Amy Bodnar
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Owner/Director
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Leah Fadenrecht
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Assistant Director, EPC
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Amy has been dancing for over 20 years. She started her dance training in Las Vegas, Nevada with the Silver Doll Dancers at age 5, and continued her training throughout high school, college, and beyond at Culture Shock Dance Center, Academy of Performing Arts, and Westlake Dance Center. Amy has studied jazz, contemporary, ballet, hip hop, cheer, and tap, and started competing at the age of 6. During her time in San Diego she was a member of hip hop dance companies Funkanometry San Diego and PGN Dance Company.
Amy graduated from the University of San Diego (USD) with a Bachelor’s Degree in Accountancy. At USD, she was a 4-year member of the Dance Team, began choreographing her second year on the team, and served as Captain during her junior and senior year. She came on as the Assistant Coach after graduation and was later named Head Coach. She has taught dance since she was 16 years old, and has spent the last decade pursuing her dream and teaching/coaching dance full time to students of all ages and styles. Amy took over as Director of Dance Elite in May 2015, and came on as the new owner in May 2017. Amy is excited to continue to build a sense of family and community at the studio and bring dance/music education to all our students. |
Leah, originally from the Snohomish area, received most of her early training from Dance Elite. During that time she was involved in student teaching and competing around the Pacific Northwest with the Amplify Competition Team. Leah later graduated from Central Washington University with degrees in Dance, History, and Film Production Management. While attending school she was a member of the CWU Dance Team and the Orchesis Dance Company. Both teams gave her many opportunities to work with notable dance groups, such as, Khambatta Dance Company, Tacoma Dance Collective, Portland Ballet, and Freddie-Lee Heath, a multi award winning dance educator.
Leah has performed in multiple seasons of The Nutcracker in local community theaters with her most notable roles as lead Spanish Chocolate and Dew Drop Fairy. She also traveled to perform various modern and contemporary pieces choreographed by New Mexico Master Dance Instructor Crystal Fulmer at the APPHERD Gala and Shape America Gala. Leah has since been back with Dance Elite teaching various dance styles since 2016 and is currently the Assistant Director of the Elite Performing Company. |
Kristin Beima-Sofie
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Chessa Chalmers
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Kalen Epping
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Kristin Beima-Sofie took her first ballet class at age 2 and has been dancing ever since. As a child, she was a member of Vancouver Dance Theater and part of the Schell School of Dance Performing Company for over 8 years. During college she choreographed and performed with the Western Washington University Dance Team and taught tap classes at The Dance Studio in Bellingham, Washington. This will be her 4th year teaching tap classes with Dance Elite.
When she’s not dancing, Kristin is busy teaching qualitative research methods and leading research studies at the University of Washington Department of Global Health. |
Chessa began her dance training at Pacific Northwest Ballet, before leaving to study with a private instructor. After several years, she moved to study with Mara Vinson and Oleg Gorbulev at Olympic Ballet Theatre, where she placed in Classical and Contemporary sections at the semifinals of Youth America Grand Prix. She has been awarded scholarships to and attended programs at Ballet Chicago, Oklahoma City Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet, The Joffrey Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and VIVO Ballet (Rome, Italy) among others.
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Kalen grew up in Olympia, Washington, where she trained and competed with various studios and instructors in the area. She is trained in jazz, contemporary, modern, lyrical, ballet, tap, hip hop, and musical theatre. Kalen graduated from Pacific Lutheran University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and a minor in dance. During her time at Pacific Lutheran University, she performed for the dance department’s concerts, choreographed theatre productions, and led Cypher, a student dance and choreography organization. She has experience teaching jazz, contemporary, ballet, and tap since 2019, coaching pom and jazz for Capital High School’s dance team for 5 years, and working for Dance Connect, a dance team coaching and consulting company.
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Mackenzy Isaacson
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Jami Pixley
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Mackenzy has been dancing since she was two years old and has trained at numerous schools in the area including Dance Premier, The Connection, Westlake, MK Ballet, Deborah Hadley's School and Pacific Northwest Ballet. Mackenzy's training consists of ballet, pointe, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, modern, hip hop, heels and Horton technique. Mackenzy has trained at Movement Invention Project in New York City, Alonzo King Lines Ballet in San Francisco, Hubbard Street Dance Company in Chicago, Long Beach Ballet in Long Beach, Peridance Capezio Center in New York City as well as dance classes at the University of Washington.
Mackenzy has toured and performed in seven cities in China and performed in New York City with Peridance Capezio Center Certificate Program. She has 8 years of experience teaching contemporary, jazz, lyrical, acro, heels, ballet and pointe and years of experience choreographing and rehearsing competition dances. |
Jami discovered her love for dance while dancing in school musicals and summer dance programs during elementary school. In Jami's senior year of high school, she made top 10 in the NYCDA nationals in New York City. After college, Jami returned to her PNW roots as a teacher and mentor, teaching tap, jazz, ballet, hip hop, musical theatre, lyrical and contemporary. She also began a more serious role as choreographer on the competitive company team, with owner and founder of Trilogy Dance Company and TPDC, Tricia Volk.
Recently Jami had an opportunity to choreograph for Pathways Dance Company with Lauren Schmidt, owner and founder based out of Westlake Dance Center. Throughout her 25 year dance career, she has found her passion for teaching has a great deal to do with her connection to her students and watching them grow and evolve. |
Casey Younger
Casey grew up dancing from ages 4 to 18 in the Seattle area, training in tap, jazz, ballet, modern, and hip-hop. At Edmonds-Woodway High School she was on the dance/drill team and served as captain her senior year. While earning her Bachelors in Fine Arts at Washington State University, Casey continued to take tap and jazz classes as she could, while also working hard as a varsity athlete for three years on the women’s rowing team (her team took 4th in the nation, Division I, her senior year!). During graduate school in Oxford, England Casey was a member of her university’s dancesport (ballroom dance) team, competing around the country in waltz and quickstep.
Since 2014, she has been an active board member, choreographer, and performer for Charity Dance Project, a volunteer organization that puts on one show each year to raise money for local nonprofits. Of all the styles, her passion has always been tap dance. Creating music and rhythm while dancing makes this American art-form truly unique, and Casey is honored to get to help keep the dance alive by passing it on to the next generation. She has been a member Alchemy Tap Project (a semi-professional, Seattle-based tap dance company) since 2021, and continues to take 6+ hours of tap class a week in addition to performing. Outside of dance, Casey is a graphic designer and software developer. One her favorite activities is traveling – 52 countries and counting so far! She lives in Snohomish with her husband and two daughters. |
Logan Wentland
Logan grew up in Lynnwood, Washington learning Hip Hop and other styles from different studios and instructors in the area. During his 4 years studying Civil Engineering at Gonzaga University, he danced with the Gonzaga Bomb Squad at basketball games and taught weekly Hip Hop classes at a local studio in Spokane. He has been dancing for 11 years and choreographing/teaching Hip Hop for 6 years.
When Logan isn’t dancing, he works as an Engineer-in-Training at a utility during the week and volunteers as a DeafBlind tactile ASL interpreter on Sundays. Logan is also interested in board games, sustainability, personal investing, nutrition and fitness. He is so excited to share his unique style and dance experience with Dance Elite |