Faculty

Katherine Horrigan
Founder/Director

Previously a professional dancer and leader in dance education, founder and director Katherine Horrigan believes in building a team and culture to support our community raising the future generation of leaders through the values of a dance education.

She and her faculty of esteemed dance professionals, teachers, and choreographers are committed to cultivating their students as both dancers and individuals. Leading by example, they instill values of integrity, discipline, compassion, and humility.

Their innate passion brings joy, fun, encouragement, and excitement to the classroom, creating an experience that students love to return to, one high-energy lesson after the next.

Connecting our community through dance!

Katherine Horrigan CEO Founder/Director

Meet Ms. Katherine!

As a dance education leader, Ms. Katherine has dedicated the last 20 years to the dance field as a professional teacher, choreographer, and manager. Her artistic and dance education experience inform her passion for developing the next generation of leaders and artists. During her forman 8 year tenure as the Assistant Director of Adagio Ballet, Ms. Katherine advanced the artistic quality and educational programming while improving operations across the board. She led the development of the intensive program, advanced the quality of performances, and grew the school while remaining community centric. Amid the COVID pandemic in 2020 Katherine saw a need within the community and opened the Dance Academy of Virginia, now in its third year of operation and growing quickly! The Dance Academy is led by Katherine and is a direct representation of her expertise and vision for the dance community! Ms. Katherine teaches our Academy Program but her brilliance and voice is felt throughout all of DAVs programs.

We asked Ms. Katherine to tell a few fun facts, here is what she had to say:

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? An Architect or a Dancer

If you could be any other DAV staff member, who would you be and why? I can’t pick! They are all fabulous and I appreciate different qualities in each of them. They are all talented, passionate, nurturing, compassionate and great role models, love my team!

If you could sit next to anyone on a place, who would it be and why? Michelle Obama, I have so many questions!

What is your most embarrassing dance story? I have two!

In dress rehearsal for Nutcracker for Les Grands Ballet du Canadians, I was a parent in the party scene with a big hoop skirt and heels. I stepped on the back of my dress and fell straight down with the dress all around me. It felt like I fell inside the dress, and my partner had to pull me up. It was not discreet!
In the contemporary dance company I was in from Mexico, one piece of choreography was in water and at the end we would walk into sand falling light rain. While on tour in Ireland, apparently they could not get sand, so someone thought it would be a good idea to use salt! So now you have wet dancers walking into falling salt. We tried to keep our eyes closed but the salt kept dripping into our eyes. Through all of this we had to keep dancing and stand and bow, all while our eyes were burning and red!