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Salt Creek Ballet GraduatesOur alumna have gone on to dance with leading companies including Joffrey Ballet, Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Houston Ballet, Ballet Arizona, Ballet Iowa, Ballet South, Lexington Ballet, Washington Ballet, Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Orlando Ballet, Memphis Ballet, Sarasota Ballet and the Royal Ballet in London. Several are teaching dance, performing in musical theatre and one has founded a dance theater company. We are very proud of our alumna and the hundreds of students at all levels whose lives are enriched each year by high quality experiences in dance. Erin Derstine
She has performed extensively in the Chicago area with various companies, including River North Dance Company, the Cerqua-Rivera Art Experience, the Ruth Page Nutcracker, Ballet Theatre of Chicago, and The Invisible People. In June of 2000, Ms. Derstine graduated with honors from the University of Chicago, where she had attended on full academic scholarship, with a Bachelor of Arts in History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science and Medicine. She was also initiated into the academic honor society, Phi Beta Kappa. Erica Edwards
She began her ballet training at age four and continued with the Salt Creek Ballet School under the direction of Patricia Sigurdson. As a member of the Salt Creek Ballet some of the roles Ms. Edwards has danced are Clara, Snow Queen, Waltz Solo, Spanish, Mirliton, Chinese, and Russian in “The Nutcracker”. Also Mistress of Ceremonies in “Graduation Ball”, Friends and Dawn in “Coppelia”, Fleur de Farine and Aurora’s Variation in “Sleeping Beauty”, Paquita Variation, “Huapango”, “Veils of Anger”, “Air”, and “Still Life”. At the Regional Dance America National Festival held in Houston, Texas, Edwards was the first recipient of the Ann Barzel Scholarship. Edwards won 1st place in the Carey Rose Winski Competition, MidStates Regional Dance Festival Talent Scholarship and 3rd place in the National Society of Arts & Letters Regional in Indiana. She received a dance and academic scholarship to Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana where Edwards studied and trained for two years before accepting a contract with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. Since joining the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, Ms. Edwards has danced numerous roles from the Company’s repertory, such as “Appalachian Spring”, “Billy the Kid”, “The Nijinsky Mystique (The Rite of Spring)”, “Crossing”, “The Taming of the Shrew”, “Les Presages”, “Jardin aux Lilas”, “Viva Vivaldi”, “Birthday Variations”, “The Nutracker”, “Kettentanz”, and “Rodeo”. For the last three years Edwards has donated her dance talent to Dance for Life (supports medical research in AIDS) in the “Finale”, and to the Praise Dance Ministry at her church. The Chicago Sun Times in February 2001 spotlighted Ms. Edwards as a “Black History Maker”. In 2002 Ms. Edwards was Joffrey’s nominee for the Princess Grace Foundation Award, and completed film work on “The Company”. In February of 2003 Ebony magazine featured Ms. Edwards as a Young Leader of the Future in the Arts. Trinity Hamilton
As a member of the Salt Creek Ballet, Ms. Hamilton danced the roles of the Sugar Plum Fairy and Snow Queen in THE NUTCRACKER, the Diamond variation in SLEEPING BEAUTY, and Taglioni in PAS DE QUATRE. Ms. Hamilton began her ballet training at age four with Nora Curran in Naperville, Ill. She studied under Maria Tallchief of the Chicago City Ballet for two years before remaining for 12 years at the Salt Creek Ballet School, studying with Patricia Sigurdson. At age 13, Hamilton choreographed a piece that was accepted into the Midwest Regional Festival, and won a full scholarship to a dance conference as an emerging choreographer. Hamilton has also won dance prizes at the Carey Rose Winski Competition (1st and 2nd place) and at the Arts and Letters Competition (2nd place), and received a full dance scholarship to Butler University in Indianapolis. In 1997, Ms. Hamilton was nominated for the Princess Grace Award. In 1998, she had a role created for her in Gerald Arpino’s Footnotes for RJ; and in 1999 she danced the female lead in Arpino’s Light Rain. In April of 2002, Ms. Hamilton was the soloist in a new Joffrey production Astarte. Ms. Hamilton was also appeared as a dancer in industrial films, commercials
and the movie, The Company. Julia Rhoads
Ms. Rhoads has been a company member of the Salt Creek Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet, and was a performer and artistic Associate of XSIGHT! Performance Group from 1995-2000. Ms. Rhoads has also been a guest artist with Beppie Blankert Danceworks, the Itinerant Theater Guild, Baubo Performance Project, Trinity Irish Dance Company and several of Chicago’s independent artists. In 1999, she founded the dance-theater company Lucky Plush Productions with Holly Rothschild. The Chicago Reader has called Lucky Plush “excruciatingly funny” and showing plenty of theatrical savvy,” and to Rhoads’ independent choreography as “luscious dance with a modern sensibility and intelligence.” Her independent work has been presented in Arizona, Alaska and throughout the Midwest, and has been commissioned by Alaska Dance Theater, River North Dance Chicago, and by Mordine & Company Dance Theater. Ms. Rhoads has received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Choreography in 2000, the Cliff Dwellers Award for Choreography in 2002, and a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from 2001-2004. She is on the faculty in the theater department at Columbia College Chicago and the happy new mother of Sadie Rhoads Brenneman. Christina Salerno
She joined Boston Ballet II in 1993. Christina was promoted to corps de ballet in 1994 and to soloist in 1999. She has since performed Sugarplum Fairy, Snow Queen, Columbine, the Chinese variation, Marzipan and Tea in The Nutcracker, Azeli in Abdallah, Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Fairy of the Golden Vine and Little Red Riding Hood in The Sleeping Beauty, the Spring Fairy in Michael Corder's Cinderella, the Peasant Pas de Deux and Giselle's Friend in Giselle, and various roles in John Cranko's The Taming of The Shrew. She also has performed the duet in Paul Taylor's Company B, French Woman in Daniel Pelzig's An American in Paris, Tango Woman in Twyla Tharp's Waterbaby Bagatelles and the Principal role in the World Premiere of Laszlo Berdo's Four Hands. Her repertoire includes Ben Stevenson's Cleopatra and Dracula, Don Quixote, Swan Lake, Symphony in C, Cantabile, Laszlo Berdo's Below Down Under, Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Winter Dreams, Nacho Duato's Without Words, Michael Corder's Danses Concertantes, Giselle, Coppélia, The Princess and The Pea, Raymonda, Le Corsaire, Carmen, Paquita, Elisa Monte's VII for VIII, Merce Cunningham's Breakers, Eliot Feld's Contra Pose, Danny Buraczeski's By The Horns, Lila York's Celts and Ode To Joy, Daniel Pelzig's Nine Lives: Songs of Lyle Lovett, Flights & Fancy, and Passage, Balanchine's Serenade, Divertimento No. 15, Who Cares? and The Four Temperaments, and Christopher Wheeldon's Corybantic Ecstasies and Firebird. Ms. Salerno relocated to Zurich in the summer of 2001 to dance for the Zurich Ballet. In 2003, she joined the Royal Ballet in London. |
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Hinsdale Studio |
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ERIN
DERSTINE is an alumnus of the Salt Creek Ballet and is a company member
of Hubbard Street Dance of Chicago.
ERICA
LYNETTE EDWARDS from Downers Grove, IL 
TRINITY
HAMILTON joined The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago in July 1996, after
dancing with Salt Creek Ballet in 1994.
JULIA
RHOADS is a performer, dance educator, 
CHRISTINA
ELIDA SALERNO — currently a member of the Royal Ballet in London
— originally from Westmont, Illinois, trained at the Salt Creek Ballet
and was a scholarship student at the San Francisco School of Ballet. 
