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 3 campuses and a faculty of 40 top professionals teaching dance, theater, and fitness to 1,700 children and adults.
Ms. Porter was herself trained by many of the 20th century’s greats including David Howard, Marcia Dale Weary, Melissa Hayden 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 “Jerome Robbins Broadway” on Broadway, understudying 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 principal 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 and choreographed 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 onstage 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 has personally trained (often from their very first classical steps) 20 professional dancers with top international ballet and modern companies including the New York City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Houston Ballet, Ballet Nurnburg, Ballet Flanders, Parsons Dance, Mark Morris, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal and Broadway.
Jacqueline’s longtime private students have won scholarships and admission to the world’s finest schools and universities including Juilliard, USC, NYU, SAB, Royal Ballet School, Manhattan School of Music, and the schools of American Ballet Theatre and San Francisco Ballet.
Jacqueline has personally trained and coached over 200 dancers invited to YAGP Finals since 2012, with over 40 of those invited as soloists.
When not in the studio, Jacqueline is an avid classical arts patron, theater-goer, and adventurer, and has to date traveled to 28 countries on 5 continents.