Enthralled with movement, music, and the human body, Lavinia Magliocco trained from a young age to be a professional ballet dancer while attending North Carolina School of the Arts and School of American Ballet. There she trained with Russian, Danish, and American legends like Alexandra Danilova, Antonina Toumkovsky, Stanley Williams, Mimi Paul, Duncan Noble, Gyula Pandi, and Gina Vidal.
Derailed by a diagnosis of Crohn’s disease at age 18 she struggled with debilitating symptoms, and was given allopathic drugs and treatments which simply created a roller-coaster of remission and illness. Forced to give up dancing, Lavinia Magliocco earned her BA in English Literature and subsequently became the dance writer and reporter at large for the Cincinnati Enquirer and Antenna Magazine. She also hosted a radio show at WVXU that read news for blind and visually impaired individuals.
Subsequent to a life-saving surgery she discovered the work of Joe Pilates and recovered her strength and technique. This experience fostered in her passion and curiosity towards recovery from disability. After several forays into musical theater and a stint with the Cincinnati Ballet, Lavinia Magliocco was offered a contract to dance with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York City for six years. She is fully certified in Pilates through Core Dynamics and The PhysicalMind Institute.
In 1998 Lavinia Magliocco came to Portland OR and began teaching at Oregon Ballet Theater School, Portland Festival Ballet, and Nike Headquarters where she advised them on their Pilates program. At OBT and PFB, she taught intermediate-professional classes, choreographed ballets while mentoring and advising students. She opened her therapeutic Pilates studio Equipoise ~ enlightened exercise LLC and has been working with students ages 8-96 to help them inhabit their bodies in conscious, informed, and liberating ways. She has continued to study and explore mind-body modalities including yoga and Qigong, traveling to Beijing in 2009 to study at a word-famous Taoist healing center led by Dr. Wan Sujian.
Lavinia Magliocco was offered an adjunct position with the Theater department starting Winter of 2019. She is also currently in her second year of a Master’s in Clinical Rehabilitation Counseling through PSU’s College of Education. In January of 2020 she was invited by the Office of Academic Innovation to present a workshop for Enhancing Academic Performance Through Movement. She is passionate about how humans express essence, how consciousness shapes our bodies, lives, and relationships. Through exploring the challenges of teaching ballet technique and retraining her own body from complete collapse to health, Lavinia Magliocco found ways to connect to sensations and wisdom, a process she continues to explore and learn. She feels a deep conviction that humans are imbued with the capacity to awaken health at a cellular level, and that the journey of exploration towards consciousness and intelligence on every level is an essentially creative one.
Lavinia Magliocco continues to teach dancers and non-dancers at her studio, Equipoise – enlightened exercise in Portland, Oregon. There she combines various disciplines and a holistic approach to encourage body awareness, integrated movement, and well-being.