Grades: 3–12
Best Format: Weekly partnership / 4–8 visits
Focus: Improvisation, creative movement, character development, collaborative storytelling, and creative risk-taking.
About Rosie
Rosie Sharkey has over 30 years of experience in jazz, including multiple styles, tap, and musical theatre, forms deeply rooted in African American cultural traditions, social history, and community storytelling. She treats dance as both art and living oral history, connecting students to rhythm, music, movement, and the cultural contexts in which these forms evolved.
Rosie began her training at Marie Stinnett Dance in Campbell, California, then moved to Los Angeles, where she choreographed and performed in dance companies, stage productions, music videos, and independent films. She has taught in studios, community centers, and schools across the West Coast, leading programs for students and participants ranging in age from 7 to 85.
A 500-hour Registered Yoga Teacher, Rosie blends artistry with an understanding of anatomy and accessibility, helping ensure every student can participate fully. Her classes are high-energy, musically rich, and designed to spark confidence, creativity, and joy.
What Students Can Explore
Rosie’s workshops connect movement, music, rhythm, choreography, and the cultural histories of dance forms. With more time, students can build technical skills and creative confidence, create original work, collaborate more effectively, reflect on their learning, revise and improve their work, complete larger projects, prepare for performance or exhibition, build stronger classroom relationships, and develop independence.
Students get the most from Rosie’s teaching when: “They have space and permission to fully engage in movement.”
In Rosie’s classroom, students: “Feel empowered to move their bodies to connect with music and each other.”
Rosie focuses on helping students: “Learn different dance styles and understand choreography.”
Students leave with: “A sense of accomplishment.”
Teaching Experience
General education classrooms and self-contained special education classrooms.
Learner Needs Rosie Can Adapt For
Neurodivergent learners, students with physical disabilities, sensory accommodations, communication differences, emotional or behavioral supports, mixed-age classrooms, beginning learners, and advanced learners.
Best Learning Environments
Gymnasiums, auditoriums, music rooms, flexible or open spaces, and teacher co-teaching.
Helpful Information + Teacher Support
Teacher learning goals or curriculum connections, accessibility needs and accommodations or learning supports, classroom norms or behavior considerations, teacher support with classroom management, and information about the space, materials, or technology available.
Contact + Artist Information
Email: rosie.sharkey@gmail.com
Phone: (818) 434-8932
Website: rosiesharkey.com
Instagram: @footwork_and_flows
