The creative team at Central Washington Dance Academy (CWDA) have been creating near professional family friendly performances in Ellensburg for almost fifteen years. CWDA focuses on providing quality dance training and a plethora of performance opportunities, working with all ages of our community! As a community driven organization, we would love to work with other businesses in the area. Sponsorships and donations are a huge part of growing the art of dance in our community.

Every year, we make it a priority to create full-scale performances for the Ellensburg community. Our most recent productions include:

• "The Nutcracker" - December 2024
• "The Sleeping Beauty" - April 2024
• "The Nutcracker" - December 2023
• "The Wizard of Oz" - April 2023
• "Alice in Wonderland" - June 2022
• "The Nutcracker" - December 2021

Ticket sales alone are only a portion of our operating revenue, so support from businesses and individuals is vital to the continued success of our organization. As an arts patron, we know you appreciate the value full-scale productions bring to the community, thus we offer a variety of opportunities to support our upcoming performance of "Mary Poppins" that will fit any budget.

About our Studio

CWDA is a place our students and their families can call home. Our vision is to help all of our dancers grow and learn to their maximum potential. Located in the heart of downtown Ellensburg, our convenient location and two spacious dance studios offer many opportunities and easy access.

Our instructors are experienced, professional, and strive to create a fun and exciting environment where our students can flourish. We offer classes in ballet, tap, contemporary, hip hop, musical theater, and young children's classes. Whether your focus is technique, flexibility, or recreation, you can find it here. 

Meet our Choreographers!

Jane Venezia's early ballet training was at the Jordan College of Music, in Indianapolis, IN. She was a scholarship student at the Boston Ballet School, an apprentice with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet Company, and a company member of New Hampshire Ballet. As a member of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, she danced in productions of "Giselle," "Nutcracker," and "Swan Lake". In NYC, she was a member of the Radio City Music Hall ballet ensemble.

She moved to New Jersey and taught at the Mercer High School for the Performing Arts. She founded Montgomery Dance Arts in the fall of 1992. She is in the 1994 edition of Who's Who Among America's Teachers. She has set works on companies/schools in Iowa City, IA, Bainbridge Island, Grand Rapids, MN and Ellensburg, WA. Jane is an American Ballet Theatre (ABT) certified instructor obtained through her ongoing seminars and testing in New York City at ABT headquarters.

She has been the director of the Central Washington Dance Academy for the past fifteen years. She directs annual productions for the school featuring all levels and dance styles in order to give dedicated dance students more opportunities to perform and to share the beauty of dance with the Ellensburg community on a larger scale. 

Taylor Bir moved to Ellensburg in 2010 when she began college at CWU. Taylor received her BA in Communication Studies as well as a Dance Minor and a Dance Performance Minor. While attending CWU, Taylor was a dancer and choreographer for Orchesis Dance Company, attended conferences such as AAPHERD and SHAPE where she  performed and took classes from professionals in the dance field, and got to travel to Guam to teach line dances, folk dances and hip hop at a large summer camp.

Her work at CWU continued as she got her MA in Administrative Management while teaching a variety of classes for the CWU Dance Program. To this day, she has continued her relationship with CWU teaching Tap, Ballet, Jazz, as well as Teaching Methods Recreation. Taylor has also worked with the Theatre department teaching tap and had the opportunity to choreograph for their 2024 production of Footloose. When Taylor isn’t at CWDA or CWU she is a certified Jazzercise instructor! We are so happy to have Taylor on our team as CWDA's Administrative Manager as well as an instructor. Miss Taylor teaches Tap, Contemporary, Ballet, and our Preschool and Kinder Dance classes!

Cindy Bruns is a long time resident of Ellensburg and is the Director of Counseling and a Licensed Psychologist at CWU. Cindy has been teaching with us for many years, and she is one of our main choreographers for our many productions! She studied ballet with Toni Pimble, Riley Grannon, and Susan Zadoff at the Eugene School of Ballet. She also attended summer intensives at Whitman College and at the Royal Academy of Dancing's summer program in Toronto, Canada. Miss Cindy began touring with the Eugene Ballet Company (EBC) at age 14 when she was cast as Clara in the Nutcracker. After that, she began performing corps de ballet roles with EBC on a regular basis. As an instructor, she has taught at the Eugene School of Ballet, Berkeley Ballet Theater, and Berkeley City Ballet. We love having her on our team teaching all ages of ballet!