Paige Larson

Owner/Teacher

Paige started her ballet journey at the age of 3. She has two older sisters that were both enrolled in dance classes. She would watch her older sisters and then try to copy everything they did once they got home. Once old enough, Paige was able to join ballet just like her sisters. From age 3, she studied in her hometown of Spooner, WI with Leigh Waggoner. She wanted to be dancing more and more as she got older so her parents started exploring options outside of their area. After additionally taking ballet and jazz classes in Rice Lake and Hayward, her parents eventually gave her the option of studying in Duluth at the School of the Minnesota Ballet.

So, for 5 years, her parents drove her 4-5 days a week the 170 mile round trip. While studying with MNB she was exposed to such amazing and influential teachers such as Allan Fields, Robert Gardner, Lila Ann Coates White, Suzanne Kritzberg, and Leanne Vecchione. In her years as a student Paige not only performed and toured with the company with Swan Lake, Giselle, and The Nutcracker, she traveled to summer intensives for North Carolina School for the Arts, Joffrey Midwest, and Boston Ballet. In those summer intensives, her knowledge grew exponentially while gaining even more appreciation for other dance forms other than ballet. At NCSA, her jazz teacher was Jacob Brent (Mr Mistofeless from the movie ‘Cats’.) One day there was a power issue and he needed to check on something. He trusted Paige in charge of his warm-ups which gave her the first taste of leading a class at age 15.

While Paige was still in high school, a professional choreographer (Michael Matthew Farrell) was working on her school’s musical and she chose to be involved in. She was dance captain for the show and her first taste of being in a musical. A guest artist in the show happened to teach dance in the town and was leaving. She saw Paige’s technique and ability and approached her about taking over her classes. So at the age of 17, with her sister Aurora as another teacher, she opened Spooner School of Dance in 2002. After 16 years of a hugely successful operation, Paige needed to step away in 2018.

Throughout the same years, Paige had a short-lived professional ballet career with the now defunct ‘American National Ballet’ where she danced principal roles and toured with the company. During the company’s existence, she was in a high-speed car crash that changed the entire course of her life. While recovering physically from her accident, Paige started getting back into the performing realm via musicals. She started dancing again with the Duluth Playhouse and eventually started dance captaining, choreographing, and teaching. Through the Duluth Playhouse, a few of her performance credits include A Chorus Line, Chicago, White Christmas, Guys and Dolls, and Cabaret. Some of her choreography credits include Rock of Ages, Chicago, Cats, Hairspray, West Side Story, and Jesus Christ Superstar. She has also choreographed for Marshall High, Carlton High, Harbor City International, Minnesota Ballet’s ‘Celebrity Dance Challenge’ fundraiser, Rubber Chicken Theater, UW-Superior Theater Department, and Denfeld musical and show choir. During this time, Paige was also a faculty member at the School of the Minnesota Ballet from 2012-2021 where she taught all ages ballet along with special technique, musical theater, repertoire, corps de ballet, and jazz. She started the adult pointe program while there along with being the Outreach Coordinator from 2019-2021.

Paige is an ABT® Certified Teacher, who has successfully completed the ABT® Teacher Training Intensive in Pre-Primary through Level 5 of the ABT® National Training Curriculum.

In 2019, Paige also took the initiative to travel to Pennsylvania to attend Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet’s teacher training because she appreciated and admired what their school offered so now implements a lot of their syllabus into her own.

Outside of her ballet career, she is married to a Duluth native, Aaron, that is an 18 year MN National Guard veteran. They reside in West Duluth and have 2 dogs and 2 cats.