Jody has been training in circus arts since 2011. They specialize in pole dance, aerial hoop, and acrobatics. Jody has performed all around California at music festivals, events, variety of circus shows, including the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, California’s Great America, Northern Nights, and the SF Craft Spirits Festival. Jody enjoys choreographing dramatic acts that showcase their unique aerial and pole creations.

In 2015, Jody founded the performance group Pole Diversity (www.polediversity.com). They have directed, produced, and choreographed several hour-long shows as well as sets for Santa Cruz’s national dance week event. Pole Diversity’s mission is to share pole dance acts in a circus setting and to dispel common misconceptions about pole dance.

They have taught pole dance and aerial hoop at various studios around California, including Steel & Grace, Cirque, Tumble, & Cheer, and Magnetic Pole Fit. Jody greatly enjoys creating curriculum, training programs, and combos for their students and for fellow pole instructors. They are always creating new techniques, strength, and mobility drills for their students or for their own personal training. Jody creates new combos and tricks by starting with a question and seeing where it takes them. They recently developed the new workshop “Appreciating Diverse Bodies in Pole Dance” for Dr. Jen Crane’s platform MyFlex to share teaching practices they develop to improve the safety of pole instruction as well as to learn how to leverage differences in bodies to create new tricks rather than viewing differences as deficiencies. Jody shares their ideas and knowledge on IG (@polediversity) and on their blog (https://polediversity.wixsite.com/website)

Jody graduated with a master’s degree in pure mathematics from UCSC. They wrote the paper Torsion of Elliptic Curves over Quadratic Fields with their research. Jody currently teaches math at Foothill College and is also working on a series of articles on applications of mathematics to circus arts.