Lauren began dancing at the age of ten, when Adagio first opened its doors in 2005. She trained in ballet, jazz, modern, hip hop, and was on the competition team. She also did gymnastics and poms. She began teaching at Adagio when she was fifteen. After graduating high school, she studied dance at Columbia College Chicago for two years and has taught at various dance studios in the suburbs of Chicago and Savannah, Georgia since then. In October 2014, Lauren will move to New York City to continue her dance career at AMDA. She is thrilled to be back with her dance family at Adagio and to be a part of the team for Summer Dance Festival.

 Donnette Cannonie

Donnette Cannonie is a professional dancer, choreographer, and teacher from Chicago, IL. She is most recently the co-founder and director of Dylan Artists Management, Inc. Trained in multiple styles, Donnette has worked as a versatile dancer nationally and internationally with many companies and artists. Working in both the concert and commercial world of dance, highlights include performing for Vanity Fair, Marshall Field’s, Taylor Dane, Kellogg’s, the DIFFA event at the Field Museum, Toby Keith and in the film Roll Bounce featuring Bow Wow and Nick Cannon. She spent seven seasons dancing with The Dance COLEctive and 5 seasons as their Executive Director. She was also a company member with Corpo Dance Co. and has performed as a guest artist with various companies.
She is a former dancer and former head coach of the nationally ranked college dance team at the University of Illinois-Chicago, with performances on WGN, CBS, and ESPN. Her choreography has been presented by the Alabama Dance Summit, Ballet Tennessee, The Dance COLEctive, the IPOP! Conventions in LA and Las Vegas, several dance programs and competitive dance teams and she recently worked as one of the choreographers for Scotland’s National Dance Team.

Donnette has had the privilege to teach master classes and workshops across the country and abroad for various universities, studios and dance programs including Ballet Tennessee, the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, Columbia College summer program, and has spent the past six summers teaching at the Alabama Ballet, originally under the direction of Wes Chapman, current ABT II Artistic Director. Donnette has been a guest judge for ScotCheer/ScotDance, WCA Dance Nationals, the Miss Chicago Pageant for the Miss America Organization, as well as local and state dance competitions across the United States. She is most recently choreographing for R/B artist Safia Jalila on her upcoming music videos and live stage performances. Donnette is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago, where she received her B.A. in dance and performance.

Barbara Wirz-Ellsworth

Piano Instructor

Barbara is a European trained Dalcroze Eurhythmics instructor and pianist. In 1980 she earned a Bachelor and Masters of Music with emphasis on Dalcroze Eurhythmics and Music Education at the State College of Music in Cologne, Germany, and in 2003 a Masters of Music at Northern Illinois University. She studied piano performance under Prof. Donald Walker and Dr. Theodore Edel. She is also a licensed pre-school educator.

Her teaching career began in 1978, and over the years she has established extensive and profound teaching experience in the area of music education, piano and Dalcroze Eurhythmics with all ages in a wide spectrum of educational and therapeutic settings.

Currently, she offers Dalcroze Eurhythmics programs nationwide, and has been employed as visiting faculty and clinician for Northern Illinois University, DePaul University in Chicago, Music Teacher National Association, Illinois State Music Teacher Association Conference and many others. She maintains a private piano studio and teaches piano and Dalcroze Eurhythmics at the Community School of the Arts NIU. She is an active performer of chamber music, and author of the book, The Golden Carousel- An Introduction to Classical Piano Music for Young Children, published in 2001 in Germany.