Movement Center -- Teacher Bios

Teaching Staff

Dance Teachers

JUNE POODIACK teaches creative movement classes, musical theater, tap, and jazz for beginners through adults. June also directs the MC dance company JuMP! which has wowed audiences at several benefit and community performances. She has a B.A. in Communications and Theater Arts from Western Conn. State University and has choreographed and performed in many summer stock musicals.

NANCY KAANTA teaches modern, tap, jazz, and creative movement. Nancy's trained with Virginia Tanner who was widely regarded as the country's most outstanding children's dance teacher. She also studied extensively in NYC, Wesleyan University, Connecticut College, Duke University and at the White Mountain Dance Festival.

JEANNE NEU enjoys teaching creative movement. enjoys teaching creative movement, gymnastics and tap. Jeanne is also a certified Zumba® and Zumbatomic® instructor. She graduated from UVM with a B.S. and took graduate courses in education at UVM and University of So. Maine. Before coming to Movement Center she worked with children for many years as a public school teacher.

HEATHER MORRIS entered the College of Wooster, Wooster, OH in 1990 with a Scottish Arts Scholarship and has been passing on her love of Celtic dance to her students ever since. She is certified by the British Association of Teachers of Dance and the Scottish Dance Teachers’ Alliance. She has been studying Irish Step Dance with Alice McNeish, T.M.R.F. and Moira McMahon, T.C.R.G.

ALYSSA PETTINGILL received her classical ballet training from Larry and Colleen Robertson, formerly of the Boston Ballet, San Diego Ballet and Houston Ballet. She also studied at the Boston Ballet School, the Portland School of Ballet, and the Milwaukee Ballet. Alyssa danced with the Seacoast Company for over six years, performing such roles as Snow Queen and Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, Hermia in A Mid Summer Nights Dream, the lead in Carmina Burana, the Can-Can doll in La Boutique Fantasque, the Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty, and in Les Sylphides and Pas de Quatre. Alyssa went on to attain a BA in Theatre and Dance from UNH, where she studied jazz and tap with Gay Nardone, and performed with the UNH Ballet and Jazz Companies. Trained in all aspects of theatre, she was awarded the Gary O'Neill "Triple Threat" Scholarship for Musical Theatre. She has over a decade of experience as a teacher and choreographer, and many more as a performer, bringing her enthusiasm for the studio and the stage to all of her students.

TORI SHORT has been a dancer at Movement Center since age three. She has studied jazz, tap, and lyrical movement, as well as being a member of the Movement Center Competition team in 2010-2011. She has been an assistant teacher for five years, working with various age groups.

CHRISTINE STONE has been pursuing the art of Ballroom for over five years. She started out social dancing and immediately knew she wanted more. She enrolled in an American Smooth Ballroom Dance Teachers Program, and from there moved on to study Ballroom technique at Vermont Dance Sport Academy, under the direction of Bobbi Davies. Today Christine continues lessons at ADAJ Dance sport, out of Canada, with five-time, 10-dance world champions Alain Doucet and Anik Jolicoeur, studying competitive level International Ballroom (waltz, foxtrot, tango & quickstep) and Latin (rumba, cha-cha & samba). Christine looks forward to sharing her love of ballroom, and to encouraging individuals to explore ballroom as an art form, sport and a rewarding social experience.

TARYN NOELLE is a resident of Stowe and works locally as a Dance Teacher, Choreographer, Actor and Jazz Vocalist. Taryn attended Circle in the Square Theatre School in Manhattan and also trained in Ballroom and Latin Dance while in New York. Taryn is delighted to be joining the wonderful team of faculty at Movement Center.

BRIANNA MAGOWAN has been dancing at the Movement Center since the age of four. She has studied jazz, tap, lyrical, and dance and sign. She was a part of the Movement Center Competition team in 2010-2011 and was in JuMP Dance Company for three years. She was a member of the Winooski High school cheerleading squad for four years, choreographing the half time routine for football and a dance for the regional cheerleading competition. Currently, she is a sophomore at Community College of Vermont studying liberal arts.

JACQUELINE CHOZICK comes to Movement Center with 13 years of professional experience as a dance educator, choreographer, and performer. Jacqueline graduated Roger Williams University in 2007 with a B.A. in Dance and graduated with her Master's of education in 2011. She has performed with the Roger Williams Dance Theater, Tap Company, Unyted Styles, Movement theatre, and many different performance studios in the Northeast. She was the President of the Roger Williams dance troupe and helped to create a dance therapy connection within her university. Jacqueline looks forward to bringing her passion and love of dance to Movement Center.

Music and Theater Teachers:

MATTHEW KLOSS has worked as a freelance bassist and educator for the past decade. A chameleon of musical idioms, Kloss' groove, sensibility, and style, makes him in much demand as a sideman in sessions for blues, rock, traditional styles, rockabilly, country punk, jazz and classical. Matthew is often sought out as a composer/arranger for everything from chamber works to jazz groups to TV ads. He has been awarded numerous awards and grants for both composition and performance. His music has been heard on TV and radio the world over. As an educator, Matthew focuses on student-based teaching. Offering lessons on upright and electric bass, guitar, cello, beginner piano, ukulele and theory/arranging, his approach is geared to peak the students interest using history, geography, math and science to explain key concepts within their musical studies. The outcome is a fun and relaxed atmosphere with a focus on clear-cut goals and student growth.

TIFFANY PFEIFFER moved from Brooklyn, NY, to Westford, VT in summer 2008, and began teaching private voice and piano lessons out of her home studio. Singing since age 4, she grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and competed and toured with the Nebraska Children’s Chorus throughout the U.S. and Europe. She later studied music and magazine journalism at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and moved to New York in 2002, launching her career as a featured performer at a sold-out “Soulfully Sinatra” show at BB King Blues Club in Times Square. She soon formed The Discarnate Band, writing & performing original soul/jazz/pop, and recorded her first EP, “Amor Frio” in 2007. Since 2010, Tiffany began singing jazz with many of Vermont’s finest jazz musicians, and has performed on stages in Bermuda, Canada, and Goa, India. Tiffany is also a certified advanced yoga instructor through Integral Yoga Institute, and infuses lessons with yogic alignment and breath. She has found teaching music to be equally as enriching for her as for her students.

JOE GOODROW is the new guitar, piano, and ukulele teacher here at Movement Center. Joe has been playing guitar since age 8, piano since age 10, and ukulele for 3 years now. Joe recently returned from a Berklee College of Music guitar program where he played guitar with many professional musicians and teens from all over the world. He has taken many lessons from Berklee graduates and even had a chance to learn a few things about guitar from Trey Anastasio.

He can play seven different instruments and has perfect pitch. Joe is fluent in French and can't wait to meet all of his new students.