Ms. NaTalia Johnson was the artistic director of the Sacramento-based Natalia Johnson Conservatory of Ballet (NJC). She was born in Lubbock, Texas on November 20, 1983 to Doris Jean Kelly-Johnson and Lenious Johnson, Sr., a business owner and one of the City’s first African American employees. She was the youngest of the couple’s four children.

“Ms. NaTalia,” as many of her students and their parents grew to call her, first took dance classes at the Guadalupe Parkway Neighborhood Center in her hometown and was discovered and encouraged to dance with the area’s premiere school, Ballet Lubbock.

Instructors knew Ms. Johnson was destined for bigger stages and cheered her on as she pursued them. At 17 years old, Ms. Johnson was offered a dance scholarship to the prestigious Juilliard School of the Arts, but instead took the opportunity to begin her professional career with the famed Dance Theatre of Harlem.

During her illustrious career, she’d also dance with Urban Ballet Theater, Ballet Noir, Ballet Lubbock, Renaissance Ballet, and Collage Dance Collective. She also studied at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. She shared her love of dance, teaching throughout the county, including at the Harlem School of the Arts in New York, Dance Theatre

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