All About Me

Hello everyone! To introduce myself, my name is Alyssa Fumagalli. I am a seventeen year old, native Napan with a love for dance, Disney movies, and Chinese food, among other things.

 As far as my family goes, I have one sister, Danielle, who is probably one of the most accomplished 23- year olds I know. Although we are unalike in almost every way imaginable, we still manage to get along relatively well and remain close, despite the fact that she lives across the country in Washington D.C. Additionally, my mom serves as an unbelievably influential figure in my life, without her watchful guidance, my procrastinator tendencies would run wild and I might possibly consume inorganic fruits and vegetables not purchased from Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. On the other hand, I see a lot of myself in my father, as he continually strives to please others, but is unpredictable in the way that he will spontaneously break out into a song or dance.

Speaking of dance… outside of school dance serves as the main extracurricular activity that I am involved in. I first fell in love with dance at the age of eight when my mother dragged me to a jazz class against my will. Since then, I have been continuously dancing for nine (almost ten!) years and have no plans of stopping any time soon. Throughout my career in dance, I have been instructed in numerous styles such as jazz, ballet, modern, hip hop, contemporary, and pointe. The opportunities to embrace various forms of dance have arisen through my involvement with different studios such as Academy of Dance, Dance Direction, and most recently, Expressions School of Dance and Music, where I will be an assistant teacher and choreographer throughout the upcoming school year. In the end though, my favorite dance experience occurred about a year ago, when I was able to attend the Pulse Convention in San Francisco, which was an incredible experience as I got to learn material from world-famous choreographers. The whole time I couldn’t help feeling a little star struck as many of them have been repeatedly featured on the TV show, So You Think You Can Dance. In addition, I actually got to talk one on one with both Mia Michaels and Brian Friedman which was crazy, since they are two people that have inspired me personally for many years.

With Brian Friedman at Pulse!

More recently however, I just finished performing as a member of Platinum Dance Company, a nonprofit organization that was a lot of fun because some of my really good friends were involved and membership was free (which was definitely a plus). Furthermore, as far as my dance experience within Napa High School goes, I am currently a member of the Napa High School Dance Department’s Jazz 3 class and I am so excited that I was selected to be a Dance Club Officer for this coming year.

As of right now, my future career goal is to become a pediatric dentist because I love kids and have had an odd fascination with teeth nearly all my life. Literally when I was younger I had a Play Doh set that included plastic versions of a person’s mouth, drills, and crowns and strangely enough, it was my favorite Christmas present ever. Looking to the nearer future though, I am not entirely sure which college I want to attend because I have visited ten different campuses in the past year and liked all of them.

Here’s a picture of me from a recent college visit at Pepperdine University (easily the most picturesque campus I’ve seen) about a month ago.    

So now you know a little bit more about me and I cannot wait to get to know you all better in the upcoming year as well!