Ellie Sandstrom, a Seattle Magazine “Spotlight Award Winner” and a Velocity Dance Center “Dance Champion”, is originally from Minneapolis, where she began her movement training with Minnesota Dance Theater and later, BalletArts Minnesota. She has studied various forms of dance technique, body conditioning, composition, improvisation and performance at dance festivals and schools across the country including Cornish College of the Arts, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance.

Ellie worked and toured with dance companies locust and Scott/Powell Performance from 2000-2010. Her choreography, under the name SANDSTROMMOVEMENT, has received funding from the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and from Artist Trust. Her work has been produced locally and nationally by organizations such as On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center and Perpich Center for the Arts, and commissioned by Seattle Dance Project, Creative Dance Center and Washington Ensemble Theater, among many others.

Over the last 25 years, through Brain Compatible Dance Education and Culturally Responsive Teaching, she has taught a variety of dance forms at many schools, private studios and universities in Seattle and beyond, including the University of Washington.

She led packed classes at Velocity Dance Center for 16 years in both ballet and modern dance. From 2006-2021, she taught middle and high school students at The Northwest School, where she was the Dance Department Chair for 5 years.

She has been a Teaching Artist for STG’s Dance This programming since 2007 and started teaching for STG’s Dance for PD® program in 2023.