If cooking is an art and baking is a science, Natasha MacAller is a pastry chef who flawlessly dances in both worlds. Her “less is more” approach to pastry has made her stand out among her peers and continues to catch the attention of the Los Angeles Times, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine and NZ’s Life and Leisure magazines. A former professional ballerina, Natasha brings the same diligence and precision to the kitchen as she did to dancing. She’s now known as the Dancing Chef. These careers may seem world’s apart – from ballerina to pastry chef – but to Natasha, or Tash as she’s called, they are both performance arts, creative disciplines that demand dedication and hours of painstaking practice. As she explains, they both offer a fleeting experience, whether it’s a whirl across the stage or savouring a whirl on one of her decadent chocolate creations.

Tash started ballet lessons at age six and turned professional at 13. During her 30 years as a professional ballerina she performed with New York’s prestigious Joffrey Ballet and the Boston Ballet finishing her whirlwind ballet career in the Broadway and Los Angeles productions of “The Phantom of The Opera”.

Realising that she could not dance forever, Tash used the time during her seasonal layoffs to become a professional cook, and soon had set up her own catering business. For eight years she owned and operated Dancing Chef Catering, serving mainly TV, theatre, film and the food industry folks. She catered for events in all sorts of obscure places, from sailboats to skyscapers.

Always a high goal setter, she completed her intensive 18-month cookery course in 1996 at The Colorado Culinary Institute and graduated number one in her class. Success led to success. In 1996 the petite blonde created an ahi tuna appetizer for “USA Team California” in the 1996 Culinary Olympics in Berlin and took out the gold medal.

Now she challenges herself constantly, to create a new cooking or taste sensation. She’s looking at starting her own cookie company. Tash spends nine months a year in New Zealand, with occasional trips to Los Angeles and London to continue teaching cookery and consulting. She teaches her elegant comfort style of starters and desserts in the states and abroad, including Haagen-Dazs International, Divertimenti London and CINZ in Kerikeri, New Zealand. Her dinner party dessert classes at London’s Divermenti cooking school are always popular, as is her ‘Art of Plated Desserts’ at Westlake Academy in Los Angeles, California.

Tash was working in Hawaii, helping to co-ordinate the annual premier international food event, “Cuisines of the Sun”, when she met celeb Kiwi Chef Peter Gordon.  Since then, Peter has kept in touch with Tash and they’ve become good friends. Tash is developing four dessert sauces to add to the Peter Gordon range and currently consults for “Dine” by Peter Gordon at Sky City in Auckland and New Zealand’s Organic Heilala Vanilla company. Previously at Charlie Trotter’s, Spago and Campanile in Los Angeles, Natasha currently divides her time between teaching, judging culinary competitions, consulting and catering. She has designed the pastry programs for several restaurants in the USA and New Zealand. She also teams up with John ScharffenBerger preparing chocolate tastes for his chocolate lectures.

Natasha is currently working on her first cookbook.