Bio & Contact
For more information or to sign up for lessons, please contact me at
ellen@pghforwardandup.com
Or call (412)-57-FWD-UP (412-573-9387).
ELLEN STAFFORD is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique living and working in the Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh. She received her certification from the Urbana Center for the Alexander Technique in the spring of 2011, where she trained with third-generation teachers Joan and Alex Murray. The Murrays are best known for introducing the developmental movement work of Australian anthropologist Raymond A. Dart into their teaching style, and developmental movement consequently plays a large part in Ms. Stafford’s teaching style as well. She has been known to ogle over babies just learning to crawl and marvel aloud at their wonderful use.
Ms. Stafford is a dancer and choreographer as well as an Alexander teacher, and received a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2008. She studied dance with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. She has performed in the work of choreographers Mary Miller, Robert Moses, Cheryl Chaddick, Erika Randall, and Philip Johnston. In 2007 and 2008 she performed in the Champaign-Urbana Boneyard Arts Festival as part of Kirstie Simson’s improvisation ensembles. In August of 2012 Ms. Stafford founded Geeksdanz, a modern dance company dedicated to the creation and performance of “geeky” dance works. For more info on Geeksdanz and her current projects, visit www.geeksdanz.org.
