SARAH PETTYJOHN

Mrs. Sarah started dancing a long time ago, when she was just Miss Sarah.  Throughout her childhood she studied classical ballet under a number of teachers in New Mexico, most frequently at Ballet de Santa Fe, Dance Arts Los Alamos, and University of New Mexico.  Eventually she got older and began learning modern dance, which she fell in love with as well as ballet. She was fortunate to have a lot of different teachers with very different styles and learned a lot.  She even got to learn flamenco and salsa at UNM!  She also got a lot of opportunities to perform around New Mexico as a soloist and as a corps member (consequently her parents accumulated an enormous number of dance costumes, sorry Mom & Dad!)  Mrs. Sarah started teaching in 1996 and was having a great time until she had a major foot injury in 1997.  At that time she was in college at Montana State University and had her first surgery only 2 weeks before a big dance performance!  It was pretty rough, but that experience prompted her to change majors and become a physical therapist.  Over the next few years she finished college, went to grad school and completed a doctorate in physical therapy.  During that time she had to have four more surgeries; but always wanted to return to dancing, even though the doctors told her she never could.  Finally, after brief returns to dance at Montana Ballet and Idaho State University which both ended in stress fractures to her foot, she gave up on dancing.  But then, after moving to Rapid City, Mrs. Sarah enrolled her 3 year old daughter in dance and that’s when it started again…she just couldn’t sit and watch while her daughter, Morgan, had all the fun!  Mrs. Sarah had to try again!  In 2014 Mrs.Sarah began teaching at Barefoot and changed our lives forever. Mrs. Sarah is super excited to now be teaching regularly at Barefoot, ballet technique, jazz, and pointe, as well as conditioning for injury prevention.  Her day job is owning Sundog Rehab, where she practices physical therapy.  With physical therapy by day, dance by night, and keeping up with her family, she stays pretty busy and has a lot of fun!