Lona Gomez

A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Lona Gomez began her serious ballet studies when she was awarded a Ford Foundation Scholarship to train with the Boston Ballet School in 1972. From 1979-1982, she was a member of Boston Ballet II as well as an apprentice with the Boston Ballet Company under its founder and director, the late E. Virginia Williams. In 1982, she joined Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre under the directorship and tutelage of the late, Patricia Wilde where she danced for nine years in corps, soloist, and principal roles in full-length classical ballets as well as many Balanchine ballets. Her favorite roles were The Scotch Lass in Balanchine’s Scotch Symphony, Dew Drop and Lead Marzipan in The Nutcracker, Donizetti Variations, Valse Fantasie, Square Dance and Serenade. As Director and Ballet Master for the Center for Dance Education in Spartanburg, SC for the past 26 years, she has developed a successful school syllabus. She instructs, rehearses and choreographs for the Pre-Professional Division, the Trainee Division and the Professional Resident Ballet Company. Her students have gone on to dance professionally with Houston Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, St. Louis Ballet, Sarasota Ballet, and Los Angeles Ballet. She assists with recruitment of students for Project D.A.N.C.E , an inclusive outreach program to nurture the underrepresented demographic of students in the Spartanburg community and assists with the only Sensory Sensitive Performance of The Nutcracker in South Carolina to make live dance accessible for audience members with disabilities. Recently, she taught a series of Zoom Classes for Leap of Dance Academy in Nigeria and was a guest faculty member at Converse College. She is honored to be a 2021-22 School of American Ballet National Visiting Fellow. She will be introduced to the curriculum and technique at the School of American Ballet, the official school of New York City Ballet, and take part in numerous workshops including class planning, curriculum building, topics on diversity and inclusion and will teach a class in the spring at the School of American Ballet.