Principal Mrs Jenna Crescenzo

Miss Jenna started dancing at the age of 3. The reason she wanted to dance was because she wanted a ‘white fing’ (a tutu). She trained at Hampshire Academy until she was 11 years old in Ballet, Modern, Tap, National, Greek, Drama and Singing.  She was also an avid festival and competition dancer many times winning the All-England finals and becoming UK Champion.

Miss Jenna and Miss Carys come from a large family of theatricals including the late Richard Burton and therefore it was in their blood to perform and teach.

At the Age of 8, she was accepted into Sylvia Young’s Theatre school and agency, luckily getting to audition and be in West End Shows, Television adverts and TV Series the most well-known of them was Moll Flanders starring Daniel Craig and Alex Kingston. During this time, she was also accepted into The Royal Ballet School Junior Associates.

Her West End Debut was at 9 years old in Les Misérables at the Palace Theatre London. Miss Jenna was the first ever Little Eponine to ever go on to play Little Cossette with just 10 minutes warning.  It was here she found her true passion and realised that she wanted to be in Show business for the rest of her life.

At 10 Years old, she was the youngest child ever accepted into the prestigious National Youth Music Theatre, Performing all across the UK with shows such as Bugsy Malone, Wizard of Oz and Oklahoma to name just a few. NYMT has made stars of many of Miss Jenna’s former production friends including Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) Sheridan Smith, Matt Lucas and Oliver Thompsett to name a few.

At 11, She was accepted into The Royal Ballet Lower School, Whitelodge and she won a fully funded government scholarship to train at the Tring Park School of Dance, formally The Arts Educational School, Tring Park.  She trained here for 5 years in all disciplines of dance, drama and performing arts, as well as her academic studies. At 16, she got accepted into The Northern Ballet School, again fully funded with a DADA Scholarship where she continued her training for a further 3 years until she graduated at a professional level with Honours. After dancing professionally for 10 years, she went to ‘Bird College’ to gain her teaching qualifications under the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (I.S.T.D)

Since graduating 16 years ago Miss Jenna has enjoyed a very varied and colourful career including, West End productions, UK Tours, Italian tours, Pantomime’s, Television and Cruise Ships. The highlight of her career so far was playing ‘Frenchy’ in the European Tour of Grease.

Miss Jenna teaches all genres of dance at ESDS and specialises on ESDS’ very own Vocational Training Scheme for talented students who wish to excel and have a career in the performing arts. She helps them individually to gain the most out of their training as possible with individual goals, coaching and experiences, helping them develop into triple threat students with solid all-round training.
Miss Jenna is also very dedicated to her family and husband Gianluca, they have 2 young sons, Henry and Jasper.

Vice Principal – Mrs Carys-Mari Herberg

Miss Carys also trained at two very prestigious dance schools (The Legat School of Russian Ballet, and The Arts Educational School Tring Park) gaining her teaching associates with the I.S.T.D (Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing) and LAMDA, before deciding to take time out to study for a Performing Arts Degree at King Alfreds University.  Whilst there she kept her passion for performing alive by performing and choreographing for the Basketball’s Cheer Squad.  Upon completion of her degree the style of dance had changed within the ‘Dancing World’ and so she decided to return to dance College to study for a further year in commercial ‘Street’.

Upon graduating she went on to work professionally with a varied career of Cruise Ships, Pantomime and Theatre.  Credits include Mabel in Mack and Mabel, Val- A Chorus Line, Production Singer for P&O on their flagship ‘Oriana’. She has also been on many adverts and tv shows, you may recognise her as the face of the original ‘SodaStream’.

She has been teaching for just over 15 years on and off whilst performing.  The past 10 years she has stayed in the UK to focus on her teaching career and raising her 9-year-old twin Girls. Miss Carys teaches all genres at ESDS but specialises in Ballet. She also runs our competition team.

Miss Tina Francis – Tap and Modern

Miss Lucy Bishop – Acrobatic Arts teacher, Pre-School classes and Festival Coach

Miss Nikita – Acro, Lyrical and coaching