About
Sandra Chinn is a ballet teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received an Isadora Duncan Special Achievement Award for “her commitment to and excellence in the training, teaching, inspiring, and motivating dancers throughout the dance community” for the 2018-19 season. Sandra has faculty and company positions with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, ODC/Dance, Shawl Anderson Dance Center, and Berkeley Ballet Theater, where she has been artistic advisor since 2018.
She has guest taught for Company Wayne McGregor, Jessica Lang Dance, the dancers of Paul Taylor Dance Company, Abraham.In.Motion, Lucinda Childs Dance, Smuin Ballet, Aszure Barton and Artists, Amy Seiwart’s Imagery, Post:Ballet, SF DanceWorks, Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and BodyTraffic. She has been a visiting guest artist for Hollins University MFA Dance program, and is adjunct teacher at New York University, Tisch Department of Dance Summer Festival since 2016.
As a teacher, she has studied Vaganova Method with Karen Morell (Level 1-4), Cuban Ballet Methodology with Laura Alonso and Reinaldo Muñiz (Level 1-8), and attended teaching seminars with Maria Vegh. She is further informed by studies with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (founder of Body-Mind Centering), Progressing Ballet Technique, Pilates, Feldenkrais, Franklin Method, Alexander Technique, Iyengar Yoga, Gyrotonics and Gyrokinesis.
During her performing career in New York City, she was a company member of Dennis Wayne’s Dancers, Finis Jhung’s Chamber Ballet USA and Bob Bowyer’s American Ballet Comedy. She was featured in the off-Broadway dance show “Funny Feet,” for which she received a Drama Desk Award nomination as “Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical.” She is a graduate of the National Academy of Arts (Champaign, Ill.), and she continued her studies at the Joffrey Ballet School (NY), and intensively with Maggie Black. She is a native of Berkeley, CA, and has a BA in Computer Science from Mills College.
She is grateful for a performing and teaching career in the concert dance field and she looks forward to continuing her work and studies for many years to come.
Updated November 2020