At 7:15 a.m. on a Tuesday in January, the streets of Somerset, Ohio, are still dark and mostly empty. But inside a converted 19th-century brick warehouse on North Columbus Street, Miranda Voss, 23, is warming up at the barre. In three hours, she will rehearse Giselle with American Ballet Theatre's corps de ballet—a role she landed two years after leaving the Somerset Ballet Academy. She credits the 6:00 a.m. starts in a town of 2,147 people for preparing her better than any big-city pre-professional program could have.
Voss is not an anomaly. Since its founding in 1987, the Somerset Ballet Academy has placed graduates in at least eight major international companies, including ABT, the Royal Ballet, and the Bolshoi Ballet. The school draws students from 14 U.S. states and six countries, many of whom board with local families through high school. How a farming community in Perry County became an improbable exporter of elite ballet talent is a story of one woman's stubborn vision—and a town that decided to treat teenage dancers like its own farm-team athletes.
A Ballerina's Homecoming
Elizabeth Somerset did not start out intending to name a ballet school after herself. Born Elizabeth Markham in 1948, she grew up on a Somerset dairy farm and left for London at 16 to study at the Royal Ballet School. She danced with the Royal Ballet from 1969 to 1981, performing under Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan, before a hip injury ended her stage career. When she returned to Ohio for her father's funeral in 1985, she found the local dance studio closed and a group of girls practicing turns in a church basement.
"The teacher had quit, and they had no one," Somerset recalled in a 2019 interview with Dance Magazine. "I thought I'd stay six months. I had no idea there was this hunger for serious training in a place no one thought to look."
She bought the warehouse with a small inheritance and opened the academy in 1987 with 11 students. Her methodology was deliberately old-fashioned: a Vaganova-based curriculum with heavy emphasis on character dance and mime, supplemented by twice-weekly classes in ballet history and music theory. Students who reached the pre-professional division trained six days a week, up to five hours daily, with academic coursework handled through a partnership with an online charter school established in 1994.
A Day Inside the Warehouse
The academy's current enrollment stands at 94 students, 38 of whom live in on-site dormitories or with host families around Perry County. A typical day for a 16-year-old in the upper division begins at 5:45 a.m., with technique class from 6:30 to 8:00. Academic instruction runs from 8:30 to 1:00 p.m., followed by pointe or partnering, repertoire rehearsal, and conditioning. Evening ends at 9:00 p.m. with mandatory lights-out in the dorms.
"Ballet history isn't an elective here—it's required," says artistic director James Morel, who succeeded Somerset upon her retirement in 2015. "Lizzie believed that if you don't know why Giselle goes mad in Act I, you cannot convincingly portray it. That intellectual rigor is rare in American pre-professional training."
The physical demands have also drawn scrutiny. In 2011, a former student filed a complaint alleging excessive training hours for minors, though Ohio's Department of Education cleared the academy after finding academic requirements were met. Morel acknowledges the intensity is not for everyone. "We lose probably 30 percent of the upper division to injury, burnout, or changed priorities," he says. "We don't hide that."
The Town as Patron
What distinguishes Somerset from larger, better-funded academies is the degree to which the surrounding community has institutionalized its support. The Farmers & Merchants Bank sponsors the academy's annual Nutcracker to the tune of $18,000 annually. Sommerset Automotive provides free transportation to physical therapy in Zanesville. Riesbeck's Food Market donates groceries for the dormitory kitchens.
"When my daughter boarded here from Houston, I worried she'd be lonely," says Patricia Oduya, mother of Royal Ballet soloist Amara Oduya. "Instead, half the town came to her high school graduation. The mechanic who fixed her pointe shoe bags—his wife baked her a cake."
This interdependence has not been without tension. As real estate values in Somerset have risen, some longtime residents have grumbled about out-of-town dance families buying property. "There's a fear we're becoming a company town for ballet," says Mayor Doug Patterson, who has held office since 2008. "But I always point out those families pay
