B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology; M.S. in Financial Planning from the American College

Office: MCD 203
Email: erin.payner@utah.edu

Erin is presently a Ballet MFA candidate (2026) at the University of Utah's School of Dance.  She began her classical ballet training in the Vaganova method with Pavel Rotaru in Atlanta, GA. She has studied, by invitation, with such renowned ballet companies as the American Ballet Theater in New York City, the San Francisco Ballet (on scholarship), Boston Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle. In 1998, Erin was selected to represent the United States as a competitor in the VI USA International Ballet Competition, often referred to as the "Olympics of Ballet”. She has performed as a guest dancer with numerous companies throughout the Southeastern U.S. and toured the Pacific Northwest, notably in the leading roles of the Sugarplum Fairy in The Nutcracker, Giselle in Giselle, and Mercedes and Kitri in Don Quixote as well as Soloist and Demi-Soloist roles in Etudes, Carmen, The Four Seasons, Sleeping Beauty and Napoli.  

Erin holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering, cum laude, from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Financial Planning from the American College. She was the founding director of Gifted Kids, an Atlanta-area dance outreach program, a long-standing board member of CityDance, an Atlanta-based non-profit supporting dance education and performance, and founding director of a 10-year running annual, acclaimed community Nutcracker production in her hometown of Port St. Joe, Florida.  In addition to her continued leadership in the dance community, Erin spent 15 years with leading global management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, initially as a subject matter expert and later as a leader in professional development both in the US and the UK.  She acts as an independent executive coach and strategy consultant to business leaders.

As a dance instructor for over 25 years with students ranging in age from 3 to adult, Erin is known for her caring and musical teaching style, cultivating a love of movement and music in her students. Most recently, she was an instructor at the college level for BodyWork, a commercial dance college, and Cambridge University's impressive Ballet Club in Cambridge, England where she created the corps de ballet and soloist selections for their original full length production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.   Erin enjoys choreography where her focus is on encouraging her audience to escape to the beauty of movement and music on the stage.  She welcomes the opportunity to work with dancers and institutions in the creation of new works for the stage.