Ashley Thurman

Ashley Thurman is a West Virginia native and a true mountain girl at heart. She grew up in her mother’s dance studio, Ellie Grimmett’s School of Creative Dance, in the small town of Smithers, WV -dancing before she could even walk. Creative movement has always been a home for her.

By age 12, Ashley was choreographing her own pieces . Traveling and competing and learning from some of the top instructors in the dance industry. After high school, she attended WVU and danced recreationally before moving to Myrtle Beach, SC, where she opened her own studio, Soo Hollywood Dance Studio, specializing in ballet, tap, jazz, acro, hip hop, as well as adult dance classes dance.

After two fulfilling years as a studio owner, Ashley returned home to care for her beloved Nani. Following her grandmother’s passing, she felt called to the West Coast. There, she completed her business degree, spent a year at Art Institute of California for photography and welcomed her first daughter. As a new mom, Ashley longed for the freedom she felt from creative movement—but with less time for dance, she turned to the yoga studio next door. That spark led to over a decade of deep yoga study.

She went on to earn her 200 and 500-hour Registered Yoga Teacher certifications, studied thousands of hours in anatomy, alignment, and the mind-body-spirit connection.

Ashley’s classes are uniquely her own, drawing from years of dance, yoga, and embodiment practices. Her passion for teaching shines through as she creates space for expression, connection, and play.

“To teach again feels like a homecoming —a place to land, create, feel, express, and reconnect. As dancers we are malleable, we learn to transform and transmute, to bend so we don’t break.I’m so grateful to share this again and with it I hope to ignite in others the same love and passion for the art that has inspired and carried me throughout my life.”

Today Ashley lives in Asheville, NC, with her greatest loves—her partner Donny, their three daughters, dog, and two kittens and of course her mother just up the street. When she’s not teaching, Ashley loves spending time with her family, being in nature and exploring all the magic of the Blue Ridge Mountains, traveling, reading, gardening, yoga, photography, poetry and advocating for all animals everywhere.