Dance Fusion NW

09/25/2026

Meet our instructors for the 2026-2027 season! At the age of 8, Allison fell in love with gymnastics and the sport has been in her life ever since. She devoted 10 years to competitive gymnastics, earning multiple state titles and was honored to represent and compete for Columbia River High School as a gymnast. Allison became the High School All-Around State Champion in 2000. As a high school senior, she was chosen to represent the State of Washington for the High School National Gymnastics Championships where she placed 10th all-around.

Allison brings 19 years of coaching experience to Dance Fusion. Her first years of coaching included teaching beginning gymnastics at Kidspace Child Enrichment Center and she trained pre-team gymnasts while attending Oregon State University. Allison began coaching for Columbia River High School in 2006, her dream coaching job. She has had the privilege of coaching the 2009 team to a State Championship as well as coaching gymnasts to seven individual state titles.

While she loves to compete, it is the life lessons learned in the gym, that have stuck with her. Perseverance, determination, focus and learning from failures have helped her to overcome life’s obstacles. As a coach, her passion lies in cultivating character traits while teaching gymnasts to defy gravity. Allison is excited to bring her gymnastics experience to Acro at DFNW

09/24/2026

Meet our instructors for the 2026-2027 season! Ariane Lewis’ journey into dance started when she was a toddler, diving into hip-hop, hula, and attending a performing arts middle school. Her passion for performing eventually led her to become an NFL Cheerleader, where she honed her skills in discipline, teamwork, and goal-setting.

Ariane has spent years sharing her knowledge in the classroom, teaching dancers from ages 4 to 16. Dance has always been her creative escape and a favorite way to stay active, but teaching has added a new layer of meaning. She finds joy in watching young dancers grow in confidence and realize the rewards of consistency and hard work. She is all about creating a safe space for students to make mistakes, challenge themselves, and set goals without the pressure of getting everything perfect right away. Her goal is not just to produce great dancers but to help her students leave each class feeling a bit more confident than when they arrived.

09/24/2026

Meet our instructors for the 2026-2027 season!

Laura Dehm brings a wealth of professional expertise, passion, and artistic vision to the studio floor. She earned her degree in Dance Performance and Pedagogy from Oklahoma City University, where she also performed as a proud member of the renowned American Spirit Dance Company. Her commitment to elite technical training is backed by her studies at both The School of the Los Angeles Ballet and Anne Reinkings Broadway Theatre Project
Laura lived and worked in NYC where her training really flourished. Beyond the stage, Laura takes a holistic approach to dancer wellness. She is a certified yoga instructor, a National Dance Competition judge, and a Registered Dietitian at OHSU. This unique blend of high-level performance training and health science allows her to mentor dancers in technique, injury prevention, and total body strength. When she isn’t in the studio, Laura is a busy wife and mom to three children.

09/24/2026

Meet our instructors for the 2026-2027 season!

Elenaluisa Alvarez started her dance career in Peru with the Municipal Ballet of Lima. In college she was mentored by Galina Panova before participating in the MASA program with Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company in Israel. Returning to the United States, Elenaluisa joined Bowen McCauley Dance Company and Vaught Contemporary Ballet, where she had the honor of performing at the Kennedy Center. She spent one season with Wonderbound in Denver before moving to Portland to join BodyVox. She has performed works by David Ingram, Lucy Bowen, Katie Vaught, Mats Ek, Rami B**r, Albert Galindo, Ilana Goldman, Sarah Tallman and Garrett Ammon amongst others.

Elenaluisa currently teaches at various studios in Portland and participates in choreographic projects around the Pacific Northwest

09/23/2026

09/23/2026

Meet our instructors for the 2026-2027 season! Devan Cochell grew up in Vancouver, WA, and trained at Dance Fusion for most of her youth. She started with ballet, and her love for dance grew as she broadened her training, to tap, jazz, contemporary, and modern. She began teaching dance at 16 and fell in love with it.

Devan moved to Pittsburgh, PA to pursue her passion for dance and attend the prestigious Point Park University in a well-rounded and rigorous program of ballet, jazz, and modern (mainly Horton and Graham techniques). She trained under some of the most accomplished teachers in the country, including Kiki Lucas, Jason McDole, Jesse Factor, and Judith Leifer-Bentz. She graduated with a BA in dance, a concentration in Modern, and a minor in psychology.

While in Pittsburgh, she performed with Prime Stage Theater and danced and choreographed a piece for a musical artist as a part of the Pittsburgh Chinese Cultural Center’s New Year performance at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. Devan also continued teaching in Pittsburgh, working for Michelle Dawson, Yanlai Wu, and others.

Devan has recently moved back to Vancouver, WA and is looking forward to growing in her passion of teaching. She aims to cultivate spaces in dance educational settings that serve as a secure base for complete authenticity to emerge. Seeing her students grow is possibly the most rewarding process she can imagine. She hopes to continue to foster healthy relationships between dancers and dance itself, as she understands that building dancers is more than just building beautiful movers. It’s just as much about fostering the growth of beautiful humans.

09/22/2026

Meet our instructors for the 2026-2027 season! Cameron Purandare
Ballet
Cameron Smith Purandare hails from Portland, Oregon where she was trained in the Royal Academy of Dance method under Marjorie Soriano. She also trained extensively in tap and jazz at June Taylor’s School of Dance in conjunction with her technical ballet training.

Cameron has had an impressive professional dance career spanning 14 years. She worked her way through the ranks to soloist with Houston Ballet. Later she danced as a principal with Ballet Memphis and Ballet Florida. During her career she danced a wide range of both contemporary and classical roles by some of the dance worlds most renowned choreographers like Glenn Tetley, Paul Taylor, George Balanchine, Ben Stevenson, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Christopher Bruce, William Forsythe, James Kudelka, Trey McIntyre, Stanton Welch, Vicente Nebrada, Lila York, Mark Godden, and Peter Martins.

After retirement from the stage in 2007 she returned to the Northwest and started working with Northwest Dance Theater and June Taylor’s School of Dance. During her tenure there she served as an assistant artistic director, co-artistic director, and choreographer, creating their Dance Education Outreach Program. Cameron has received teacher training in R.A.D. syllabus at the Advanced and Intermediate levels as well as I.S.T.D advanced jazz teacher training. She has also taught dance classes through Dance for Parkinson’s Oregon. Cameron lives in Vancouver, WA with her husband and two children.

09/22/2026

Tap/Jazz/Lyrical/Junior Company Assistant Director
Nichole Stewart's love for dance started at a very young age studying, performing and competing in groups with The Schell dancers here in Vancouver, throughout the west coast, Australia and Fiji.
Nichole then attended Jefferson Performing Arts High School with a focus on dance. She soon after became a core member of Keith V. Goodman’s contemporary dance company, Dance Gatherer, where she performed, studied and taught workshops in a variety of schools and colleges throughout Oregon.
She has trained in Tap, Jazz, Ballet, Modern/Contemporary, Hip Hop, Yoga, Gymnastics and Taekwondo, and studied Capoeira and Folkloric dance in Bahia, Brazil.
Nichole feels so blessed to have had dance in her life and believes that artistic expression is vital to feeding our souls, empowering our creativity & confidence and helping us reach our dreams. She loves sharing her passion for dance with others and creating a creative space to grow not only as dancers, but humans.

09/21/2026

Meet our staff for the 2026-2027 Season! First up - Willow Swanson

Jazz, Tap, Contemporary, Improv, Hip Hop, Senior Company Assistant Director

Beginning with classical jazz, and soon expanding to a variety of styles including tap, hip hop, and contemporary, Willow Swanson fell in love with dance early on.  Fascinated by other types of movement, as well as how to apply them to dance, she has also trained in Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Yoga, and Acrobatics, and rock climbs as another way to train.  She has collaborated with a number of Portland locals such as DarVejon Jones, Alicia Cutaia, Jamuna Chiarini, Beth Whelan, and Amelia Unsicker, and her performance experiences include dancing with Portland companies Polaris Dance Theatre, Agneizska Laska Dancers, and Tongue Dance Project, as well as the Vancouver-based company Horizon3 Dance.  Credits also include performing with Victoria Perez at the Young Choreographer’s Festival 2019 in New York City, showing and performing her own work at Chapel Theatre earlier the same year, and several small film roles.

As an instructor and company assistant at Dance Fusion, Willow is responsible for re-staging and setting all the company pieces for their original holiday production ‘Christmas Stories’.  She also continues to work with dance companies and independent artists on several types projects, including live shows, film and photography, and dance outreach.