About Adage Ballet Academy
Adage Ballet Academy was founded on March 1, 2021, in Seattle, Washington, by Owner and Artistic Director Abby Jayne DeAngelo. Since then, Abby Jayne and her husband, Guillaume Basso, have led the academy as a husband-and-wife team devoted to excellent ballet training in a caring, attentive, and joyful environment.
After five meaningful years in Seattle, Adage Ballet Academy is beginning a new chapter. In September 2026, the academy will open in New Castle, Pennsylvania, at its forever home: Lucymont Events and Performing Arts Center, located on the former St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church campus.
At Adage Ballet Academy, excellence and well-being are not opposing ideals. We believe dancers can be challenged with rigor while being supported with compassion. Our approach combines classical ballet training with yoga and conditioning, to help students understand their bodies, build strength safely, prevent injuries, recover intelligently when challenges arise, and care for their physical and mental well-being.
Faculty
Adage Ballet Academy is led by Abby Jayne DeAngelo and Guillaume Basso, an esteemed husband-and-wife faculty team whose careers have included major U.S. ballet companies such as Pacific Northwest Ballet, The Joffrey Ballet, and Houston Ballet II. Their teaching is informed by professional experience, continued artistic work, and a deep commitment to education. Together, they refine technique while encouraging artistry, intelligence, musicality, discipline, and physical well-being.
Training
Adage Ballet Academy offers classes for dancers beginning at age five, with programming designed for both the joy of dancing and the demands of pre-professional ballet training.
Our curriculum is organized through a structured tier system that allows dancers to progress with clarity and purpose. Each level is designed to develop technical precision, musical understanding, physical coordination, and artistic expression, while giving students personalized attention within a thoughtful and disciplined training environment.
Facilities
The academy’s new facilities at Lucymont E.P.A.C. include two expansive ballroom-sized studios, dedicated conditioning spaces, parent lounges, student amenities, and generous areas for gathering, learning, rehearsing, and creating. Lucymont gives Adage Ballet Academy the space to expand its mission for generations of dancers to come while preserving the care and attention that defined its Seattle years.
Performance
Adage Ballet Academy is a performing academy. Each year, students are offered two major performance opportunities: Winter Tales and the Spring Showcase.
These productions allow dancers to gain invaluable stage experience while developing confidence, responsibility, presence, musical awareness, and ensemble discipline. With the expansion to Lucymont, the academy’s Summer Intensive will also grow to include new performance opportunities in a festival structured program.
Join Our Community
Adage Ballet Academy believes ballet has something to offer every student. Whether a dancer is taking their first ballet class, seeking a joyful and enriching activity, or preparing for a professional future, the academy offers a nurturing yet challenging environment where each student can grow with care, structure, and inspiration.
Our History
Adage Ballet Academy was founded on March 1, 2021, in Seattle, Washington, by Abby Jayne DeAngelo. From the very beginning, Guillaume Basso was part of the teaching staff, joining Abby Jayne in shaping the academy’s earliest identity. At the time, both were dancing full-time with Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Adage began as a small private coaching facility. The academy opened in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, during a time when many dancers were searching for safe and meaningful ways to continue training. What began as a modest studio for focused work quickly became something larger. Within five months, in September 2021, Adage Ballet Academy launched its full-time training program.
From that point forward, the academy grew steadily. Each year, the student body continued to expand, eventually allowing Adage to take on additional studio space within its Seattle facility in the summer of 2023. Around that same time, Abby Jayne and Guillaume made the decision to step away from full-time company life in order to devote themselves more completely to teaching, directing, choreography, and freelance performance. They remain active artists in the dance field, but the growth of Adage made it clear that the academy was no longer simply a studio as it had become their vocation.
During its Seattle chapter, Adage Ballet Academy developed into a full training home for young dancers, offering year-round study, seasonal workshops, summer intensives, and a growing performance program. As a performing academy, Adage has always believed that stage experience is an essential part of dance education. Its productions grew from an intimate first Spring Showcase into larger and more ambitious performances, culminating in a student-led abbreviated production of The Sleeping Beauty, in which Adage dancers carried the leading roles with only limited support from guest artists. These productions give students the opportunity to experience real artistic responsibility, from ensemble work to featured roles.
Performance opportunities also extended beyond the academy’s own stage. Through Adage Ballet Ensemble, Abby Jayne and Guillaume created a professional touring group that allowed Adagio Tier dancers to perform alongside them in outside engagements. These opportunities included appearances at Ballet Arts Academy in Spokane, WA and Washington Ballet Academy in Walla Walla, WA, where Adage dancers performed leading roles in support of smaller school productions. For students preparing for professional careers, these experiences offered a rare bridge between academy training and the expectations of the field.
Adage Ballet Academy also remained deeply connected to the Seattle arts community. The academy participated in the Seattle International Dance Festival, where Guillaume Basso continued to develop his choreographic voice and where Adage students had the opportunity to perform in works such as Jeux d’Enfants, co-choreographed by Abby Jayne and Guillaume. The academy also participated annually in the O-Jak Bridge Dance and Art Festival, founded by MiYoung Margolis, a fellow artist and neighbor in Seattle’s SoDo district. Over the years, Adage contributed to the festival in many ways, through choreography, production, guest performance, and student participation. It became a meaningful platform for the academy’s young dancers and a cherished part of Adage’s Seattle story.
In 2026, Adage Ballet Academy was honored to collaborate with Cascade PBS on the Viewers Like Me campaign, a short animated film centered on young boys in ballet. Guillaume Basso choreographed the movement material used by the animation team, while Adage Ballet Academy served as a research home for the project. The creative team visited the academy, observed classes, and sketched dancers in order to portray the experience of growing up in ballet with care and authenticity. The campaign went on to receive two Telly Awards and a Northwest Emmy, a recognition that felt especially meaningful to Adage because of the academy’s ongoing commitment to helping boys see a future for themselves in dance.
The success of Adage Ballet Academy’s training has also been reflected in its students’ next steps. In the first two years of the academy’s Adagio Tier, 100% of graduating dancers continued into professional-track placements, including pre-professional training programs, trainee programs, and professional contracts. For a young academy, this milestone affirmed the strength of its curriculum, mentorship, and individualized approach to dancer development.
Now, after five formative years in Seattle, Adage Ballet Academy is preparing for its next chapter at Lucymont Events and Performing Arts Center in New Castle, Pennsylvania. For Abby Jayne, who is originally from Pennsylvania, this move is also a return home. For the academy, it is the beginning of a larger dream: the opportunity to build and steward a true home for dance, performance, training, and community.
Adage looks back on its Seattle chapter with deep gratitude. Those first years gave the academy its foundation, its courage, and its identity. But they were also only the beginning. At Lucymont, Adage Ballet Academy enters a new era with the space, vision, and commitment to serve dancers and families for decades to come.