About Gavin

Gavin Larsen is a writer, teacher, and former professional ballet dancer.

Born and raised in New York City, Gavin received her professional dance training at the School of American Ballet, the Pacific Northwest Ballet School and the New York School of Ballet. Over the course of her 18-year professional career, she was a member of Pacific Northwest Ballet, Alberta Ballet, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, and Oregon Ballet Theatre, dancing prominent roles in ballets by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Anthony Tudor, James Kudelka, Christopher Wheeldon and Paul Taylor, as well as the major classical works and numerous original contemporary pieces.

Gavin retired from full-time performing in 2010 to focus on teaching, coaching and writing about dance, while continuing to pursue unique artistic opportunities. She has taught and coached widely across the country and been a guest teacher for schools in Japan and Canada. In 2010, Gavin was a founding member of Incoroporamento, a collaborative trio combining dance, poetry, and music, producing several performances to critical acclaim.

Gavin has been a contributor to Pointe, Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher, and Dance Spirit. Her writing has appeared in Dance/USA’s online journal In the Green Room, Oregon ArtsWatch, the Dancing Times and Artslandia as well as the literary journals the Threepenny Review, Page & Spine, Sunlight Press, KYSO Flash, and The Maine Review. In 2015 she was honored with a fellowship to the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM, to pursue her work as a writer. 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.