VDE School for Modern Dance

Instructors

Photo by Lucas Bybee

Marina Wagner: Education Director, 2nd-3rd Grade

Marina has been part of the VDE community for the past decade as a dancer, teacher, and most recently, as the Youth Artistic Director from 2022 to 2024. She enjoyed the opportunity to bring her creative visions to life while directing The Quiltmaker’s Gift and A Bad Case of Stripes. With a background in ballet, jazz, and modern dance from various studios and workshops, Marina is passionate about teaching creative and modern dance to youth of all ages. She holds a degree in Exercise Science from BYU, combining her knowledge of movement with her love for dance.

Caitlyn Jennings: Artistic Director, Adult Beginner

Caitlyn has been the VDE Artistic Director since 2022 directing the Spring Company shows of Reverie and Forces. This is her fourth year teaching for VDE and loves helping adults find a new love for dance or rediscover their passion.

Ana Simkins: Adult Intermediate

Ana Simkins is started her love for teaching dance when she started her first job as a student assistant teacher at her hometown dance studio in Huntsville, Alabama. Since then she has assisted and taught dance classes in college at BYU-Idaho, as well as dance studio in her husband’s hometown in Roosevelt, Utah. This year, she is teaching the Intermediate/Advanced Modern class for VDE and she’s so excited to share her knowledge of modern technique she has gained in her college education at BYU-Idaho.

Katie Anderson: Kindergarten-1st Grade, 3rd-4th Grade, Modern Technique

Katie directed Valley Dance Ensemble from 2020-2022 and VDE-Youth from 2021-2022. She has been dancing, teaching, and choreographing with our company since 2014. Katie directed Priscilla and the Pink Planet (2016), STEAM (2021), The Magic Hat Shop (2022), and I am Woman (2022). She also directs VDE-Y’s yearly Halloween production of Under The Bed, and directed/filmed/edited VDE’s Dance for Film series. Before moving to Logan, Katie danced with BYU-I’s Collegiate Contemporary Dance Company and graduated with a Major in English Education and a Minor in Dance Education. She grew up in Star Valley, Wyoming, where her love for dance all began.

Tessa Evans: Limitless, Parent-Tot, Preschool

Tessa has had the opportunity to learn from and work with many talented dancers, choreographers and other artists in her time with VDE as a teacher and dancer and through her time serving as the VDE Youth Director and the Artistic Director for the adult company.  Before coming to Cache Valley, Tessa danced on ballet and dance team scholarship at CEU, ran her own ballet and modern dance school and choreographed for groups, teams and soloists around the state.  Now most of her time is spent homeschooling and adventuring with her family, teaching creative movement and developing an online creative movement program to teach more about our world through dance.

Tiffany Childress: 4th-5th Grade

Tiffany Elise Childress grew up in Sandy, Utah. She started dancing at the age of 11. In college she danced with BYU’s Dancensemble and The Dancer’s Company where she had the opportunity to perform and teach workshops across the US, Philippines, Korea, and India. As a finalist in the American College Dance Festival, she also had the opportunity to perform in the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. She worked as a teacher at Chows Gymnastics in Iowa, as well as Luling Dance arts and Uvalde Classical Dance in Texas. Currently she is teaching with VDE-youth, and is Director of Canyon Creative Dance. She is honored to be a part of Valley Dance Ensemble and be a part of Logan’s arts community.

Parker Rae Evans: 6th-7th Grade

Parker started dancing with VDE-Y at age 1 and proceeded to dance in their junior company. This season is Parker’s third year as a company member and fourth as a teacher at the School for Modern Dance. Valley Dance Ensemble has been a creative home to Parker going on 18 years now. Growing up in Logan Parker performed with several community theatre companies such as Unicorn Theatre, Music Theatre West, Old Barn Theatre, Cache Theatre company and danced on and off with Cache Valley Civic Ballet. Parker now works as a caregiver for adults with disabilities and enjoys writing music, playing instruments, yoga, Pilates, weightlifting and boxing in her free time.

Alyssa Luthi: Preschool-Kindergarten, 5th-6th Grade

Alyssa fell in love with dance at a young age, and as a mom of three little boys she is so excited to be on the stage and dancing again. She grew up in Ohio were she studied ballet, tap, jazz and toe tap under some beloved instructors as well as studying at Otterbein University, dancing with Dance Alive, and Jazz on Tap on Tour. Alyssa and her family moved to Utah almost three years ago and are so happy to have found a community that shares their love for the arts. This is Alyssa's second year teaching at the School for Modern Dance and she looks forward to many more.

Emma Newby: 1st-2nd Grade, 7th-9th Grade, 9th-12th Grade

Emma loves the way she is able to express herself through dance. The best dances are the ones that come from the heart. She also loves to play soccer, ski, meet new people, and eat doughnuts. She is currently a student at USU studying applied economics, German, and global peacebuilding.