"You can be a fairy. You can be a princess. You can even come back from the dead. It's amazing," said Rudda, who earned her B.A. in dance from La Roche in May of this year.

The Wilkes-Barre, PA, native is testing her skills on a much larger stage starting this month. The Roxey Ballet, a professional company in Lambertville, NJ, has hired Rudda to perform with them for a year. It is the latest in a series of significant accomplishments for the young dancer, now 21, who began her career at the age of 5. Along with her training at La Roche, Rudda participated in summer pro-grams with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. At the age of 16, she accepted an appointment to study at the Penn-sylvania Governor's School for the Arts. She also trained at the North Carolina Dance Theater and the San Antonio/Joffrey School of Ballet.

The majority of Rudda's training before college came from Trinette Singleton at Bravo!Dance in Wilkes-Barre.

"She (Singleton) had a major influence on my career. She was a principal dancer at the Joffrey Ballet. She pushed me. She wanted me to be the best that I could," said Rudda, who also credits her success to her training at La Roche.

"Sharon is wonderful," said Gerard Holt, artistic director for La Roche's Dance Department. "She is everything that you could want in a dancer. Her progression parallels the dance pro-gram's development at La Roche."

As Rudda begins her professional career in ballet, she has some advice to her aspiring peers. She tells them to audition as often as they can, because they'll quickly learn what requires improvement.

Rudda's appointment to the Roxey Ballet has generated plenty of excitement for her and her family. She sees it as the first step in what she hopes will be a long career on the stage.

"I want to continue to perform for as long as I can," said Rudda.