(Adult Ballet) Julie Lowe serves as Associate Artistic Director of Menlowe Ballet, based in Menlo Park, California. She received her earliest dance training in New York with Mimi Kellerman, and went on to study with teachers including Audree Ismailloff, Meredith Bayless, Lawrence Rhodes, Wilhelm Burmann, Sally Streets, Howard Sayette, Betsy Erickson, and Ronn Guidi. For over a decade, as a Principal Ballerina with the Oakland Ballet Company under the artistic leadership of Ronn Guidi, Ms. Lowe toured the United States and Europe extensively, performing leading roles and receiving coaching and mentorship from many of the dance world’s great luminaries including Frederic Franklin, Anna Sokolow, Leonide Massine, Eugene Loring, Irina Nijinska, Ruthanna Boris and John Butler. Her repertoire of notable portrayals include the title role in Giselle, Swanhilda in Coppélia, Sugarplum Fairy, Snow Queen, Rose Queen and Marie in Ronn Guidi’s Nutcracker, Gretel in Guidi’s Hansel and Gretel, Beth in the world premiere of Eugene Loring’s The Tenderland, and signature roles in works by John McFall, Betsy Erickson, Brenda Way, Marc Wilde, John Pasqualetti and Ronn Guidi. Ms. Lowe participated in many of Oakland Ballet’s notable Diaghilev and Americana revivals. From 1991-1992 she appeared as a guest artist with San Francisco’s ODC, performing the title role in their production of The Velveteen Rabbit. From 2008-2015, she served as a Master Teacher for the Ballroom Dance Teachers College, one of the nation’s premier vocational training program for ballroom dance instructors. For many years she taught social and ballroom dance at San Francisco’s Metronome Ballroom and Oakland’s Just Dance Ballroom. She continues to teach private ballroom and social dance lessons, with a focus on preparing wedding couples and wedding parties for their first dances. Ms. Lowe has created a thriving evening adult ballet program at the Alameda Ballet Academy which she has led since 2012. With a nurturing, supportive and exacting approach, she supports dancers in developing and enhancing both technical and artistic skills.
