ABOUT
CADENZA'S STORY
Cadenza /kÉ™-dÄ•n′zÉ™/, noun. In music, a cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing virtuosic display.
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Cadenza Ballet is an adult ballet school located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in July 2024, CB started humbly in Leigh's home studio with friends. Cadenza Ballet provides our students with not just technique, but the knowledge of how to make it work for them, and provide a sacred, safe space for which they have the freedom to develop their creative expression​.
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Cadenza Ballet is the culmination of years of listening to the wants and needs of adult ballet dancers, and its programs designed to make ballet technique accessible and create pathways to common goals of adult ballet dancers that were missing in many programs. As a dancer who returned to ballet as an adult herself, Leigh truly appreciates all the challenges and obstacles adults face in trying to pursue ballet, as well as all the emotional and physical hurdles adult students face when confronted with a physically demanding technique.
Having trained in her youth as an elite pre-professional student, Leigh has been able to compare pre-professional training with adult ballet classes, and noticed several gaps that hinder an adult ballet dancer's ability to both progress and dance healthy and safely.
She knows what the pros know: that to master ballet technique, one must know how to make the technique work for them, not how to make them work for the technique. Cadenza Ballet embodies the knowledge that "every body is a ballet body".
While many adult ballet programs give their students a class, Leigh is focused on providing students with explanations to make esoteric technique accessible through a variety of modalities.
A life-long learner, Leigh is dedicated to continued research in Dance Science & Medicine, and continues to refine both her curriculum, corrections, and program to meet the needs of her students.
Cadenza Ballet is nothing short of a love letter to her fellow adult ballet students, to provide them with the best ballet has to offer them.
MORE ABOUT LEIGH
Leigh Grant is a former elite pre-professional dancer and freelance professional dancer with 42 years of training and experience in ballet, and nearly a decade of teaching experience.
In her 40 years of dance training, she has been taught and coached by amazing dancers and teachers including: Finish Jhung, Madame Gabriella Darvash and Cynthia Vallone, and Frank Hatchett at Broadway Dance Center, and as a returning adult ballet dancer, with Runqiao Du, Berks Ballet Theatre, and many others.
At age 13, Leigh obtained her first professional freelance performance contract. At 23, injuries sidelined her from pursuing a performance career in ballet. Disheartened, she left dance to attend college. Leigh graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Theatre and Philosophy.
She realized how much she missed ballet and returned, not knowing where or how she'd fit in. She quickly returned to the ballet studio, this time as a teacher. In 2019, she audited the American Ballet Theatre's Teacher Training Curriculum program in New York City, in the famed studios that she previously entered as a hopeful ballet student two decades prior.
​ Now she is forging a path for herself as an adult ballet influencer and advocate, teacher, and director. She loves sharing her passion, expertise, and experiences with her students. ​
Outside of Cadenza, Leigh serves as Vice-President and Secretary of the New Mexico Dance Coalition, is President of a second board, and works part-time in business administration.