Jessica Phillips, founder of the Sedona Dance Academy, would like to keep your kids busy during the summer while improving their exposure to the arts and their dance skills.

Phillips trained with the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington, D.C., as well as the School of American Ballet and the Houston Ballet. She danced with Ballet Arizona in Phoenix from 2009 until 2018.

“After I left Ballet Arizona in 2018, I was teaching full-time for a studio in Scottsdale for two years until the pandemic hit, and then I stopped teaching,” Phillips said. “They had us teaching on Zoom and it was terrible. It was at that point that I decided to move to Sedona.”

Shortly after her arrival, she found herself faced with the opportunity to start a school of her own.

“The owner at the time offered it to me because she was burnt out,” Phillips remembered. “It kind of just fell in my lap. She didn’t have a dance school, but she had the space.”

Her students came to her through word of mouth, a process aided by Phillips already having connections in Sedona.

While most of the older dancers she has taught so far had previous dance experience, she has been starting from scratch with the younger ones. Today, SDA has approximately 90 students.

Phillips described the Sedona community response to SDA as having been “super supportive. Passionate. All of the kids want to be here. They all want to be in dance. I found in the city, sometimes kids were forced, and they had not-great attitudes.”

Her advanced students show particular dedication.

“They know my experience, that I danced professionally,” Phillips said. “I think it’s helpful for them to have a teacher who has been there before, and they see that it’s a possibility for them. They do a bunch of private lessons, they take every class they possibly can. Some of them do work trade in order to take all the classes, where they assist me with younger classes.”

As with finding her students, Phillips has relied primarily on personal connections to build up SDA’s staff, which now includes Kirstyn Lazur as well as Danielle McNeal of the Sedona Dance Project.

“There’s a few other really talented dancers that could be wonderful teachers that I’m trying to pull in and have that add more variety,” Phillips said. “It’s good for kids to have multiple different types of teaching styles … Some people here have had the bright lights … and they moved to Sedona to almost remove themselves from that in some way, or slow down, and I’m finding more and more people like that who are coming out of the woodwork.”

One of these people is Eric Lindemer, who will be joining SDA as an instructor. Lindemer, who moved to Sedona in 2008, formerly performed with American Ballet Theatre under the direction of Mikhail Baryshnikov, the Boston Ballet and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, and has been teaching dance for more than 30 years, including at Harvard University.

“People really value the grace and the discipline [of ballet] here in Sedona,” Phillips commented on the local state of the art. “It’s really classy. But just as much, there’s a different community that loves and values and relates more to modern.”

Spring Showcase

SDA’s May 20 show at the Posse Grounds Pavilion featured nearly all of the school’s pupils, who ranged in age from 2 to 17. It was SDA’s third time performing at the pavilion.

The program included appearances by SDA’s junior classes, several of which are composed of toddlers, alternating with performances by Phillips’ advanced students. Sofia Wolf and Anisa Jaffe were the evening’s standouts.

Wolf appeared in seven of the showcase’s performances, including two solos choreographed for her by Phillips. The first of these, “Kitri,” was a very traditional ballet piece with fan and pointe work that Wolf had previously performed at the Sedona Dance Project’s spring concert. The second, “Waves,” saw Wolf dancing with a cloak as if it were a burden she could not quite bear to surrender and with the right amount of wind to make the cloak fly effectively. Her transitions were fluid and confident.

“She’s been with me from the beginning,” Phillips said of Wolf. “I’ve seen her mature and grow so much. I’m helping her nuture her dream to become a paid professional dancer. I actually see that happening, and it’s really cool, because we’re here in small-town Sedona. Ballet is such a niche … it’s just rare to find that kind of drive.”

Jaffe likewise appeared in seven of the show’s numbers and danced a solo of her own, “Beautiful Distraction,” that was highly acrobatic and athletic, filled with darts, leaps and kicks. Phoebe Jones offered a solo from Marius Petipa’s “Paquita,” which was promising, elegant and precise, and Giselle Gidley made a strong appearance in white as the “Queen of Dryads.”

The evening’s most striking ensemble piece was “Business of Love,” a jazz number performed by a cast of 10, Wolf, Jaffe and Jones among them. The dancers were costumed entirely in black, including fedoras — except for bright teal gloves. Appropriately, the dance began with an emphasis on hand movements and incorporated some of the slinky, leisured style of the Roaring Twenties. Some of the performers lounged against the railing of an access ramp that was conveniently placed behind the stage like a barre, where they were silhouetted against the red rock views with the rest of the cast performing in front of them before the divisions merged.

As for the junior jazz class, its members offered a 1960sinspired selection, “Boogie Shoes,” that had the audience clapping along with the beat. One of the irrepressible youngsters in this group was later spotted offstage improvising some much more elaborate and definitely nonjazz movements.

Summer Intensives

Far from taking the summer off as many Sedona organizations do, SDA will only be getting busier as Phillips relaunches her series of summer classes.

“Students will be taught an array of different dance styles, and they can commit to one to six weeks,” Phillips explained. “There’s two sessions, and it’s set up to be a three-week commitment, but because of travel, we decided to make it one-week drop-in availability. We’ll be offering hip-hop from our guest teacher, modern, contemporary, jazz, ballet of course, yoga, dance conditioning, pointe work for our older students and a little bit of improv and acting.”

“It’s kind of a smorgasboard,” Phillips continued. “It’s a good way to try all the classes and get a feel for a different style. If you only have taken ballet it’s a good opportunity to try other styles … it’s more of an intensive this year. It’s more geared toward learning the true technique and not just scratching the surface of these different styles.

“Because they’re there for multiple hours, five days a week, I find that it really does sink in more than our regular semester schedule, once or twice a week for an hour. The more time you commit, the more you’re going to absorb. One week may be a tester. Two weeks, you’ll get a little more integrated. Three weeks is really what we’re hoping for … I have two really committed dancers that are going to be with us for six weeks.”

So far, she has about 20 students signed up in three different age groups and plenty of room for more. “There’s a lot of space for dancers to sign up and have a lot of individual attention,” Phillips said.

Phillips also hopes to expand SDA’s relationships with local schools.

“Two years ago I worked with Running River,” she said. “That was really fun, to reach out to a different community of kids, and I’m also working with them to create a program on Fridays because they’re changing to a four-day school week … We’re going to be providing a during-the-day class.

“I would love to work with Sedona Red Rock High School and West Sedona and the charter school.”