more for students of all ages from 3 through Adult.