Meet our Live It Up team!

Breawna Ventura

Founder and Owner, Studio Director, Coach,

Pro Aerialist

Breawna is the owner of Live It Up Studio which opened up in a new location at Rushmore Mall in 2018. Breawna has coached in the Black Hills for over 20 years. Her cirque specialties include aerial silks, chains, sling, hoop, trapeze, fire dancing, poi, duo performances, hula hoop and handstands. She has trained in circus schools across the US in Denver, Chicago, Orlando and most recently Missoula. Also Breawna is a proud owner and director of ZirKiss Cirque Production and Awna Artography. Breawna would love to bring her unique experience in training and creative performance to your student! 

Anna Starenkova

Studio Manager, Certified Aerial Coach, Pole Instructor, Pro Aerialist

Coach Anna has been an aerialist, competitive rhythmic gymnast and performer with the ZirKiss Cirque Production. Her cirque specialties include aerial silks, aerial rope, and lyra/hoop, flying pole. She also enjoys performing poi flow, contortion, fire dancing and dance. Anna has joined Live It Up Team in 2018 and has been teaching aerial arts ever since.

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Anna is originally from Ukraine and speaks three languages.

She has graduated from Black Sea State University in Ukraine with a BA in Linguistics majoring in Translation and Interpreting. Here she is teaching children some basic language skills from her mother tongue, Russian. Anna is so excited to share her experience and training techniques with you!

Marilyn Neubert

Aerial Coach, Dance and Pole Instructor,

Pro Aerialist

Coach Marilyn started dancing when she fell in love with her first ballet class. Besides the technical training, she was always being goofy pretending the world is her stage. She joined the Hotshots Dance Team where she gained extensive performance experience and later became their main instructor/choreographer.  By college, Marilyn was performing for the Rush Hockey Team as a Rushette Cheerleader and decided to start taking aerial silks classes.

Since 2018, Marilyn has been an aerial silks and pole fitness instructor at Live It Up Studio. Teaching these art forms to others is one of her main passions in life and feels grateful to have the opportunity to do so.  Her cirque skills include aerial silks, hammock, trapeze, lyra and fire dancing. Contortion performance is one of her specialties!

“I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself,” ⁃ Mikhail Baryshnikov

Robyn Melvin

Aerial Coach, Certified Yoga Instructor,

Pro Aerialist

Coach Robyn has been a dance teacher, aerialist and yoga instructor for over 15 years. She is an athlete and  a proud mother of 5.

She is excited to bring Aerial Flex & Fit Program - fusion of yoga and aerial flow - to Rapid City. Her cirque skills include hammock, silks, net, and lyra and duo trapeze. One of her unique specialties is stilt walking.

          Kelly Antes

Aerial Coach, Pro Aerialist

Coach Kelly has been an aerial coach and instructor for 4 years. She is a leading instructor of Tiny Homeschool Revolution Program and enjoys working with our youngest students. She has been certified as Child Care Professional by the state of  South Dakota and has been working with the children under the age of 5 for over 6 years. Her cirque specialties are aerial hammock and chains. One of her unique skills is fire breathing and fire stunts.

Trinity Conrad

Finance and Booking Manager, Pro Aerialist

Trinity has trained with Black Hills Aerial for 9 years. As member of the Pro Team she also assists with the program in many ways. Trinity works as our CFO to keep our business progressing and also  to manages the area Pro team performance and bookings.

Sara Carstensen

HR Program Director, Dance Instructor 

Sara is Homeschool Revolution Founder and Ballet Instructor.  Sara is passionate about the well-being of children and started her career working as and ESL teacher in South Korea for four years, with students from preschool through college and adult. She also taught for two years at Sturgis High School and then three years with Early Head Start.  Sara has danced ballet since she was a little girl and learned modern dance later as an adult. She has performed in many shows, plays and recitals, including three Flutter Production shows. Sara is an aerial student at Live it Up Studio, and is helping to coach beginning aerial to our homeschoolers. Sara is also a Professional Photographer as her trade, and owns Sara Skye Photography.

Sabrina LaCroix Brown

Art Teacher, Costume Designer

Sabrina is our Art Teacher and Costume Designer. She is a former cake decorator turned freestyle upcycle artist with a focus on using discarded materials in new and interesting ways, she loves giving these materials new life! Much of her work is inspired by music and incorporates various types of paper such as vintage sheet music, newspaper print, vintage advertisements, and even cereal boxes and other packaging. Her focus as an instructor is to help children find value and beauty in unexpected places and use unique materials for self-expression in who they are or who they want to be!

Kaitlyn Abrahamson

Aerial Coach

Kaitlyn is an aerial coach and has been an aerialist for 4 years.  She currently coaches Introduction to Aerial Silks and hopes to broaden her curriculum by teaching more advanced students.  Her specialty is aerial silks, but she also enjoys aerial hammock, lyra, trampolining, stilts, and riding unicycle.  Her education and career is in geography: she works as a GIS Coordinator and business owner of Apiary Imagery, an aerial imagery service business.

Kaitlyn grew up loving gymnastics and trampolines as a kid and is so happy to shift those skills into aerial arts as a coach.  She loves coaching younger students since aerial is a passion sport she wished she could have participated in when she was young.  One huge goal of Kaitlyn’s is to inspire others to try aerial arts because it is a form of exercise and expression that anyone can do.

Kristjana Hillberg 

Aerial Coach, ACE Certified Fitness Instructor

Kristjana is an aerial coach and fitness instructor. She stared doing aerial 8 years years ago and it became one of her main  workouts. As a mother of 3, a business owner and a military spouse, she have learned how to be flexible and strong in more than one way and she is excited to share her knowledge with you.

Kristjana would love to help you learn how to self express yourself through the body movement YOU love!

Synneva Hakert

Aerial Coach, Fitness Instructor

Synneva is an aerialist, photographer, and animal lover. She was born in Lubbock, TX but now lives out of Gillette, WY. She is currently in her second year of college studying Heath Science.

She have been practicing aerial for 5 years and teaching for 3 years. Among her specialty skills are aerial silks and hammock. She is passionate about teaching and continues her personal growths by learning more about aerial arts and dance.

Dionne Walters

Pole Instructor

Dionne Walters is  a proud mother of three and a pole instructor at Polerina Studio. She has a degree in Professional Accountancy from BHSU. Over the years she has been a basketball coach for almost 10 years from K-5th grade for kid’s teams and one year volleyball coach.

Dionne has started her pole journey  a couple years ago. Previously she had been a drill team choreographer in high school and wanted something to do with dancing, so she signed up for her first pole class at age of 43.

Nothing has compared to Pole Sport.  It gave her confidence, strength, both physical and mental.

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"Take the leap, come join me. I know the obstacles my own body had and I know how to break it down for you, even if you have no dance experience. I would love to help you build your confidence, strength and find a new you!" -  Dionne Walters