About

Julie Opiel is a dancer, choreographer, and dance educator currently residing in Los Angeles.

Julie’s choreography reconstructs the ballet vocabulary to reveal the labor of making the body “more perfect” for the sake of the technique. This research on experiencing her body as a disembodied structure began to manifest most clearly while pursuing her MFA in Performance and Choreography at Florida State University (FSU). In her thesis work, Fourth Girl on the Left, she collaborated with visual artist Justin Bailey jbaileydesign.com to position dancers and structures representing the human figure side-by-side to demonstrate her experience of feeling detached from her body. She presented the solo iteration of this work at WAXworks in NYC and at The Mad River Valley Performance Platform in Warren, VT.

Julie has also choreographed works for The Tallahassee Ballet, FSU’s Days of Dance concert, the Ballet Memphis School, the Ballet Memphis Interiorworks Series, Racine + Southern Dance Exchange (Memphis), and Imagine Dance Project (St. Louis).

While at Florida State, she performed in works by Merce Cunningham, Ilana Goldman and Anjali Austin, and acted as rehearsal assistant in the re-staging of George Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes. Prior to earning her MFA, Julie danced with Ballet Memphis for 3 years. There, she performed in works by Steven McMahon, Julie Niekrasz, Trey McIntyre, and Karl Condon. She also performed for 2 seasons with Ballet Ashani (founded by Iyun Harrison) where she has also worked as company manager and rehearsal director. Julie received her BFA in Dance at Webster University in St. Louis, where she performed in works by Alvin Ailey and Antony Tudor among others.

Julie has been a dance educator in a variety of settings, extending from academia to community centers. She taught ballet for dance majors and non-majors at Florida State University, was on faculty at The Tallahassee Ballet School, The Ballet Memphis School, was a Teaching Artist for Ballet Memphis Cares - the company’s community engagement program, and has been on faculty for summer intensives at New Tampa Dance Theatre and Imagine Dance Project. She is currently teaching ballet, pointe, and modern at Inland Pacific Ballet Academy in Montclair, CA.