Born and raised in New York City, Ms. Larsen received her professional dance training at the School of American Ballet, the Pacific Northwest Ballet School and the New York School of Ballet. She was a member of Pacific Northwest Ballet under the direcDon of Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, and subsequently joined the Alberta Ballet, directed by Mikko Nissinen. She performed with the Suzanne Farrell Ballet as a soloist at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. before joining Oregon Ballet Theatre as a principal dancer under arDsDc director Christopher Stowell.
Over the course of her career, Ms. Larsen danced prominent roles in ballets by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, James Kudelka, Christopher Wheeldon and Paul Taylor, among others, and originated roles in numerous ballets. She reDred from performing in 2010 to focus on teaching, coaching and wriDng about dance. She was a founding member of Incoroporamento, a collaboraDve trio combining dance, poetry, and music, producing several performances to criDcal acclaim.
Ms. Larsen has taught and coached widely across the country and has been a guest teacher for schools in Japan and Canada.
She is a regular contributor to Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance Teacher, and Dance Spirit magazines. Her wriDng has appeared in Dance/USA’s In the Green Room, Oregon ArtsWatch, the Dancing Times, as well as the Threepenny Review, Page & Spine, and The Maine Review. In 2015 she was honored with a fellowship to the Helene Wurlitzer FoundaDon in Taos, NM, to pursue her work as a writer. Her memoir, Being a Ballerina: The Power and PerfecFon of a Dancing Life, was published by the University Press of Florida in 2021.
She lives in Asheville, NC.
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