Cheryl Burke Biography Cheryl Burke has just recently begun to attract national attention for her work on the television show, Dancing with the Stars. At just the tender age of twenty-two, Burke has already been a professional dancer and teacher for many years; a dancer who prides herself in being a rule-breaker in the art. Cheryl Bautista Burke was born in May of 1984. She grew up in San Francisco, California, in a family that loved to dance. Burke comes from a multi-racial family, being half Filipino and half Caucasian. She began taking ballet lessons at only four years old and quickly began performing throughout the San Francisco Bay area. At the age of eleven, Cheryl’s dancing interests expanded when she took a class in ballroom dancing. She quickly became fascinated with this new form of dance and hung up her ballet shoes to focus her energy on becoming a ballroom dancer. For the next two years she took classes in both standard ballroom and Latin dancing. At the age of thirteen, Burke was already touring and competing around the world in ballroom dancing. She graduated high school in 2002 from Menlo-Atherton High School.
One of the awards Burke won when she was younger was from competing in the 2005 World Cup in the Professional Rising Star Latin Champion UK Championships. She placed fourth overall in the Under-21, U.S. Division. Cheryl prides herself in being a unique dancer, unlike anyone else out there. She has made dancing her sole focus in life; it has become her way of expressing how she is feeling. Dancing has turned her into a competitor, both on the dance floor and off. She strives to be the best that she can be in everything she strives to accomplish. Besides dancing, both Cheryl and her family are well-known philanthropists in the Bay area. Cheryl returned to the Bay area in 2006 to help the International School of the Peninsula raise over $250,000 for their educational programs. Burke and her family have spent many hours volunteering their time and energy toward charity efforts. In 2006 Cheryl signed on to season two of Dancing with the Stars. The concept of the show is to pair a professional dancer with a celebrity. The teams are then judged on their performances by a panel of three judges, and slowly eliminated until there is a winning team. Cheryl was teamed up with 98 degrees star, Drew Lachey. They were the winning team on season two. Past celebrities on the show include: Master P, Tatum O’Neil, George Hamilton, Joey McIntyre, and Rachel Hunter. The show has been a great success. On the finale there were 27 million viewers watching.
Cheryl’s current home is in Los Angeles where she can be close to Hollywood and the numerous opportunities available there. Let us know of updates to the Cheryl Burke biography at editor@yuddy.com | 
