Berkeleyside31%
Remembering Claire Sheridan, who founded groundbreaking degree program for professional dancers at St. Mary's College 64%
By Family of Claire Sheridan0%
7/20/2026, 12:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including Halo Effect, Appeal to Emotion, and Hasty Generalization, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 46.9% saturation with 305 hits. Analysis detected 1,444 faulty-reasoning hits from 651 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 59.2% and a BS Rank of 64% (6,889 of 18,799 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 63.40% of the article peer group.
Claire Sheridan, who founded groundbreaking degree program for professional dancers at St.
Mary's College
She also worked as a dance educator for the San Francisco Ballet and developed the dance program at the Athenian School in Danville.
Dance educator and choreographer Claire Sheridan passed away on July 15.
The cause was pancreatic cancer.
Born in Oakland on July 25, 1954, to parents Thad S.
Sheridan Jr and Sally P.
Taylor (both UC Berkeley graduates), her family moved around the country before settling in Danville in 1969.
Her connection to Berkeley began early in her adult life when she began taking classes at Shawl Anderson Dance Studio and she lived in the city from 1996 until her death.
Claire loved dancers, from amateurs to professional, and she spent her life building public enthusiasm and respect for the art form.
Klutzy, overweight, with lousy posture and a bad knee, she got a late start on her own dance training.
But once she found her passion, she was hooked.
In the late ’70s, while developing the dance program at the Athenian School in Danville, Claire started offering dance classes in the gym at Saint Mary’s College of California.
There were no dance studies on campus at that time, but course by course, Claire built a thriving program there.
She and her music and theater colleagues created SMC’s first Performing Arts department, and Claire directed its dance program for 20 years.
While choreographing and producing innumerable dance concerts and musicals on campus, she earned both her Bachelor of Arts and Master’s Degree in Education from the College.
Then, in 1999, Claire founded LEAP, the highly respected Bachelor of Arts degree program at Saint Mary’s College that is specifically designed for current and former professional dancers.
Traditionally, going to college was not compatible with the life of a professional dancer.
Education was usually sacrificed for the career, resulting in a work situation where dancers were infantilized, underpaid, and ill-prepared for the future.
And the tradition then in the dance world was that you were suspect — not truly committed as an artist — if you dared to think about something other than dance.
But Claire and LEAP changed all that.
The dancers proved to the world (and to themselves) that they could achieve extraordinary academic excellence.
LEAP alumni have gone on to graduate studies and successful new careers in a variety of fields, including medicine, business, law and psychology.
The program, which is still going strong, has received significant press attention and accolades from The New York Times, The Chronicle for Higher Education, and CBS News Sunday Morning, among many others.
Claire also devoted a large part of her career to teaching dance internationally, including in Russia (St.
Petersburg Conservatory), England (Cambridge University), Prague (Charles University), and at academies and professional dance companies in India, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Palestine (the University of Bethlehem), Bosnia, Ukraine (Donetsk State Ballet), South Africa and Bangladesh.
She learned the Russian language, and was on the road for months at a time.
Her favorite city in the world was London; nothing made her happier than to be there with a nice cup of tea and a little cake.
But her proudest achievement was her long and happy marriage to the brilliant physicist, writer and former Oberlin College President Robert Fuller, who she married in 1994 and who predeceased her in 2025.
He was brave, wise, steadfast, and the love of her life.
Claire also treasured a close and enduring relationship with her five sisters, Elizabeth Jones, Laura Haselof, Emily Finn, Sarah Clugston and Kathleen Sheridan.
Those extraordinary ladies were by her side when she died, exactly 12 months after the loss her husband.
She is also survived by her step children, Adam Fuller, Noah Brand, Ben Fuller and Karen Fuller, plus a billion nieces and nephews.
Analysis
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