Dance was a big part of Jennifer Gallegos’ life while she was growing up in Albuquerque, N.M., but because several of her family members are nurses, she was also interested in healthcare. She didn’t expect to find a way to combine both interests into a career.
“When I was a senior in high school, I was a dancer with the local ballet company, and one of our dancers was injured,” Gallegos recalls. “During rehearsal one night, she told us about her experience with a physical therapist who specialized in working with dancers. A light bulb went off in my head, and I knew what I wanted to do — be a physical therapist for dancers.”
“I chose Rider because I was able to double major in dance and biology and finish in four years, unlike other schools that told me it would take five years because dance classes and science labs overlapped,” she says.
After graduating from Rider in 2009, she enrolled in New York University’s physical therapy program and earned a doctorate in physical therapy in 2012.
She knew that some physical therapists worked with touring musicals, but didn’t think she was ready to do that right out of school. But when she heard about the opportunity to tour with Wicked, she applied for the job and was accepted. After a month of training in Atlanta, she started touring in March 2013.
Thinking back to her time at Rider, she says, “I liked the fact that Rider was close to New York City, and the program exposed me to a lot of different dance styles. Dr. Kim (Vaccaro) opened me up to the idea of using dance movement as therapy. I wrote my dissertation on different types of dance therapies.”
In August, Gallegos moved from Wicked to the Dirty Dancing national tour. To check in with Gallegos on the road, go to the Dirty Dancing tour’s website at us.dirtydancingontour.com.
Read Gallegos' story in her own words.
