Tenisha Hamelin
Tenisha Schild Hamelin is the owner of Ember Dance Academy. She found her passion for dance at a very young age while trying to imitate dancers training at her mother’s dance studio. She competed with her first solo around the age of two, receiving the first of many “queen” awards. Around age 12, she began choreographing her own lyrical and jazz solos. Throughout her competitive years, Tenisha received many high point soloist awards, including the Joel Ferrell award at the AAU Junior Olympics. She has choreographed many solo, duet, trio, and team dances, and won “Best in Choreography” at multiple competitions over the years.
Tenisha has been teaching since 2008 (beginning as an assistant previous to that year), and has taught a variety of styles. Jazz, Lyrical/Contemporary, Tumbling, Acro, and Ballet are her areas of highest expertise. In college, she was a University of Idaho Cheerleader and later was a part of Dance Alliance touring performance company at BYU-Idaho.
Tenisha graduated from Brigham Young University-Idaho with a Bachelor of the Arts in Dance Pedagogy, emphasizing in Ballet. Dance Pedagogy focuses on the techniques of teaching dance as well as the skills needed to run a dance studio, and this training provided her with greater knowledge of how to teach more effectively. While at BYU-Idaho, Tenisha received the opportunity to travel across the United States and Canada as she performed with Dance Alliance. She loved experiencing new styles while studying for her degree, but especially loved learning the information taught in Dance Kinesiology classes. This information combined with Tenisha's training and experience have given her a strong knowledge of why techniques were developed and what each dancer must do to perform each movement with efficiency, as well as injury prevention tactics.