Faculty Bio

Rockport, Texas

Holly Waxman is the founding Ballet Instructor at Rockport Center for the Arts, where she helped launch the dance program in July 2023. The program currently includes 2 year-long ballet classes for children ages 6-9 and 10-18 and 4 summer camps serving the children of Aransas County and beyond. Holly returns for her third year to Aransas Pass Schools Faulk Elementary and Charlie Marshall Elementary to teach their 2 ACE Summer Ballet camps. She is very proud to be seeing her first student traveling to New York this summer to attend a ballet intensive on scholarship. She is the Artistic Director of Rockport Ballet Theatre, a pick-up company based in Rockport, Texas, whose season proudly includes performances at the Rockport Center for the Arts Dance Program and Bailando International Dance Festival.

Holly holds an MFA in Dance, Teaching, Performing, and Choreography from the University of Oklahoma and a BFA in Ballet Pedagogy from the University of Utah, where she danced with Utah Ballet. While a student at the University of Utah, Holly danced professionally with Ballet West in Salt Lake City under the direction of Jonas Kåge (American Ballet Theater, Royal Swedish Ballet). At Ballet West, she performed in Kåge’s Swan Lake, Willam Christensen's The Nutcracker, George Balanchine's© Stravinsky Violin Concerto, and Ben Stevenson's Cinderella.

Holly was a principal dancer with Oklahoma Festival Ballet and performed internationally in works by George Balanchine©, George Skibine, Miguel Terekhov, and Mary Margaret Holt. In 2003, Holly was selected by Kathleen Tracey, Ballet Master with New York City Ballet, to perform the Second Violin in George Balanchine’s© Concerto Barocco and again selected by Ms. Tracey in 2006 to perform in Balanchine’s© Stars and Stripes Pas de Deux. In 2007, she performed “The Osage Variation” from The Four Moons Ballet, choreography by Miguel Terekov at the Oklahoma State Capitol Building under a mural of the Five Native American Ballerinas painted by Mike Larsen. From 2004-2009 Holly danced in productions of The Nutcracker and The Firebird as a guest artist with companies in Tennessee, California, Arkansas, and Texas.

For six years, Holly was a full-time Movement Specialist in the Austin Independent School District with the Any Given Child program (Kennedy Center). She provided access and equity in the arts to hundreds of students all over Austin through sequential fine arts dance classes during the school day. Holly co-trained hundreds of Austin public school teachers in arts integration strategies for the EC-12 classroom. She helped write arts strategies into the Austin ISD curriculum as part of the Curriculum Writing Cadre for three years. Holly did her student teaching in creative movement under Mary Ann Lee (Children’s Dance Theater) at Lowell Elementary in the Avenues neighborhood in Salt Lake City. Holly was the founding Elementary and Middle School Dance Teacher at Skaggs Catholic Center in Draper, Utah, where she taught from 1999-2003.

From 2006-2013 Holly was a Professor of Ballet at the University of Oklahoma, she taught Ballet Technique - beginner through advanced, Pointe, Body Science for Dancers, Dance Appreciation and History, and was a Rehearsal Director for Oklahoma Festival Ballet as well as a principal dancer for the company for seven years. As a faculty member, she directed the Summer Wind Youth Ballet camp, coordinated and taught for the Saturday Youth Class program, and served as Faculty Coordinator of the fundraiser which supported student scholarships and the international touring program. As Ballet Mistress for Oklahoma Festival Ballet, she rehearsed and coached dancers in works by choreographers Antony Tudor, Gerald Arpino, Bronislava Nijinksa, Mary Margaret Holt, Ben Stevenson, and Miguel Terekhov. Holly toured with patrons of the company to at the Classical Musical Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria, and was Rehearsal Director for Oklahoma Festival Ballet’s The Creation.

Additional teaching credits include ZACH Theatre Performing Arts School, Texas State University Division of Dance, the American College Dance Festival Southwest Region at the University of Texas, and private dance studios in Utah, Texas, and Oklahoma since 1996. In 2011, she was invited to be an Artist-in-Residence at Texas A&M University Department of Dance where she taught ballet technique, pointe, body science, and set original choreography on the dancers. Holly was Rehearsal Director for Deanne McBrearty of the New York City Ballet for Balanchine’s© Who Cares? and Brian Reeder of New York City Ballet and Frankfurt Ballet for 2 summers at the Oklahoma Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain.

Holly’s choreography has been presented at Western Michigan University, The University of Oklahoma, Sooner Theatre, and Marching Auxiliaries. Holly published articles in Dancer Magazine in 2004 and 2006, and she served as Public Relations coordinator for CORPS de Ballet International from 2007-2010.

Holly began her dance training in Corpus Christi at the age of 4 at Roquemore Ballet Arts and continued with Munro Ballet Studios and the Corpus Christi Ballet. She has studied dance at the Boston Ballet School, Houston Ballet Academy (full scholarship), Ballet West Conservatory, STEPS on Broadway, Broadway Dance Center, American Ballet Theater School, New York Theatre Ballet, the Paul Taylor Dance Company (full scholarship) and the Alexander Technique Center in New York City.

Holly’s Grandmother, Ella Ilse, was a Dance Educator in Corpus Christi for over 40 years, and in 1964 Ella collaborated with another dance teacher, Artist Richard “Dick” Turner, and Maestro Maurice Peress of the Corpus Christi Symphony Maestro to put up the first full-length Nutcracker production in The Coastal Bend. Holly wrote about this performance in her graduate thesis ""A Community of Movement: The History of Theatrical Dance Training and Performance in Corpus Christi, Texas, 1930-1970"", published by the University of Oklahoma in 2006.