Denise Rodriguez

Denise Rodriguez has a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin with a Texas teacher certificate. She began to study dance when she was two years old and trained for four years in the Royal Ballet School System. She switched to studying the Vaganova Method of Ballet after her family moved to a new home. 

Deborah Case trained Denise for many years. She also took classes with Irina Vakhromeeva, Alex Ossadnik, and Florian Rouiller and attended classes led by Misty Copeland in New York and the Martha Graham School. Denise started teaching dance as an assistant when she was 12 and became a dance teacher shortly thereafter. Throughout her years of dancing, Denise studied various ballet styles: contemporary, jazz, tap, flamenco, Arabian, hip-hop, Irish, and Hungarian dance. She trained by many teachers worldwide and has attended numerous intensives, including the Joffrey Ballet School, The Rock School for Dance Education, and the Bolshoi Ballet of NYC, where she was a certified student. 

Her teaching principle involves focusing on each student's needs so they can learn to dance while developing discipline and confidence while improving posture, flexibility, creativity, and coordination. Denise has been cast in the musical Phantom of the Opera, Carmen, Kitri River dance Concierto Aranjuez, Mary Poppins the Musical and The Lion King. She also has portrayed various principle roles in the Rio Grande Valley Ballet Nutcracker, including: Clara, Dew Drop, Arabian, Snow Queen and the Sugar Plum Fairy. She made a cameo appearance as the Sugar Plum Fairy with Belles Artes in Brownsville for their Nutcracker in 2020.