Miss Carla was the owner and artistic director of Inclusion Dance for 10 years. She wanted to be able to focus on her passion of teaching and choreographing again without the added pressure and stress that comes with studio ownership. It made perfect sense for her to join the team at NEW Fusion and Performing Arts and work with her long time friend, Rana Poley.

Carla has been teaching and choreographing for over 25 years. She believes strong technique lays the foundation for a solid dancer. Her strongest medium is ballet, having trained her entire childhood and early teen years at the Makaroff School of Ballet, but she also finds joy in lyrical and contemporary ballet. Carla is a strong believer in movement quality over tricks and flash – emphasizing texture, dynamics and storytelling in her choreography and teaching as to create a well rounded dancer.

Since she has a background in social work, Carla is also the kind of dance teacher that cares about her students and has created connections with dancers that have remained long after they were her students. While running Inclusion Dance, she created a space that was safe and empowering. Carla is a teacher that wants to be respectful but is also warm and approachable and quite silly (just wait until you hear some of her “jokes”). Aside from dance, Carla’s other passion is fitness, and she looks forward to strength training and injury prevention work at NEW Fusion.

In her downtime, Carla can be found spending time her husband, Dustin and their two dogs, Beesly and Joni. She is an avid camper and gardener (native pollinator gardens are “her jam”) and self proclaimed “bird nerd.” She will also quote “The Office” endlessly, so beware.

Though closing her studio was not an easy decision, Carla says she is excited to create with the students at NEW Fusion and cannot wait to meet her new students!