Melissa Scholten

Melissa Scholten has been dancing for over 40 years and teaching dance for over 20 years.  She took mostly ballet as a young student, dancing in a Regional Dance America pre-professional ballet company in the Boise area.  Melissa decided not to pursue a professional career in dance but during college she began to teach dance and discovered that teaching ballet technique was something she enjoyed and at which she excelled.  She continued to dance at a recreational and semiprofessional level and spent more and more time teaching as she moved around the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.  One final move landed her in the Spokane area and here at AIM where she loves teaching the students, both young and old, the power of a technical thinking dancer.  Outside of dance, she works at a plant gene bank that focuses on preserving the genetic diversity of specific crops.  She is also a certified Scottish Highland dance instructor and can do a mean twirl in a kilt.