Penny Leto – Choreographer, Owner/Director of CoffeeMill Dance Studio

Born and raised in the Bronx, Penny relocated to Key West in 1977 with a B.A. in Dance Education from Herbert H. Lehman College. Penny purchased the CoffeeMill property (known for it’s El Brazo Fuerte coffee) in the early eighties, co-founded the Key West Dance Theatre and became an original member of the Fabulous Spectrelles (Toni). In 2016 she was thrilled to move the CoffeeMill and expand into 2 new state of the art dance spaces. The CoffeeMill’s pre-professional student dance company the Young Dance Collective, made up of 15 talented and hardworking young dance artists, just achieved non profit status through Merging Ideas Developing Arts (MIDA). Penny has performed in and choreographs for all the theater groups in Key West. Favorites at the Waterfront Playhouse include: this season’s Young Frankenstein, Avenue Q, The Producers, Spamalot, Xanadu, Drowsy Chaperone, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Reefer Madness and Urinetown. Every spring she produces DanceWorks! dance concert at TWT, and Walk on White’s ‘hiPSo fActO’ – an informal monthly live dance performance series at the studio. Each summer Penny is proud to be a part of Camp Bravo! A musical theatre camp for children in collaboration with the Waterfront Playhouse and Keys Community School of the Arts (Seussical Jr. in 2018), and the newly formed Waterfront Playhouse’s Youth Theater program (Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat in 2018).