Falmouth, Maine –Sometimes it takes missing something to realize just how important it is. That’s exactly the case with Maine State Ballet (MSB) company dancer Katie Skog. Like many dancers at MSB, Skog was faced with a difficult decision her senior year in high school: to attend college outside southern Maine and leave MSB behind, or find a college nearby that would allow her to continue to dance.

“I knew I wanted to keep dancing at MSB, since I started dancing when I was four and it was such a big part of my life growing up,” says Skog. “That definitely influenced my decision to look at colleges nearby.”

As a result, Skog enrolled at Bates College in Lewiston and began the time-consuming task of staying atop her studies while also commuting to Falmouth to continue dancing with the company. Soon, it became apparent to Skog that the roundtrip commute of more than hour each day became unworkable.

“During the first semester, it just became too much doing the commute and I thought it was the ballet that was the problem,” she says. “So I stopped dancing here for two years.”

To feed her hunger for dance, Skog continued to dance in the modern dance program at Bates. “It was fun, but I came to realize that I was missing something,” she adds. “It took me a while to realize it. I wondered if it was school that I didn’t like, but what I was really missing was being at MSB and the family that I have here.”

So four years ago, in the middle of her sophomore year at Bates, Skog transferred to the University of Southern Maine (USM) and began dancing again with MSB and hasn’t looked back since.

Now, just days shy of turning 24, Skog is preparing to take on her first feature role as Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, in MSB’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, running March 20 through March 28 with seven shows at the Maine State Ballet Theater.

“I’ve danced so many parts in the past in the corps and in the back. Now to be up front and in the spotlight is very exciting,” Skog admits.

It’s also exciting for Linda MacArthur Miele, MSB’s artistic director, to be able to bring a veteran like Skog to the fore, as well as other dancers who have gone away to college only to move back and take up with the company again.

“I love having dancers like Katie stay here past high school because they bring a depth of maturity to the company,” says Miele. “They have personalities and life experiences to share. These dancers are making sacrifices in their lives to continue dancing and I believe audiences can feel and respond to that energy.”

In choosing Skog for Titania, Miele offers that “Katie has a striking presence on stage, tall and very beautiful. The role required a dancer old enough to reasonably be ruling over the rest of the dancers on stage, and sweet enough to interact with the young children in the cast.”

Miele also has praise for Skog’s character acting ability, which is important for the role of Titania. “I wanted her because I want everyone to know immediately that she is the queen of this kingdom and she does that immediately when she walks on stage.”

For Skog, dancing Miele’s choreography is also a big reason for her interest in staying with MSB.

“I enjoy both her method of teaching and her choreography,” Skog says. “She always finds the good qualities in dancers and caters to their style by choreographing for them.”

It’s a pleasure Skog plans to enjoy for as long as she is able. Next fall she will enroll in the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service at USM to earn her master’s degree in health policy and management and then plans to settle in the area.

“I plan to dance here as long as I can,” she says. “I want to dance until I can’t dance anymore.”

Contact: Eliza Miller - 207-781-7672