- Annie Erkkinen
Annie Erkkinen, Artistic Director. Annie has been dancing most of her life and enjoys teaching many styles of dance, including tap, jazz, modern, and hip hop. For the past seven years, Annie has been teaching most of her dance classes at Casco Bay Movers Dance Studio in Portland, Maine, where she is blessed to work with talented, creative, and generous students and colleagues. Annie is also a curricular dance teacher at Scarborough High School, Scarborough, Maine, and regularly choreographs student productions at area high schools. To keep her own dance chops fresh, Annie dances and performs in southern Maine with several companies including SONARdance, Collective Motion, and Rhythm and Sole Tap Company. Annie is excited to be working with Portland Youth Dance as Artistic Director and is loving collaborating with the fantastic PYD Company dancers.
Elizabeth Goulet
Elizabeth Goulet, Company II Director. Elizabeth has been eagerly involved with Portland Youth Dance as a Board Member and Choreographer since 2007. She was originally drawn to PYD for its unique focus on the artistic process versus competition and its deeply rooted mission to serve those in need. She brings a great deal of experience to the Outreach Program through her previous work teaching at-risk children and teens at inner city schools in Washington, D.C. and Virginia, including the Maya Angelou Public Charter School, the Campagna Program through A Dream in Color Dance and various workshops with George Washington University’s performing arts group BLAZEN.
While attending GWU, where she received a degree in marketing and dance, she developed a love for hip-hop dance while taking classes with Culture Shock DC and at The Joy of Motion Dance Center.
Elizabeth currently teaches hip-hop, jazz, and dance imagination at Casco Bay Movers in Portland, Maine and dances with indiedanceworks. She has over eight years of experience teaching and thrives on continued training with choreographers from So You Think You Can Dance, America’s Best Dance Crew, and Monsters of Hip Hop. Her personal mission is to contribute to the community by sharing her passion for dance with all those who desire to express themselves through the art form.
