Studio Stories: Reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance with Ronna Rochell - Season 21, Episode 203

A native of the North Chicago suburbs, Ronna Rochell started dancing at age 5. At that young age, she started with creative movement classes, and by the time she was in junior high, she had evolved into a serious modern dance student. She was fortunate to have a fabulous teacher from junior high and high school who taught her the technique of Martha Graham and Alwin Nikolai.  Her dance teacher’s name was Carol Walker, who later went on to serve as Dean of the Department of Dance at SUNY Purchase. At age 16, after studying dance for a summer at the American Dance Festival at Duke University, Ronna auditioned and made it into one of the premiere modern dance companies in Chicago, the Joseph Holmes Dance Theatre.  She was an apprentice with the company and performed with them as well. After dancing in college at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, she went on to pursue her MFA in dance at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, earning her degree in 1989.  Right before graduation, she auditioned and was accepted into the New Dance Ensemble apprentice program.  So after graduation, in 1989, she moved to Minneapolis and apprenticed with the dance company for one year.  Next, inspired by the Nancy Hauser Dance Company, she was invited to join the company in 1991.  Ronna was a member of the Nancy Hauser Dance company for two years. She finished her modern dance career dancing in a Walker Art Center sponsored event in Gerry Girouard’s choreography on the beach of Cedar Lake in 1993! Since then she has gone back to her teaching roots and started her own business, BodyWisdom, teaching yoga, Pilates and fitness classes, as well as bringing chair yoga into senior living communities. More recently, she rebooted her dance career by going into musical theatre as she performed with Theatre 55 and had a fabulous time dancing in the productions of Pippin (2019) and A Chorus Line (2023). Now Ronna focuses on continuing teaching yoga and fitness classes, spending time with her three adult sons, tandem biking with her husband Steve, and enjoying cross-country skiing, even racing at the American Birkebeiner.  She is proud to say that she skied the Kortelopet at this event- 29 kilometers- and she just received her 10 year plaque for the Kortelopet - quite an achievement for her!