Phaedra Jarrett

Phaedra was born and raised in San Francisco, California, and began her professional career with Sacramento Ballet, where she danced for six years. She relocated to the Bay Area, where she joined Oakland Ballet as a soloist and rose to the rank of principal. Her dancing career, which spanned 20+ years, included many traditional ballets such as Swan Lake, Giselle, Coppelia, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Don Quixote, Les Sylphides, and of course, Nutcracker, to name a few. She also had the pleasure of performing numerous works by Balanchine, Choo San Goh, Jose Limon, Agnes de Mille, Michel Fokine, Septime Webre, Anthony Tudor, Bronislava Nijinska, Val Caniparoli, Trey McIntyre, Kathryn Posin, and Ron Cunningham. She had the honor to be an original cast member for pieces by Robert Henry Johnson, Graham Lustig, Alan Hineline, Michael Lowe, Mark Foehringer, and Dwight Rhoden. She was a founding member of Amy Seiwert’s company Imagery. A few of her favorite roles include Puck in Janet Wilder’s "A Midsummer Night’s Dream", the young girl in Ron Cunningham’s "Incident at Blackbriar" and the female solo from Francisco Martinez’s "Places."

 

After moving to Spokane in 2006, she became co-director of Ballet Spokane with Janet Wilder and the following year, full director. After the birth of her son Perry, and with the partnership of Kristen Potts, she refocused the company to form Spokane Youth Ballet (SYB), a local non-profit dance company whose mission is to provide professional-level production opportunities for dance students throughout the Spokane area, regardless of studio affiliation. She is currently the resident choreographer for SYB where she has choreographed many one-act traditional story ballets with a fun twist.

 

In her spare time, she works full-time as an administrator and teacher for Plum Tree School. A private play-based preschool with an emphasis on mindfulness.