Reno's ballet studios have produced dancers for San Francisco Ballet, Ballet West, and Broadway. Yet the city's reputation as a serious training ground remains one of its best-kept secrets. Beneath the neon and casino lights, a tight-knit dance ecosystem has been building ballet careers for decades—fueled by pre-professional academies, a university program feeding dancers into national companies, and performance venues that treat student work as professional art.
We examined three institutions that anchor Reno's ballet pipeline. Whether you're a parent researching schools for a ballet-obsessed child, an adult beginner looking for your first barre class, or a pre-professional dancer auditioning for summer intensives, here's what each hub actually offers—and who it best serves.
The Reno Ballet Academy: The Pre-Professional Powerhouse
Founded: 1995
Best for: Serious students ages 8–18 aiming for conservatory or company auditions
The Reno Ballet Academy operates out of a sunlit studio complex in Midtown, its floor-to-ceiling windows looking onto the Sierra foothills. Founder and artistic director Margaret O'Sullivan, a former soloist with Pacific Northwest Ballet, built the school around a Vaganova-based syllabus with strong Balanchine influences—an unusual combination that prepares students for both Russian and American company aesthetics.
The academy runs six levels of pre-professional training, with students placed by technique rather than age. All classes feature live piano accompaniment, and the facility's four studios are fitted with sprung Marley floors and professional-grade barres. The annual Summer Intensive—held each June—draws guest faculty from major companies and regularly attracts out-of-state students from California, Oregon, and Idaho.
Notable alumni include James Chen (San Francisco Ballet trainee) and Elena Voss (Ballet West II). The academy mounts two full-length productions annually, including a Nutcracker that casts students alongside regional professional dancers.
Tuition: Monthly pre-professional tuition runs $285–$420; summer intensive auditions are held in January and February, with limited merit scholarships available.
Northern Nevada Dance Theatre: Where Training Meets the Stage
Founded: 2001
Best for: Dancers who want performance experience in both classical and contemporary repertoire
Northern Nevada Dance Theatre (NNDT) functions as both a school and a student repertory company—a rarity in a city Reno's size. Under the direction of Carlos Mendez, a former dancer with Houston Ballet, NNDT emphasizes stage time as an extension of classroom training. Students as young as 12 can audition for the Junior Company, which performs three to four productions per season at the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts and during Reno's annual Artown festival.
The curriculum splits evenly between classical ballet technique and contemporary ballet/choreography workshops. Mendez regularly commissions works from emerging choreographers, giving students early exposure to new repertoire rather than relying solely on Swan Lake excerpts.
The theatre's downtown studio includes two performance spaces with full lighting grids, allowing students to rehearse with production elements from day one. NNDT also maintains a partnership with the Reno Philharmonic, which provides live orchestral accompaniment for the annual spring gala.
Tuition: Company membership requires a $150 annual fee plus monthly class tuition ($220–$380). Need-based financial aid covers up to 50% of costs for qualifying families.
University of Nevada, Reno: The Degree Path to Professional Dance
Program: Department of Theatre and Dance, School of the Arts
Best for: Dancers seeking a B.A. or B.F.A. with professional performance and teaching preparation
The University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) offers the only four-year dance degree program in northern Nevada. Its B.F.A. in Dance Performance and Choreography and B.A. in Dance both require substantial ballet training, though the department operates as a modern-dance-forward program with strong classical foundations rather than a pure ballet conservatory.
Ballet courses run from Beginning Ballet through Advanced/Pointe and Partnering, taught by faculty with active professional credits. Professor of Dance Jennifer Taxier, formerly of Sacramento Ballet, heads the ballet area and has developed a repertory course in which students learn and perform works by guest choreographers from Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco.
UNR's Church Fine Arts building houses three sprung-floor studios, a black-box theater, and a dedicated dance science lab with motion-capture technology for injury-prevention research. B.F.A. students complete senior capstone projects that include both performance and choreography requirements, and the department's annual recruitment showcase in Las Vegas
