2025-2026 Committee Members

Angela Amarillas

Angela Amarillas is a dedicated dance educator and performer. She innovates, teaches, and performs historical and vernacular social couple dance across the United States and Europe, with notable appearances at the Smithsonian Institution, Lincoln Center, Academia Nazionale di Danza in Rome, Arts et Mouvement in Paris, and Dvorana Dance in Prague.

Anita Paciotti

Anita Paciotti is a Bay Area native, a Principal Dancer with the San Francisco Ballet for 18 years under the directors Lew Christen and Michael Smuin, followed by 37 years as a Rehearsal Assistant under director Helgi Tomasson. She was also a Principal Character Dancer until her retirement in 2023. She recently staged works by Helgi Tomasson and Jerome Robbins for Atlanta Ballet and Houston Ballet respectively.

ChingChi Yu

ChingChi Yu was in LangLing Theater before relocating to California from Taiwan in 1986. She’s had the honor of dancing in works by many Bay Area choreographers and is a founding member of Dandelion Dance Theater. In January 2023, she joined Dance Generators. ChingChi discovered choreography as a dance student at UC Berkeley, and upon graduating joined Asian American Dance Performances as a resident choreographer. Her work has been presented throughout the Bay Area. ChingChi’s work is theatrical and usually has an emotional component. Her theater experience greatly influenced her choreography, which uses theatrical imagery, facial expressions, and intriguing character interactions to express a potently wide range of emotions and human experience. Awards: City of Berkeley Civic Arts Grant. SADC Frank Shawl Residency.

David Henry

David has had a diverse professional dance career. He came to Berkeley and entered the folk dance world in the 70s. Touring nationally with Khadra International Folk Ballet and in Europe with Westwind International Folk Ensemble. He breached out into ballroom dance, and has been teaching American and International Ballroom style dance ever since. Exploring modern dance while studying at Cal, this eventually lead him to ballet. He was a member of many local companies ,Berkeley Ballet Theater, Peninsula Ballet Theater, Solano Civic Ballet, Palesch Pacific Ballet, Oakland Ballet ,as well as Tuju Tasksu (an improvisational masked theatre company) and Omega West, a liturgical dance group. Still active in the dance world, David is also accomplished yogi.

Elizabeth Sweeney

Elizabeth Sweeney began her dance training under the Royal Academy of Dance before continuing her studies with Paul Curtis and Shawn Stuart at San Jose Dance Theatre (SJDT), performing in The Nutcracker from age eight to seventeen. Under Robert Kelley’s direction, she participated in Regional Dance America, gaining exposure to a wide range of artistic influences. She later trained at the San Jose Cleveland Ballet School under Denis Nahat before earning her BA in Dance from California State University, Long Beach, where she studied under Keith Johnson, Susan McLain, and Doug Neilsen, expanding her passion for modern dance.

Elizabeth is TESOL-certified and taught English in Beijing, China before returning to the Bay Area to work as an insurance professional. She joined the SJDT Board of Directors in 2011 and has served as Executive Director since 2023, leading the organization into a period of artistic revitalization, community outreach expansion, and organizational Growth.

In her role as Executive Director, Elizabeth oversees two major mainstage productions annually, educational programming serving over 1,000 students, and outreach initiatives that bring the arts to underrepresented communities. She is dedicated to preserving the legacy of ballet in San Jose while ensuring it remains relevant and accessible for future Generations.

As a newly appointed member of the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee, Elizabeth is eager to bring her deep knowledge of the South Bay’s vibrant dance scene to the table. She is committed to honoring the diversity, excellence, and innovation of Bay Area dance while advocating for greater visibility of artists and organizations from her region.

Hally Bellah

Hally's dance journey began unconventionally, gaining admission to San Francisco Ballet School as a high school senior. At 20, she earned her BFA in Ballet with a modern minor from The North Carolina School of the Arts.
Her career started in the Bay Area where she danced with The SF Opera Ballet, Deborah Slater Dance Theater and The Ruth Langridge Dance Co. She then moved to NYC where she danced with a wide range of accompanies including: Rebecca Kelly Dance Co, New York Theater Ballet, Armitage Ballet, The Eglevsky Ballet and was the lead dancer in a North American Tour of ‘The King and I’ for 6 months.
In 1991 she joined Die Komische Oper, a major ballet company in Berlin, Germany. After returning to the US a decade later, she taught ballet at Shawl Anderson for close to 20 years.
She’s a master fitness trainer and the co-founder of a nonprofit event ‘AfroComicCon’ which is an event for POC and women in the arts, media, tech, and Entertainment. She also returned to the stage, performing with Danse Lumiere, and earned the 'Best Performance of 2011' award for her captivating solo portrayal of Emily Dickinson as part of Cal Performances.

Jenefer Johnson

Jenefer was a member of the Phares Ballet, Central Pennsylvania Ballet, Dayton Ballet and the former Shawl Anderson Modern Dance Co., and taught ballet technique at Shawl- Anderson Dance Center, Berkeley City Ballet and UC Berkeley.
She is a senior lecturer emerita of the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley where, as an American Cultures Fellow, she annually taught an undergraduate requirement that focused on gender, culture and ethnicity in dance forms associated with various African American, Jewish American and Indigenous American cultures.
At UCB she also cycled through four other courses that dealt with the history, culture, and/or analysis of a variety of dance genres and served as advisor for the department's undergraduate thesis seminar.
She was a frequent Visiting Professor at Mills College where she held seminars in ballet and modern dance and served as advisor for the dance program's master's thesis seminar.
For a decade, she taught ballet history in San Francisco Ballet School's trainee program and in its summer program.
She is a former Izzies Chair and has chaired two of its subcommittees (Governance and Membership).

Julian Pham

Julian Pham is a filmmaker and dancer based in Oakland and is also the Creative Director for the City of San Francisco's Public Works department, in the Office of Communications and Public Affairs.
As a dancer, he was a company member of Savage Jazz Dance Company from 2010-2014, and in 2013, the company was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award in the category of Outstanding Achievement in Performance – Company. He has also danced with ahdanco, Push Dance Company with Ensemble Mik Nawooj, and Erika Shuch.
As a filmmaker, he recently completed his first feature film, Owl, in 2024, which has been featured at CAAM Fest, Twin Cities Film Festival and Poppy Jasper International Film Festival. He has also directed short narrative and short documentary films that have played in national and international festivals, and was shortlisted for the Orchard Project Episodic Lab in 2023 for a television pilot. He is an avid cinephile primarily focused on screenwriting and directing, but enjoys all aspects of filmmaking.

Katy (Katherine) Warner

Katherine Warner is a founding member of Alonzo King Lines Ballet. She also danced with San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Dance Spectrum, Zaccho Dance Theater, San Francisco Opera, and Santa Fe Opera. Katherine has been honored by the Isadora Duncan Awards for Outstanding Contribution as a Dancer. Katherine graduated Magna Cum Laude from SF State University, with a degree in Child/Adolescent Development. Ms. Warner taught with Alonzo King Lines Dance Center and the Lines Educational Programs.

Leah Edwards

Leah began studying ballet and other dance styles when she was eight and has continued to follow and study dance ever since. Although she pursued a career in startups, she has also been deeply involved in the arts. In addition to helping create a course in arts management in the Stanford business school, Leah studied ballet at Stanford with Ken Delmar and dance history and criticism with Janice Ross. With more training in writing workshops hosted by the Dance Critics Association, Leah wrote dance and theater articles for international publications. In addition to serving on the board of the Della Davidson Dance Company, Leah has completed many marketing and fundraising projects for other dance companies and has served on other nonprofit arts boards. She currently serves on the board of the San Francisco Dance Film Festival and continues to take dance classes at several Bay Area studios. And, of course, she attends scores of dance performances around the world each year.

Lucia Verzola

Lucia Verzola began her formal ballet training at Kansas City Ballet and went on to study at Kansas School of Classical Ballet and the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet. She spent summers at Miami City Ballet School and Philadelphia Ballet School (formerly the School of Pennsylvania Ballet). She graduated from the University of San Francisco with a B.A. in English and Journalism and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Saint Mary’s College of California. She is honored to continue to experience the joys of dance as an audience member. Though Lucia grew up moving often, she considers the Bay Area home and lives in Oakland.

Missy Kim

Missy Kim’s ballet journey began in 2014 at Santa Clara Ballet in an adult beginner class where she fell in love with the exercise and art form. Since that first class she has performed in SCB’s Nutcracker party scene, and volunteered in costumes, ticketing, social media marketing, fundraising, and more. Missy has served on Santa Clara Ballet’s board since 2015. In 2023 she was San Jose Dance Theatre’s Nutcracker Prop Master.

Paul Parish

Paul is the dance critic for the Bay Area Reporter, the nation’s oldest gay weekly. He’s covered dance for 35 years, writing for local alternative papers and for Ballet Review, Dance Magazine, Ballett Internazional/Tanz Aktuelle, and The New Yorker. He studied English at the U of Mississippi and at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and left the PhD program at UC Berkeley to study ballet with Sally Streets. He’s also studied West African, Limon, Cunningham, contact improv, Pilates, and Lindy hop. He has performed with the dance Brigade and Remy Charlip. He teaches at the Beat and at the Downtown Berkeley YMCA.

Susan Melville

Susan’s love of dance started in the Philippines where she received her first dance training in Luigi Jazz and ballet. When she came to the United States, she continued to study dance in diverse styles such as modern, Broadway jazz, Flamenco, dance teacher training and more. She was very fortunate to be able to train with Bay Area teachers Yaelisa, Inna Bayer, Karen Morell, to name a few. In addition to performing and teaching children's dance classes, Susan has greatly enjoyed attending countless dance performances over the decades living in the Bay Area and is greatly looking forward to using these experiences as a member of the Izzies.