By her own account, Kelly Farrell has always been shy, and dance gave her a place to be herself. She is also the founder of Ballet 180 School, who signed a commercial lease for her first studio before a single student had enrolled. 

In those early days, she kept a screwdriver and drill within reach for whatever broke. The studio is her work, but the rest of her life runs through it. She was the toddler who danced with a cast on her leg while watching The Nutcracker. She is the landscape designer who still heads outdoors for walks on her days off. She is the boss who says she learns a great deal from her own staff and who makes giving back to the community a regular part of life.

Kelly Farrell is a 2026 Main Line Parent Women of Influence Award Winner

Main Line Parent’s Women of Influence Awards celebrate exceptional women making significant impacts in our community. Kelly was nominated by her parents and selected based on her achievements and dedication to creating positive change. Each Women of Influence Award Winner has committed to support Family Focus Media’s core values. Together, we are committed to fostering a sense of belonging and empowerment for all families. All backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations are welcome and safe with us.

Beyond the awards, our Women of Influence Luncheon and Speed Networking Night attendees come together as our Women of Influence Network, a community fostering connections, collaboration, and mutual support.

A Dream Planned in Thirds

Kelly’s parents love to tell a story about her childhood. At 18 months old and with a cast on one leg, Kelly watched The Nutcracker on television and danced along for the full two hours. Afterward, she asked for shoes like the dancers wore. “I kept asking, apparently forever,” Kelly says. She watched the same version of The Nutcracker every year throughout her childhood. Dance, she says, gave her a space to feel herself. “When I’m dancing, I’m not thinking about anything else,” Kelly shares.

Kelly was in middle school when she began sketching dance positions and keeping a journal of ideas for her own dance school. As she writes on Ballet 180’s Our Story page, every birthday and holiday card brought money she divided into thirds: personal savings, a future dance school, and a future dance company. Her father, who owned his own business, taught her about saving. The dance school idea and the plan for getting there were all her own.

From Landscape Design to a One-Room Ballet Studio

Before the studio, Kelly was working full time as a landscape designer while pursuing a master’s in landscape architecture. She was also directing a nonprofit ballet company. “I loved everything I was doing, but it was just too much to do at once,” she says. So she left the job, set aside her degree, and opened Ballet 180 School in 2013.

Kelly had no business training, so she took what she calls baby steps. The first space was a single room studio, small enough that the lease felt intimidating, but not reckless. “I have always tried to look at the numbers and see, ‘does this make sense?’ It’s scary, but does it make sense?” she says, describing her methodical and cautious approach. Her checking tool of choice is a spreadsheet, and she uses a lot of them.

Kelly’s first studio space opened with a party. Friends and family came, a musician friend played, and the dance company Kelly directed performed in the space. A summer workshop became the first class, an unusual start for a dance school, where fall is the big season. Kelly taught nearly every class herself, for all ages and in every style. In between she greeted families at the door, and answered the phone and emails herself. When something needed fixing, she fixed it.

What the Name Ballet 180 Means

The name Ballet 180 comes from the idea she built the school around: inspiring a 180-degree transformation in the lives of others. “It suits dance, too,” Kelly says. “We’re making shapes and lines with our bodies when we dance, and 180 degrees is also a line.” The school’s mission echoes it, aiming for a positive change of mind, body, and soul.

Today, Ballet 180 School is an award-winning school that teaches dancers from preschoolers to professionals. Its focus on community and kindness is meant to help students reach their potential on the dance floor and well beyond it.

A Culture Built on Kindness, Not Competition

Some dance schools focus on competition, and Kelly doesn’t think they’re wrong to do so. “There’s a lot of dance schools out there. Some people want a competitive environment, and that’s okay,” she says. Instead, Kelly purposefully fosters collaboration amongst her staff and her students. “We’ve established a sense of camaraderie at the studio that shows up through words of encouragement and clapping for classmates,” Kelly shares. “Seeing students share these acts of kindness on their own accord shows that we as a studio have set a tone that fosters this type of behavior.”

That clarity shapes how staff are selected for her school. Kelly runs an extensive interview process when hiring instructors. She wants to know who a candidate is as a person as well as their dance experience. She looks for “a heart for what they’re doing,” and she asks herself whether the children would like taking class with them.

Growing Through COVID and Into Four Studios on the Main Line

Ballet 180 School grew from one room to two, then three. When COVID arrived, classes moved outdoors and onto Zoom. At a time when many businesses were scaling back, Kelly’s business continued to grow. 

The move to the current space took years of searching. Kelly had a long wish list: parking, easy access, a spot near a train station for staff who commute, and ceilings high enough for jumps. “If we were going to move, it needed to be worth moving,” she says. 

The Paoli building that now houses her studio was labeled a medical office, so she hadn’t even considered it. She decided to take a look anyway and it turned out to be zoned for fitness. A drop ceiling hid the one thing that mattered, so she asked to have a tile moved and found the height was sufficient. As she had done in every space she toured, she quickly mocked up a layout, and this one worked.

Then the clock started. The contractor called it the fastest timeline of his career. Crews were still painting an hour before the first classes in the fall of 2024. The timing wasn’t ideal for her personally, she admits, but she knew another space like this might not come along. The school now has four dance rooms with sprung floors, within walking distance of the Paoli train station.

Leading With Kindness and Boundaries

Leadership has taught Kelly some harder lessons than logistics. “Balancing kindness and boundaries in business can be challenging, especially as a woman,” Kelly says. Over time, she has learned to establish clear policies that protect her staff and students while maintaining flexibility as business needs evolve. 

Kelly is just as candid about what she gets from her team. She says she has been amazed by how much she has learned from her own staff members. “I am leading them, but I learn so much from them, too,” she says. She tries to keep track of what she picks up from each teacher and work it into how she leads, with the goal of being a better leader for them in return. For a founder who started out doing every job herself, it is a notable shift. She now describes leadership as something that runs in both directions.

Giving Back, Led by Students

Service is built into Ballet 180’s calendar. Kelly’s studio hosts two chapters of the National Honor Society for Dance Arts. In recent years she has let those student members choose which organization the school supports. “I think it means more to the students if they have ownership,” she says. Partners have included CHOP NICU, the Chester County Food Bank, Safe Harbor, and the SPCA. The SPCA donation drive was so successful, Kelly notes, that it outgrew the studio lobby and required use of a truck. The school has also taken workshops and performances to libraries, schools, and parks through its community programs.

Kelly doesn’t push students to give. “We don’t ask so much as say, hey, here’s what we’re supporting,” she says. “If you can support that cause, great.” What the staff does teach, she says, is community and kindness inside the classroom, and the giving tends to follow.

Lifting Up the Next Dancers

Kelly’s sense of mentorship starts with her parents, who she says have been her biggest cheerleaders since childhood. They still check in with her often. It also began with the dance teachers who saw her potential, and with the woman she interned for in college, who showed her that encouraging people is a way to lead. 

Over the years, several people have told Kelly they saw something special in her, and she credits those words with keeping her going. Now she passes that along. Kelly says that many of the students who started with her as preschoolers are now in high school, and she is amazed to see them leading the younger dancers. Ballet 180 School has paired older and younger students on choreography at times, among other chances for leadership. Whenever Kelly sees a student doing something well, she tells them, “The younger students are seeing what you’re doing. That’s awesome. Keep it up.”

Asked what she hopes a former student will say about their experience at Ballet 180 School in twenty years, she names confidence, friendship, and the knowledge that you can overcome any challenge.

---

Follow Ballet 180 on the studio’s website and on Instagram.

Help us honor Kelly by sharing what her contributions mean to you in the comments below.