Courtney Lyon is the Artistic Director of professional ballet company Ballet Quad Cities and principal faculty member of Ballet Quad Cities School of Dance. She received her early ballet training from Nathalie LeVine in St. Louis, MO and earned her BFA with Honors in Dance from the University of Iowa studying under Francoise Martinet, Susan Toumine, Edward Ellison and Cherie Noble. She received additional training from the Joffrey Ballet School, Milwaukee Ballet and private coach Arleen Sugano. As a principal faculty member of BQC School of Dance, she has created and implemented a comprehensive syllabus for beginning through pre-professional ballet students. To support her teaching of classical ballet technique Ms. Lyon has completed two pedagogue courses that involved study of the 1st through 5th years of the Vaganova syllabus with John White, an authority of the Vaganova teaching method and former dancer and Ballet master of the National Ballet of Cuba, as well as intensive training exploring the bio-mechanics of movement with physicist Kenneth Laws and master coach Arleen Sugano. Ms. Lyon participated in the Kennedy Center's Artists as Educators Seminars Laying a Foundation: Defining Arts Integration and Anatomy of a Lesson: Planning Instruction. She has attended the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet’s Teacher Intensive workshop with Marcia Daly Weary and has participated numerous times as a choreographer for the Glenda Brown Choreography Project. Ms. Lyon is a RYT-200 Yoga Teacher.