Aretuza Caldas Garner

Ms.Aretuza Caldas Garner was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and started her dance training when she was four, under the guidance of her mother, a professional flamenco and modern ballet instructor. She continued her training under the instruction of several Russian Ballet Masters, Eugenia Feodorova and Tatiana Leskova. When she was 16, she became a professional dancer for Sindicato de Danca do Rio de Janeiro. She was later awarded with a scholarship to study multiple styles of dance at the Hochschule Fur Musik Und Tanz Köln, in Cologne, Germany.

After a long and distinguished dance career throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, in 2003 Ms. Garner founded her own dance academy in the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Aretuza’s School of Dance & Pilates. The school had over 150 students taking ballet, pointe, jazz, tap, hip-hop, salsa and flamenco classes. With a strong belief of community and youth enrichment through dance and arts, she ensured that her school offered scholarships to more than 50% of the students who came from underprivileged families. When the Premier and First Lady of Turks and Caicos Islands heard about her drive to empower the country’s youth communities through dance and arts, other altruistic members of the community, provided grants to support her school.

In 2007, some students from her dance school were also awarded scholarships to participate in a Summer Intensive Program at the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet under the instruction of Margarita de Sa and John White. Ms.Garner accompanied them there, where she participated and earned a Certificate of Completion in the Vaganova Syllabus Levels 1-5, a comprehensive pedagogue course at the Bryn Mawr College.

Ms. Garner has choreographed and performed in several internationally acclaimed shows in the Caribbean and abroad, including The Lion King, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Grease, Sylvia, Paquita, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Aladdin, Miss Universe Turks & Caicos and Turks & Caicos Music and Cultural Festival (TCMCF), appearing alongside some of the world’s most talented singers such as Alicia Keys, Lionel Richie, Michael Bolton and Ne-Yo.

In 2010, she relocated to Orlando, Florida, where she kept dancing professionally, as well as choreographing and judging several summer dance camps, intensives and workshops. In 2016, she founded the Aretuza’s Ballerina Project, a local performance company for young dancers and she saw able to witness several of her students gaining scholarships at the Dance Theatre of Harlem. In addition, her dance students also competed at many local events and shows, where they performed with distinction at the Universal Ballet Competition and Youth American Gran Prix.

Ms. Garner follows her passion for teaching dance up to this day and strongly preserves the respect, athleticism, discipline, artistry and enrichment of the classical ballet and other forms of art. As an instructor, ballet master and mentor, she keeps supporting her dancers, both former students and present ones, and teaches them the importance of perseverance, discipline and humbleness. Some of her former students have become professionals who completed their education at the University of Cambridge and at Kings College London.

Today, she still performs her role as an International Dance Adjudicator with Sheer Elite International and Shake the Ground, and loves to connect with people she has met throughout her life and their diverse cultures. She was most recently appointed as the Board of Director for the Brazil America Council, where she works with the Culture and Heritage Arts within the community. She is also a member of the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) and the International Dance Council United Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. She holds certifications in Vaganova Syllabus Classical Ballet Technique, Pilates mat 101 and Ballet Barre workout.