Love of dance leads to roles with famous performance troupe

Lauren Jaeger has loved to dance since she was 4. She took dance lessons all through her elementary and secondary school years and today, she teaches ballet at The Ridgefield Conservatory of Dance and attends Marymount Manhattan College as a dance major.

On Dec. 8, Jaeger debuted at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City, dancing modern dance with the Buglisi-Foreman Dance Company. It was the stuff young dancers’ dreams are made of.

“It was the most amazing experience of my entire life,” the 19-year-old Jaeger said. “It was awesome. I was standing about a foot away from Baryshnikov.”

Jaeger was 4 when she took her first dance class, a combination of ballet, tap and gymnastics.

“I remember we were moving at the time and the movers packed my sneakers,” she said with a laugh. “It was my first day in the class and my mother carried me to the car and then into the dance studio. I’d had to bear my ballet shoes to class and she didn’t want them to get dirty. I still haven’t seen those sneakers to this day.”

Jaeger danced “almost every day of the week.” She started concentrating on ballet at age 10. By 12, she was introduced to modern dance.

“They are very different,” she said, “but I find the more modern dance classes I take, the more I understand ballet. And the more I understand ballet, the more I understand modern dance.”

From the eighth grade through high school, Jaeger danced in the Danbury Music Center’s production of “The Nutcracker.” She also danced in the Ridgefield Conservatory’s productions of this holiday classic.

“I was taking dance classes at the Pinewood School of Dance in Stormville, N.Y., when I met James Robey,” Jaeger said. “He was choreographer of ‘The Nutcracker’ in Danbury. when he was hired as director at The Ridgefield Conservatory of Dance, I followed him there. He’s an excellent teacher and an amazing dancer.”

Jaeger chose Marymount as the college to pursue her bachelor of fine arts degree in dance because of its credentials.

“It was recently named the third best school in the country for dance,” she said. “We’ve had amazing opportunities for choreography in the last year. Twyla Tharp and Jiri Killian, top choreographers, were there last year.”

When Jaeger, now a sophomore, thinks about her future it is that of a dancer with a professional dance company.

“Ballet is probably my dance of choice but if I could permanently get in with Buglisi-Foreman, that would be fantastic,” she said.

Dancing has been a constant in Jaeger’s life but that is not to say she doesn’t have other areas of interest.

“I was considering being a physics major,” the petite dancer said. “If I wasn’t dancing, I’d be an astronaut in a minute. But thanks to James Robey, I’m still dancing.”

Jaeger has been teaching at The Ridgefield Conservatory of Dance since she was 17, when she filled in as a substitute dance instructor. Today, she travels back into Ridgefield teaching pre-ballet and three levels of ballet.

“I enjoy teaching dance,” Jaeger said. “It’s very rewarding. It’s good when I can get something across to my students. I love dance.”