Danielle Campbell Steans, Director
Making her dream a reality
Danielle’s dream began at the tender age of four, when she started dancing with June Neal Key in Kansas City, Kansas, then furthered her training at age nine with Lisa Stickelman Dillinger and Flo Klenklen at the State Ballet of Missouri (now the Kansas City Ballet School). Danielle continued her dance education at the Walnut Hill School for the Performing Arts in Natick, Massachusetts with Michael Owen, Sydelle Gomberg, the late Samuel Kirkjian, and Tamara King, and was a member of their National Youth Ballet for two seasons. During that time she also attended several summer programs including the Rock School of the Pennsylvania Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Atlanta Ballet Centre for Dance Education.
As a professional dancer, Danielle joined the Georgia Ballet, where she danced in La Sylphide, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake, and was featured in Ginger Thatcher’s Monet’s Garden. She then performed with Nashville Ballet and Nashville Ballet II, dancing in numerous classical and contemporary works, including Scheherazade, Balanchine’s Serenade, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and Aida with The Nashville Opera, as the Tortoise in Paul Vasterling’s The Singing Tortoise, and in the late Robert Philander’s Snap.
In 2007, Danielle joined Ballet San Antonio and performed in Gabriel Zertuche’s Suzaki Dances and Svelto, in Spanish and Russian dances in The Nutcracker, as a villager and lead bride in Dracula, as lead Czardas in Coppélia, in Ben Stevenson’s Cinderella, and as the Nurse in Ben Stevenson’s Romeo & Juliet. In 2013, she joined the Ballet San Antonio staff where she helped expand the company’s community education program to reach over 10,000 families, and initiated a partnership between Ballet San Antonio and American Ballet Theatre’s prestigious Project Plié program.
In the summers of 2015 and 2016, her work with at-risk youth at Boys & Girls Clubs in San Antonio earned her a full-tuition scholarship to attend American Ballet Theatre’s National Curriculum Training. An American Ballet Theatre Certified Instructor, Danielle has served as Co-Interim Artistic Director, Company & Outreach Manager, Ballet Master for Ben Stevenson O.B.E.’s Swan Lake, and Children’s Rehearsal Director for Ballet San Antonio’s The Nutcracker. But most importantly, Danielle shares her true passion and love of dance with the many students of the San Antonio Ballet School and the San Antonio Youth Ballet, with the hope that they too will one day share their love and beauty of the art of ballet.
