Christine S. Bergeron Ballew, BA, MFA, PhD

Welcome to Brazos Emerge. I started Brazos Emerge as a way to bring together the work I have loved throughout my career: helping people reach their goals through movement, leadership, and safe dance practices.

At the heart of everything I do is education. I believe in creating spaces where people feel welcome, supported, and able to grow. I have a strong belief in inclusion and community, as the world is diverse and it takes a village to move through it and achieve our own goals. We all come to movement, leadership, and learning with different experiences and different bodies—and I believe those differences should be valued.

I have always considered myself a late bloomer. Sometimes I simply wasn't ready yet—but when I was, I went full steam ahead. I started dancing in seventh grade because my sister, Tina, wanted to take a jazz class. She stopped. I made a career out of it.

I earned a BA in Dance Education from the University of Akron and an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Florida State University. Then, in my late 40s, I decided to tackle something I had wanted for years: a PhD in Dance Science from the University of Wolverhampton.

It took me ten years, while raising children and working full-time as a professor and administrator. My research focused on the effectiveness of Pilates on core control in collegiate dancers, bringing together two areas I care deeply about—Pilates and dance science.

My research has since been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented internationally, and I continue collaborating with university colleagues on research involving high school dance and drill teams. But one of the things I value most about earning that degree is much simpler: my children watched their mom set a difficult goal, encounter plenty of obstacles, and keep going.

I have been teaching Pilates since 2002, with training through PhysicalMind and Balanced Body. Over the years, I have worked with people managing chronic pain, scoliosis, fibromyalgia, and previous injuries, as well as collegiate and professional dancers and athletes.

My philosophy is simple: Pilates is for every body.

I believe Pilates should meet the person in front of me rather than ask the person to fit a particular exercise. My goal is to help clients move safely, understand their bodies, build strength and confidence, and continue doing the things they love.

That philosophy is personal. In my early 20s, poor training practices contributed to a serious back injury that threatened my dance career. Pilates, physical therapy, and dance science changed the way I understood my own body. Instead of forcing it to move a certain way, I learned how to work with its strengths and challenges.

That experience allowed me to return to dancing and enjoy a long professional modern dance career. More importantly, it shaped how I have taught movement ever since.

People saw me as a leader long before I saw myself that way. Like many people, I found myself in leadership positions without much formal preparation and sometimes felt as though I had been thrown into the deep end.

So I started learning. I studied leadership, explored how personality influences the way we lead, completed leadership training, and learned through years of experience—both the successes and the mistakes.

That journey eventually led me to serve for many years as Director of Dance at Texas A&M University, College Station campus, and later as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Performance, Visualization, and Fine Arts. I have also served in leadership roles with state and national organizations and have been honored for my teaching and leadership.

Those experiences are the foundation of the leadership work at Brazos Emerge. I especially want young people to have something many of us did not: the opportunity to learn how to lead before they are thrown into the fire.

Teaching has been the thread connecting almost everything I have done. I have taught students from age three to people well into their 80's, I worked with dancers and gymnasts, taught movement in Arts in Health settings, and spent 26 years teaching at Texas A&M University.

When I arrived at Texas A&M in 2000, dance did not have its own degree. Over the years, I had the privilege of working alongside wonderful colleagues to help build the program from the ground up.

One of the accomplishments closest to my heart was helping create the first undergraduate degree in the United States focused on Dance Science. The program eventually grew to include multiple minors, a B.S. in Dance Science, and an MFA in Dance with focus areas including Dance Science.

Why does that matter to me? Because I wanted dancers to have more options—and better information—than I had as a young dancer.

Dance science can help create safer training environments while opening doors for dancers to become educators, researchers, healthcare professionals, and leaders as well as performers. What began as lessons I learned through my own injury became something I could pass along to another generation.

When I left Texas A&M, the dance faculty had grown from three people to fifteen. Walking away from something I spent so many years helping build was not easy, but I left knowing it was in the hands of talented people who will determine what comes next. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to be part of its story.

At first glance, Brazos Emerge may seem to have several different directions—Pilates, leadership, and dance education. To me, they have always been connected. The foundation is education. 

We educate ourselves about our bodies so we can move with greater confidence and independence. We educate young people about leadership so they have the tools to lead others with empathy, courage, and responsibility. And we educate dance teachers and dancers about safe practices so we can create healthier physical and emotional environments.

Brazos Emerge is the next chapter of the work I have been doing throughout my career—educating movement, inspiring leadership, and empowering people to grow.