Amanda Phillips Balingit

Amanda Phillips Balingit is Costume Shop Manager for the School of Performing Arts. She joins Virginia Tech after eight years at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey, where she was a costume shop draper and an adjunct professor in the Theatre and Dance Department. Her broad teaching experience has included courses in beginning and advanced costume construction, flat patterning, tutu making, corsetry, and fabric dyeing, painting and distressing.

Through her pragmatic and solution-oriented instructional methods, she blends theory and practice in order to reach a diverse range of learning styes and skill sets. She has honed her craft in shops such as the Broadway shop of Lynne Baccus with the creations of costume designers such as Catherine Zuber (Just In Time, Moulin Rouge), Gregg Barnes (Disney’s Aladdin on Broadway), Susan Hilferty (Funny Girl - National Tour). Thanks to a particular interest in, and respect for, physically demanding forms of performance, she has been fortunate enough to make costumes for Richmond Ballet, Ballet West, and Carolina Ballet. As the Assistant Head of Wardrobe for Cirque du Soleil’s NYC tour of Zarkana and Draper for Circus Juventas, she was able to gain invaluable first-hand experience and know-how which she has been imparting to capable and curious learners for over a decade.

Amanda is a native of Southwest Virginia and has worked in and/or supervised several shops in the region (Radford University, Mill Mountain Theater, etc.) and beyond. She graduated from Virginia Tech in 2001 with a BA in Theatre Arts with a specialization in Costume Construction. She went on to earn an MFA in Costume Production from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. She is thrilled to join her alma mater and to have the exciting opportunity to pass on her craft to the next generations.