She Broke Away, Started Over, and Built a Dance Company Where Everyone Belongs

A dancer who never stopped — and built a company to prove it

Serena Webb’s story starts the way a lot of great ones do: she refused to let the music stop. After graduating from Utah Valley University in 2008, she got a few friends back together “just to start dancing again.” One rehearsal turned into choreography, choreography turned into a show, and the show turned into a company — Body Logic Dance Company — that ran for years and grew into a full dance academy.

Today she is the Founder and Artistic Director of Serena Webb Dance Theater, a registered nonprofit run with a board of directors and a home stage at the Midvale Performing Arts Center. The work is modern and ballet based, and it has a signature move: Serena takes a story audiences already know and retells it in a contemporary vocabulary. Her “Nutcracker and the Mouse Queen” rewrites the holiday classic as a love story and pulls local children onto the stage alongside professional dancers. She has staged a gothic “Snow White” where the dwarves became vampires. Next up: a “Little Mermaid” danced on pointe underwater, then contemporary and barefoot on land — plus a coming program of modern works by Repertory Dance Theatre alum Angie Banchero-Kelleher and UVU professor Amy Markgraf.

The make-or-break moment: when the dream almost didn’t survive

It did not come easy. Early on, Serena partnered with someone to run the company and academy together — and it nearly cost her everything. “It turned out she was not a good business partner,” Serena says. The partner “didn’t do much to help,” and Serena eventually had to break away entirely, keep the academy, and rebuild her own company from the ground up.

The turning point was a show. She brought in a collaborator to create “The Nutcracker and the Mouse Queen,” bending a story everyone recognized into something new — and in that production she realized exactly what she wanted her company to be. That clarity is what she built Serena Webb Dance Theater on.

The threat that never fully goes away is money. Original dance is expensive to stage, and Serena is honest about feeling like “a small fish” producing big shows. Every production is a bet on whether the work survives another season. She credits grants from Zoo, Arts & Parks (ZAP) and the wider Utah arts-funding community for keeping the lights on — and she is candid that finding people who believe in the work enough to sponsor it is the hardest part of all.

Why it matters: she casts on heart, not height

Here is what makes Serena Webb Dance Theater different. Serena does not cast the highest legs, the most tricks, or the smallest body. “I cast on their love of dance, their performance quality, their acting abilities, and their passion,” she says. “It does not matter what size you are, or how old you are — this is a place where you can dance.”

That inclusivity is not a slogan; it is the whole point. The company regularly welcomes single moms, many of them recently through divorce, and lets them bring their kids to rehearsal so dance can stay part of their lives. Serena’s message to the women who quietly believe their dancing days are behind them is direct: if you still want to dance, come. “I don’t want anyone to give up their dream. I want everyone to get a chance to find a space they can call their own.”

She is just as devoted to her dancers’ growth. Where the industry chases the polished few, Serena looks for the potential others miss — and draws it out until those dancers become leads. “I feel like my biggest achievement is giving these people a place to dance,” she says. “I see potential in them, and they bring it out.”

What’s next: the goals Serena is chasing

Serena’s ambitions are refreshingly concrete. She wants to grow funding so she can pour more into productions, pay her dancers more, and bring more kids into the world of dance she is building. She wants more recognition and bigger audiences for original Utah work. And she wants to keep expanding her reimagined-classics repertoire — with “The Little Mermaid” already in the wings.

Underneath the logistics is a simple mission: connect people through dance. Serena believes that when audiences meet a modern movement vocabulary wrapped inside a story they already love, something clicks — “oh, I understand this, and this made me feel a certain way.” Inspiring those audiences, and inspiring her dancers, is the whole reason she is still here.

That is exactly why we featured her. Serena Webb is a credible, hard-working Utah operator with a clear vision and clear goals — and the kind of good heart and good energy that, as we believe here at Utah Main Street, always gets you farther.