Meet Our Staff

Bethany Doherty Cruze

OWNER | ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

A native of Georgia, Bethany Doherty Cruze has been teaching dance professionally for over 25 years, and has studied ballet, tap, jazz and pointe since the age of 4. After attending Brenau University, she discovered her true passion of teaching and inspiring the next generation of dancers.

Miss Bethany's top priority as Owner of Elite Dance Academy is to bring out confidence in all students in a clean, well-organized and safe environment.

Skyler Brennan

BALLET | TAP | JAZZ | POINTE

Skyler Brennan has been an avid dancer for 23 years, studying ballet, tap, jazz, pointe, and contemporary. She has experience teaching and choreographing for multiple competitions while in college, and has over 15 years of class choreography and teaching experience.

Skyler holds a Master's Degree in Epidemiology from Emory University and also works at the Georgia Department of Public Health as a Zoonotic Disease Epidemiologist.

Hope Burt

Hip Hop / Contemporary / Jazz 

Hope Burt was born in Detroit Michigan but raised in Southern California and Central Florida. She began dancing at the age of 10 and immediately discovered her passion! Hope quickly developed a love for all dance styles but through intensive training and hard work reached a high level of accomplishment in Contemporary, Ballet, Hip Hop, Jazz and Lyrical. She later added ballroom to her repertoire.
 
Hope has won numerous awards and scholarships including a full scholarship to Dance Educators of America’s Ballet Seminar where she trained under nationally renowned ballet instructors. Hope has performed annually as one of the featured soloists in the Nutcracker Ballet, Held at the Maxwell C. King Center. She has gone on to perform at the Mercedes Benz Stadium for the "Beloved" benefit, The Kennedy Space Center, Morgan State University, Disneyland and toured around the country performing.

In addition to performance, Hope is a choreographer/Instructor known throughout Atlanta for creating innovative and unique choreography. After teaching for over 12 years her love for all of her students is still going strong helping them to reach their fullest potential. Many of her students have been accepted into prestigious summer intensives, and college dance programs such as Juilliard, NYU, University of Georgia, University of Alabama, and Point Park University.
 
Hope's work has been featured at Emory University, Gas South Theater and she is currently a judging official for Empire, GHSA (Georgia High School Association) and a Judge/Convention Teacher for Inspire Dance Competition.

Tristen Prescott

BALLET | POINTE 

Ms Tristen is from a small town just outside of Columbia, SC. She started dancing at the age of three, but truly began training rigorously at the age of seven with Southeastern School of Ballet. While there, she attended well-known summer intensives, such as Houston Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem on merit scholarship, The Rock School for Dance Education, and Texas Ballet Theater on merit scholarship. At the age of sixteen, she was chosen to be apart of Texas Ballet Theater’s very first Professional Training Division, where she trained under Ballet Mistress Anna Donovan for two years, and was able to perform works choreographed by the world renowned Ben Stevenson, O.B.E., such as Ben Stevenson’s The Nutcracker and Ben Stevenson’s Coppelia.  At age eighteen, Tristen joined the Gwinnett Ballet Theatre as a trainee and has risen through the ranks each year to now being a full fledged professional company member. She has performed as the Dew Drop Fairy in The Nutcracker, Butterfly in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed a soloist variation in Paquita, and has had featured roles in original works choreographed by GBT’s own resident choreographers Jennifer Mason and Michelle Bourgeois. She is so very excited to be teaching at Elite Dance Academy