Thea van Warmerdam Patterson (she/her) is a full-time Lecturer in Ballet at UC Berkeley in the Physical Education Program. She holds an MFA in Ballet and a Certificate in Gender Studies from the University of Utah and a dual BA in both Dance and English from the University of California, Irvine.

Before pursuing her MFA, Thea was a freelance dancer, teacher, and choreographer in the San Francisco Bay Area. During this time, she was a long-standing company member, collaborator and commissioned choreographer for No Strings Attached Dance Company (NSADC), founded by Lissa Resnick. Her performance with NSADC aided in winning the Audience Choice Award at PUSHfest Dance Festival in 2018. Additionally, she has performed works by Carlos Carvajal, Natasha Carlitz Dance Company, Danse Lumière, Blue Scorpion Dance Theater, Jaq Dalziel, Alyssa Mitchel, Yuki Fujimoto, and Garrett+Moulton Productions. For the 2018-2019 season, Thea was co-awarded the Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Achievement in Performance Ensemble for her work with Garrett+Moulton Productions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

At Berkeley, she is currently focused on building a multi-level program that centers the nonmajor ballet students, providing adult ballet students with quality dance education. Her article “The Nonmajor Matter: Building Adult Ballet Communities in Higher Education Beyond the Performance Track,” outlines the benefits of developing nonmajor ballet programs, both in academe and the professional ballet world. Her past work has dissected the construct of the “ballet body,” and the seemingly innocuous language used in ballet pedagogy that upholds often exclusory body standards. Her ultimate goal at the center of all of her research is to make the ballet community at large more inclusive and joyous on recreational and professional levels.

Thea has been a member of CORPS since 2024, presenting her research in 2024 and 2025, and serves as an active member of the Conference Planning Committee.