Jessica Martin began her dance training at the age of three in Yorba Linda, California. At age five, her family moved to San Diego County where she began training in ballet, jazz, lyrical and hip-hop at Dance Unlimited in Oceanside. Jessica competed with Dance Unlimited’s Competition team from ages 6 to 13. At age 14, Jessica joined the Ballet Conservatory program at San Elijo Dance Academy where she switched her focus to mainly studying ballet and pointe work. Jessica had many performance opportunities with the Conservatory program such as getting to perform excerpts from full length ballets like Swan Lake and Paquita as well as having the opportunity to perform in The Nutcracker annually. Jessica also got the chance to attend several ballet summer intensive programs. One at Joffrey Ballet in New York and the following year at Los Angeles Ballet. It was a great experience for her to live the life of a professional ballerina for six weeks.
During high school, Jessica began to focus on jazz and contemporary again after being asked to be a part of the San Elijo Dance Academy Competition Team. She competed with this team until she graduated from Carlsbad High School in 2013. After graduating, Jessica danced as an apprentice for PGK Dance Project, a contemporary modern dance company in San Diego. While attending Mira Costa College as a dance major, she worked towards transferring to Cal State Fullerton to complete her Bachelor of Arts in Dance. She transferred to California State University Fullerton in 2016 where she trained in classical and contemporary ballet as well as three different forms of modern dance (Horton, Limon and Graham). As a student at CSUF, Jessica had the opportunity to take master classes with the Mariinsky Ballet, Desmond Richardson of Complexions and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to name a few. She graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance in 2018.
Jessica taught dance classes throughout her high school and college career in both San Diego and Orange County, and is happy to be back at Hart Academy of Dance. Jessica’s favorite part of teaching is getting to share her love of dance with the younger generation of dancers. She hopes to inspire her students to find a similar love and appreciation for the art of dance.