Barbara Yurick
Lecturer in Dance
BS – WVU
Barbara Yurick teaches ballet and introduction to dance. Barbara danced professionally for many years, performing ballet, jazz, and modern dance. She was a founding member and contributing choreographer of The West Virginia Dance Company, where she worked with it’s Artistic Director Toneta Akers-Toler, recipient of the Governor’s Arts Excellence Award. Barbara also performed with Theatre West Virginia in their summer repertory company as dancer and actress for several seasons. Barbara served as a Modern Dance Instructor and Artist-in-Residence in a collaborative project for Mountain State University where she choreographed and performed pieces created for a centennial celebration based on Pearl Buck’s life and work.
Yurick has served the arts in many capacities. She has been a guest instructor and assisted with auditions for West Virginia’s Governor’s School for the Arts. She serves on RESA I Arts Team to provide more arts in education program in WV public schools. She developed and presents “Children for Children,” an integrated arts program for early elementary students which incorporates children’s literature, creative movement and dance, music, theatre and visual arts, for students and teachers. Barbara was selected from applicants throughout the country to participate in the Artists as Educators Seminar at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The seminar focused on developing participatory workshops for teachers. She has been teaching in her own private studio, Dance-It! Oak Hill Dance Center, as well as guest teaching for other private studios, arts camps, Artist-in-Residence programs in public and private schools, and college and university settings for nearly thirty years.
She holds a B.S. from WVU, studied dance at North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, received dance scholarships to The Craft of Choreography Conferences SUNY, Brockport, NY and Geneva, NY and continues to study dance, education and the connections between all the arts and human growth, development and communication through them.