A ballet teacher at Marin Dance Theatre builds community in Marin

Between teaching young ballerinas their pliés and older students their pirouettes, Lexi Pittman says she needs a reset. Most mornings, the 25-year-old Marin Dance Theatre instructor walks the waterfront path at Blackie’s Pasture, earbuds in, letting podcasts and bay breezes clear her mind before the afternoon classes begin.

“This is kind of like a reset for my brain,” she says.

But Pittman’s most meaningful work at the San Rafael ballet school goes beyond teaching classical technique. Over the past few years, she and a colleague have developed an adaptive dance program for students on the autism spectrum and dancers with other sensory sensitivities — filling a gap in Marin’s dance community.

“That’s been really eye-opening,” she says. “We’re trying to build more of a community focus in Marin, because there hasn’t really been a program like this here.”

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