Jacqueline Porter
FOUNDING ARTISTIC AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Ballet, Pointe, Variations, YAGP Coaching, Theatre Dance
Jacqueline Porter founded and directs The Dallas Conservatory, one of America’s largest and most highly awarded private performing arts schools. The 9-time winner of the prestigious YAGP “Outstanding School” award comprises three campuses and a faculty of 40 top professionals teaching dance, theater, voice and fitness to 1,700 children and adults.
Ms. Porter was herself trained by many of the 20th century’s greats including classical teachers David Howard, Marcia Dale Weary, and Wilhelm Burmann, and jazz legends Luigi, JoJo Smith, and Betsy Haug among many others. Professionally, Jacqueline worked on Broadway, National Tour, and regionally, with credits including understudying film icon Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown on a Pre-Broadway tour for one year, four years with Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway and tour, and acting roles from Off-Broadway to the Santa Fe Shakespeare Festival.
The daughter of an English actor/director and Scottish dancer, Jacqueline began teaching and choreographing with her mother’s dance school at age 12, and has since guest-taught for over two dozen schools and festivals from Beverly Hills to Tokyo including outreach in India, Bali, the Philippines and Morocco.
During and after her professional years in dance and theater, Jacqueline accumulated 10 years of business experience in corporate luxury sales as well as marketing, fundraising and development for arts organizations including NYC’s Roundabout Theater, LA’s Riverside Philharmonic and The Dallas Symphony.
Now in her 16th Anniversary Season with The Dallas Conservatory, Jacqueline Porter has personally trained (often from their first classical steps) 17 professional dancers with North America’s top ballet and modern companies including the New York City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Houston Ballet, Parsons Dance, Mark Morris, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal and Broadway. Her students have won scholarships and admission to the world’s finest schools and universities including Juilliard, USC, NYU, Royal Ballet School, Manhattan School of Music, and the schools of American Ballet Theatre and the San Francisco Ballet.
Jacqueline has personally trained and coached over 175 dancers invited to YAGP Finals since 2012, with over 40 of those invited as soloists.
When not in the studio, Jacqueline is an avid adventurer and theater-goer and has to date traveled to 28 countries on 5 continents.