Ian Sanford was raised in Edgewater, Maryland. He began his formal training at The Baltimore School for the Arts at the age of sixteen. He has attended summer programs at The School at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts, The Arts Umbrella International Summer Dance Intensive in Vancouver, Canada, and the Nederlands Dans Theater Summer Intensive in The Hague, Netherlands. Over the course of his training, he has performed works by George Balanchine, José Limón, Bryan Arias, Martha Graham, Cayetano Soto, Didy Veldman, Crystal Pite, Marco Goecke, Paul Lightfoot, Sol León, Dimo Milev, Andrea Miller, Mats Ek, Lukas Tumilak, and Barry Hughson.