The story of Austin Community Ballet

Told by Dorothy on July 27, 2022

In 2013, after performing in NYC for many years, I moved back to Austin to be closer to family. At the time there were not a lot of options for professional-level open ballet class in Austin, it was a tough transition. I felt lost. One day I took a Saturday morning ballet class at Tapestry Dance, taught by Magdalena Riley. It was clear from her teaching that Magda was a highly sophisticated dance-artist, and I immediately felt that I had found a friend.

Magda texted me one day (May 3, 2013 - I still have the text message thread because I’m sentimental like that…) and asked if I was interested in teaching an advanced/professional ballet class. I responded that I needed to be able to take class myself, and I proposed that the class could be informal and collaborative, so the teacher could ‘lead’ class but also dance. We both loved this idea, so Magda put together a Facebook Group, found us a space, enlisted Sara Paul to help with organization… and Austin Community Ballet was born.

We started two days/week with recorded music, and we soon expanded to three days. Eventually we were able to afford musicians for class - the amazing Joshua Piper was the OG.

When the state of national emergency was declared on March 13, 2020, we immediately began live-streaming classes from our homes on Facebook Live. Our first livestream was the following Monday, March 16, and we kept live-streaming our classes for a number of months after we returned to the studio.

HUGE thank you and BIG love to ACB teachers AJ Garcia-Rameau and Alexa Capareda. They are CHAMPIONS: together the three of us kept ACB class going during lockdown, teaching live-stream classes from home 3 days a week, without fail, from March to October of 2020. Endless love and gratitude to our community… we helped keep each other sane.

Much love y’all.

-Doro