On Saturdays during “Nutcracker” season, Lori Lahnemann doesn’t leave Studio B. Not for lunch, not for a phone call, not for anything. “If you want to see me during ‘Nutcracker’ season, you’ve got to come into Studio B,” she says. It’s a small joke, but it says a lot about her.

She opened The Philadelphia Dance Academy in a single neighborhood space more than 20 years ago. Today it is a two-location, pre-professional program. She also launched the Philadelphia Youth Ballet along the way. Yet she still measures success one rehearsal at a time.

Ask her what she’s proudest of, and she won’t mention the growth of her business. Instead, she’ll bring up students like Domenica Passio. Domenica started at the academy at 8 years old and worked her way through a work-study program to help cover tuition. She is now on the faculty herself. Lahnemann will also cite the annual shows her dancers put on at a children’s hospital in North Philadelphia, or maybe her accomplished staff. Her business card says Director. What she actually does, day to day, is closer to steward. She tends a craft, a staff, and the hundreds of kids who walk through her doors every week.

Lori Lahnemann is a 2026 Philadelphia Family Women of Influence Award Winner

Philadelphia Family’s Women of Influence Awards celebrate exceptional women making significant impacts in our community. Lori was nominated by multiple employees and a parent of one of her students. She was 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 School Built From What Was Missing

Lahnemann started teaching at 17. Nina Fedorova, a former New York City Ballet principal, trained her and gave her her first job. Fedorova showed her something unexpected. The most successful dancers she knew weren’t the most guarded or competitive ones. “Confidence and generosity are aligned with success, not in opposition to it,” Lahnemann said, describing what she learned watching Fedorova. That idea became the blueprint for the Philadelphia Dance Academy.

Before founding the academy, Lahnemann earned a master’s degree in elementary education. She taught briefly in the School District of Philadelphia. She now credits that detour with shaping her entire teaching philosophy. “You’re basically trying to give everybody an opportunity to learn this content regardless of how far they’re going to go with it,” she said of her classroom experience. “That’s equity and education. Why can’t that translate into dance education?”

It clearly has. PDA’s pre-professional program and its performance ensemble, The Philadelphia Youth Ballet, train dancers at a serious technical level. Graduates have gone on to conservatory programs and professional companies. Still, every student benefits from that discipline and rigor, whether or not a dance career is in their future.

The studio’s motto, “professional training in a positive environment,” translates into deep camaraderie among students and staff. Lahnemann insists the training builds her students’ character rather than judging it.

That distinction has shaped an entire studio culture. An experienced faculty carries it forward, and she describes them as critical to the studio’s success. What began as a neighborhood school, she said, grew almost without her noticing. People began recognizing that “what we’re doing is different and people are noticing and they’re telling others and now we’re starting to really expand our reach.”

That expansion has been recognized publicly, too. PDA has picked up several regional awards and recognitions over the years. Even so, Lahnemann is far more animated talking about a single rehearsal than a single trophy.

Steady Through the Hardest Year

If there’s one period Lahnemann still hasn’t fully shaken, it’s 2020. She had to reorganize the entire program and learn to teach dance through Zoom. At the same time, she worried about her staff’s livelihoods and her students’ emotional health. It took a toll she describes candidly. “I still do not feel fully recovered from the stress and anxiety of that period,” she admits.

But the year also produced one of her proudest projects. After reopening for a reduced-capacity summer program, PDA pushed forward with its annual “Nutcracker” production. The team filmed it in small, socially distanced groups as “The Nutcracker Reimagined.” It kept a tradition alive for teenagers who badly needed routine and a sense of normality in their lives. Looking back, she sees this experience as the moment her staff understood how much she cared about them. “I think they saw during that time how much I valued their well-being and worked to keep them teaching and the dancers growing and connected.”

A Home for Adults, Not Just Kids

Lahnemann is quick to point out that leading a studio of PDA’s size also means managing a large business. That’s the part she still wrestles with. She never set out to become an employer with a dedicated staff, she said. She just wanted a place where children could train well. The responsibility of running a workplace crept up on her.

Many of her staff members have been with PDA for more than a decade. By their own account, what has stuck is a culture people want to stay in.

Longtime teacher Fallon Gannon took one of her first teaching jobs at PDA after moving from Central New York. She called Lahnemann’s communication “exceptional” and said the studio “quickly became my Philly family.” Sabrina Faith is a childhood friend turned longtime employee. She described Lahnemann as “the most supportive and encouraging leader,” someone who “has truly created a family at the Philadelphia Dance Academy.”

Beyond the Studio Walls

Ask Lahnemann about giving back, and she’ll steer the conversation toward St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in North Philadelphia. The relationship is a decade old. A student’s father, a pediatrician there, sparked the connection years ago.

What started as an annual holiday performance for patients has grown into an ongoing partnership. PDA sponsors the hospital’s Reach Out and Read literacy program and runs book drives. It also shows up for the back-to-school carnival to hand out backpacks.

“The investment in kids is where I feel we can make the greatest impact,” she said. “I want my dancers to see that the actual impact of the arts is building and connecting in your community.”

Most of studio’s public outreach is performed by The Philadelphia Youth Ballet, a pre-professional performance company Lahnemann founded to give advanced students more performance experience. The company regularly performs at community festivals, tree lightings, and local schools around the city in addition to performances in traditional theater settings.

The studio also created scholarship pathways for students who couldn’t otherwise afford pre-professional training. One is a work-study model that lets students offset tuition by helping run the studio. It’s the kind of door-opening Lahnemann rarely names directly, but her students remember it.

Mentorship That Outlasts the Studio

For Lahnemann, mentorship isn’t a program. It’s the way the studio actually runs. Students meet with her one-on-one for advice about auditions for college dance programs, and she treats each conversation as a chance to build self-awareness.

Alumni come back for career panels, too. One dancer didn’t pursue performance but went on to earn a doctorate in physical therapy, and she credits PDA’s early emphasis on body awareness for shaping her path. Lahnemann also keeps in touch with the women who mentored her, Fedorova among them. Their influence shapes how she shows up for her own staff and students.

Family, Off Book

Outside the studio, Lahnemann’s husband is a recently retired veterinary cardiologist. He plays the Mouse King in Philadelphia Dance Academy’s “Nutcracker” every year, since that’s the only reliable way to see her during December. Her seventh-grade son studies ballet and contemporary five to seven hours per week. She suspects that’s partly a result of growing up in the studio.

She’ll admit to a pattern. She loves ballet, so she made it her job. She discovered Pilates in her 20s, so she got certified and has taught it for years. For Lahnemann, everything is purposeful. Now that her husband is retired, she’s facing a new challenge. She is learning to simply leave and go away for a weekend without a reason to be somewhere else. “This is going to be a new muscle I have to work on,” she said. “Going away for the weekend without thinking about the studio. I’m not there yet, but I’ll get there.”

What she hopes people appreciate most about PDA is the culture of its training. “We’ve always held that something as rigorous as high-quality dance training is mutually compatible with confidence and character building in a positive way.” Lahnemann’s award is recognition of staying true to that belief for more than two decades.

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