About Me
Blaisdell Studios is a culmination of Merilee’s life’s work and training. It’s a place where she can bring all of her years of study into her own space and share it with her clients. She strives to teach her clients how to integrate more healthy movement into their daily routines in and outside of class; to create good movement habits 24/7. She loves being able to help her clients recover and heal from physical challenges and is so grateful to have the ability to give them tools for self-care so they can learn to heal themselves.
Currently she teaches all of her sessions, classes and workshops online on Zoom.
She has a BA, with honors, in Performing Arts, from Saint Mary’s College of California, is a certified Classical Pilates Instructor (trained by Romana Kryzanowska), a Yamuna Body Rolling Practitioner, Franklin Method Educator® level III, and a personal fitness trainer.
Ms. Blaisdell has taught movement and dance at universities on the east and west coasts. She developed a Creative Movement program for preschool children in the Burbank Unified School District, where she taught for over 10 years. She was co-Director of the Valley School of the Arts Program and Director of the dance division, which brought Arts classes into public elementary schools in the San Fernando Valley. She was on staff at the Colburn School in Los Angeles for seven years, as a ballet teacher. She started a Pilates program at CHAMPS Charter High School of the Arts in Van Nuys California, where she taught for over four years and she developed and taught a Franklin Method® Movement course for actors for the Junior Drama Academy at CHAMPS as a guest artist.
Merilee started ballet lessons at the age of 3, and at 16 received a scholarship to study with the Joffrey Ballet. Her professional career (as Merilee Magnuson) began that same year as a principal dancer with Ballet Pacifica, in Orange County, CA. She starred in the multimedia arena show, Disney on Parade, as Alice in Wonderland, and went on to perform on Broadway in seven shows. She starred off-Broadway, at the Manhattan Theater Club, in the Arthur Schwartz review, “Dancing in the Dark,” originated the role of Sister Mary Leo, in the off-Broadway hit, “Nunsense,” and appeared in many other productions on stage, in film, and on television.
