Kellis McSparrin Oldenburg is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher from Clinton, Mississippi.  In 2010, she received her BFA in Dance from the University of Southern Mississippi and in 2012 she graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with an MFA.  Kellis is a former instructor of dance at Belhaven University in Jackson, MS, and USM in Hattiesburg, MS.  She specializes in ballet, contemporary, jazz, and musical theatre techniques, and she has also orchestrated a freelance choreography business for the past nine years. Kellis and her husband, Kirk, recently moved to New Orleans, where Kellis is thrilled to be a new member of Marigny Opera Ballet.

Kellis will be teaching a contemporary modern class that focuses on athleticism, articulation of the spine, weight sensing, floorwork, musicality, and accessing one’s full kinesphere.  Her modern training has its roots in Cunningham, Horton, and Release techniques, and her classes reflect the fusion of those various techniques while also including stylistic attributes from jazz, ballet, and hip hop.  Kellis’s class begins with an extensive warm up, followed by stationary and locomotor technical exercises that grow in expansiveness and level of difficulty.  Class culminates in repertory phrase work with hints of improvisation to allow dancers to find freedom, expression, and creativity in their movement.

Tuesday: Contemporary technique
Wednesday: Phrasework