Dusty Buttons Holds Master Class in Salem NH

Dusty with GroupVoter’s School of Dance in Salem, NH hosted a master class with famed Boston Ballet Principal Dancer, Dusty Button last month.

This was an amazing opportunity for the students at Voter’s School of Dance and the surrounding ballet community. We also felt it was important to open our doors to the local ballet community, so we had been sharing the class information on social media all week.

In addition to students from Voter’s, we were pleased to have students from Helene Joy School of Dance in Middleton, MA and The Salem Dance Network in Salem, NH.

Studio owner and director, Vanessa Voter has been committed to bringing professional level ballet education to the local area since she began teaching at the school over 25 years ago. At that time, the school was owned by her mother, Pam Voter. Vanessa is now the owner and director and has been enthusiastically raising the “barre” ever since. Although Voter’s offers a wide range of disciplines including modern, tap, jazz, lyric and hip hop, ballet has always our specialty.
Voter’s even has a resident ballet company, the Methuen Ballet Ensemble; a local troupe of ballet dancers who all train under Vanessa’s tutelage.

As a young dancer, Vanessa trained at the Boston Ballet and the Boston Conservatory. She understands the important of proper ballet technique and training. Having the opportunity to learn from a current superstar and professional is such a unique and important part of the students’ dance education. We are all such huge fans of Dusty Button. She embodies the grace and athleticism and beauty of today’s prima ballerina.

The students were all so blown away by her. They were absolutely mesmerized. It was surreal to see her in our very own local studio.

There were 17 students in all and every one of them walked away with something really positive and amazing to say.

Jordanne Miller, 19 years old and a Salem, NH native, is a sophomore at Boston University. She is been training at Voter’s School of Dance since she was a toddler and made the trip home just so that she could have the experience of working with Dusty Button. Jordanne said of the experience, “I’ve been dancing at Voter’s for 16 years now, so when I got the call that Dusty would be teaching a class, I was so excited to be able to come back from Boston University to join my dance family for this once in a lifetime experience! I learned so much from Dusty but what stuck with me most was that she said to give it 100% in the beginning of a combination and that way you can keep pushing yourself further as you do it more times. It always feels great to be given corrections, so I’m honored I got some today from one of my ballet idols!”

We are looking forward to bringing similar opportunities to our studio over the summer through our unique summer intensive programs. We’re in the process of working to bring other principal ballerinas to the studio including a return visit by Dusty herself.