About the Director:

Rachael Carnes has been dancing since she was 7, and her first piece of ground-breaking choreography, performed when she was in the second grade with her then best friend, was set to Willie Nelson's "Georgia On My Mind".

Hailing from the wide-open Pacific Northwest, she received a B.A. in DanceTheater from Reed College in 1993. She was trained at the Creative Dance Center in Seattle, WA in 1996, by Anne Green Gilbert, the leading authority on Creative Dance, and worked as a teacher, choreographer and board member at the CDC, as well as developing her own classes, artist-in-residence workshops and projects throughout the Seattle area. Rachael sat on the board for the Dance Educators Association of Washington and wrote dance and performance reviews for The Stranger. In addition, Rachael worked as the Education Director for On the Boards, the artistic home for contemporary performance, music and dance in the Pac NW, as well as the coordinator of 12 Minutes Max, an ongoing festival of innovative performance that held performances every six weeks, providing a platform for new and emerging artists to stage their work, and established artists to explore new territory.

Relocating to NYC in 1999, Rachael pursued Graduate Studies at the New School of Social Research in the areas of Child Development, Developmental Psychology and Dance/Movement therapy. In 2002, with her seven week old baby in her arms, she began teaching ongoing Creative Movement classes for babies and toddlers at the Elizabeth Seton Center, so her daughter would have a place to do creative dance.

Rachael founded and serves as executive director of Sparkplug Dance, a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. Along with weekly classes for students ages 6 weeks to 74, Rachael has developed programming with the Willamette High School teen parenting program, and has worked as a trainer for LCC's Lane County Childcare Provider Network, the Oregon Association for the Education of Young Children, The Provider Resource Organization and the Oregon Association for PE, Recreation and Dance. In Summer 2006, she presented at the International Conference of Dance and the Child International in The Hague, The Netherlands.