Gavin Larsen, a former principal dancer with Oregon Ballet Theatre, lives in Asheville, NC, where she teaches and writes about dance. After training at the School of American Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet School, she danced with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Alberta Ballet, and the Suzanne Farrell Ballet before joining OBT. In addition to regular contributions to Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance Teacher, and Dance Spirit, her writing has been featured in Dance/USA’s journal In the Green Room, Oregon ArtsWatch, Artslandia, and literary journals the Threepenny Review, Page&Spine, and Kyso Flash. Her 2021 book, Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life was a Marfield Prize finalist. Her forthcoming Infinite Steps: Thirty-Three Dancers and Their Lives in Ballet, a collaboration with the photographer Gene Schiavone, will be published by the University Press of Florida in March, 2026. She lives in Asheville, NC.
