Alicia Head is a ballet teacher, movement professional, and rehabilitation specialist. She started studying ballet at the age of five, after seeing the magical Italian ballerina Carla Fracci in a performance of “Coppelia” with American Ballet Theatre. It was a life-changing experience that opened up a new world full of transcendence and joy, and from then on Alicia became a devoted, lifelong “bunhead.” Her early training years involved schools such as the American School of Dance (later the Los Angeles Dance Center) and the Stanley Holden Dance Center.

In 1987, Alicia met Zory Karah, an extraordinary ballet teacher who combines a love of the art form with intuitive anatomical cueing. She became a student at the Academy of Ballet in San Francisco, directed by Mr. Karah and his teacher, Richard Gibson. Their combined focus on alignment-based ballet technique that is free from tension and affectation helped to set in motion Alicia’s interest in understanding the process behind classical ballet technique. She began her journey with mind/body exercise in 1989 with Elizabeth Larkam in the dance medicine division of St. Francis Memorial Hospital’s Center for Sports Medicine in San Francisco, CA. The Center for Sports Medicine, directed by Dr. James Garrick, was a leader in the newly established sports and dance medicine community.

In 1994, Alicia attended Marie-José Blom’s Pilates teacher training course at her Long Beach Dance Conditioning studio, receiving her comprehensive certification two years later. Alicia joined the faculty of LBDC and also started her 17-year career with Lauridsen Ballet Centre and South Bay Ballet (now Ballet California), where she performed with the company and taught Ballet technique, Variations, Pilates, and the GYROKINESIS® Method. She was also a rehearsal director for South Bay Ballet and staged “Kingdom of the Shades” from “La Bayadère” as well as sections in “The Sleeping Beauty”, “Coppelia”, and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Alicia began specializing in injury prevention and ballet rehabilitation, networking and collaborating with local clinicians in dancer care. One of Alicia’s first ballet rehabilitation clients was Misty Copeland, of American Ballet Theatre. At Lauridsen Ballet Centre, Alicia’s classes became a laboratory for the application of anatomical ideas to classical ballet and The Inner Life of Ballet™ was born. Students from Alicia’s 17 years at Lauridsen Ballet Centre have joined such companies as San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, LINES Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, and LA Dance Project.

In 2012, Alicia began an 8 year career of teaching at the summer intensive programs for both American Ballet Theatre (Orange County) and LINES Ballet. Her classes at the ABT summer intensives included Anatomy for Dancers, Injury Prevention, and Body Conditioning. In 2014, Alicia became an inaugural faculty member of the ABT Gillespie School, where she taught Body Conditioning to advanced and pre-professional dancers until 2024.

At the LINES ballet summer intensives, Alicia was the supervising master trainer for instructors of the GYROTONIC® Method, and taught classes in the GYROKINESIS® and GYROTONIC® Methods, Therapeutic Assessment, Injury Prevention, and Pointe Workshops. In addition to providing guidance for the summer intensive students on how to use the GYROTONIC® Method to aid in injury risk reduction, Alicia also offered faculty development in-services for instructors at San Francisco GYROTONIC®.  

In 2013, Alicia converted Long Beach Dance Conditioning to a fully equipped movement space for ballet, the Pilates Method, and the GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEM®. Her studio was called Up Studio, and allowed Alicia to develop The Inner Life of Ballet™. Her students studied both the Pilates Method and the GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEM® as part of Alicia’s curriculum.

From 2012-2016, Alicia taught the Long Beach Dance Conditioning Pilates teacher training program under the direction of Kendel Pink, of Studio 3 Pilates, Anaheim (now Integrated Movement & Wellness).

In 2016, Alicia began a two-year position as an adjunct Ballet Lecturer for California State University, Long Beach. Her approach blended with the university’s well-established dance science program and allowed her to continue gathering anecdotal evidence for The Inner Life of Ballet™. With the help of Alicia’s Pilates teacher and mentor Marie-José Blom, Up Studio hosted dance medicine pioneer and New York City Ballet physical therapist Marika Molnar for her Dance Medicum Practicum in 2015-2016. This was the first and only time the course was offered outside of New York City.

In 2017, one of Alicia’s students, Ashley Ellis, a former principal dancer for the Boston Ballet, invited Alicia to begin regular visits to Boston as a Ballet Rehabilitation Specialist. With the approval of Heather Southwick, PT, Alicia began annual visits to Boston as an independent provider for the company dancers.

In 2018, Alicia presented original material on arabesque at the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS) conference in Helsinki, Finland. She continued with presentations in 2022 in Limerick, Ireland and 2023 in Columbus, Ohio.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Alicia began teaching online classes to dancers and movement educators and launched her first The Inner Life of Ballet™ course in 2021 with “Port de Bras - the Gateway to Artistry.” In 2022, she introduced “Turnout from the Ground Up”, both live and virtually, and in 2023, Alicia offered “Arabesque from the Inside Out.”

Alicia is based in Los Angeles, CA and sees private clientele, coaches ballet dancers, teaches courses in the GYROKINESIS® and GYROTONIC® Methods, leads Pilates workshops and courses, and continues to develop The Inner Life of Ballet™.