Previous Members

In the following list of previous members, the clickable ones are those who served since 1999, when the website was created, and for whom there are biographies. Those biographies were accurate at the time of service on the Committee, but are no longer current. There is also a list of current members.

Cal Anderson designed the first Izzies Awards. He was the founding art director and designer for in dance, a publication of the Dance Coalition, and taught Design at the San Francisco Art Institute. For a decade he designed all the posters, programs, and ads for the San Francisco Ballet, where he did sets and/or costumes for eight San Francisco Ballet productions, including the Fiftieth Anniversary Celebrations, Life – a Do-It-Yourself Disaster, Totentanz, N.R.A., Peter and the Wolf, Orpheus, Scarlatti Portfolio, and Love-Lies-Bleeding. He has also done projects for Pacific Northwest Ballet and Theater Flamenco, and has worked with Val Caniparoli, Carlos Carvajal, Adela Clara, Lew Christensen, Robert Gladstein, Lucas Hoving, Miguel Santos, Kent Stowell, and Jerome Weiss. He worked with Steven Steinberg on the design of exhibitions at the Opera House, Encore, and books for the SF Performing Arts Library and Museum.

Karen Attix
“If I could say it in words, I wouldn't be dancing."
-- Isadora Duncan
Karen Attix, native of Oakland, has performed professionally with the companies of Kathryn Posin, Merce Cunningham, and Margaret Jenkins, and developed her own touring company, Dances for 1 and 2, with Virginia Matthews and guest composers. A recipient of two NEA Choreography Fellowships, she also worked as an Affiliate Artist in the states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Idaho. For the past 16 years, she has worked as an arts administrator developing a performing and literary arts program at UCSF and most recently, a marketing program at the Osher Marin Jewish Community Center. She has served as a panelist on the California Arts Council Dance Touring Program and Organizational Development. Currently, she is training to be a Pilates personal trainer and mat teacher.

Molly Barrons graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a concentration in Dance. From 1989 to 1990 she studied at The Laban Centre for Movement Studies and Dance, in England. In 1992, at an International Improvisation workshop hosted by Jacob's Pillow, she met Butoh master Koichi Tamano and his wife Hiroko, and since 1993 has trained and performed with them. In 1996 Barrons joined the Tamanos on a tour of Japan with Grammy Award-winning musician Kitaro, with performances in Tokyo, Mt Fuji, Osaka, Nigata, and Ise. In 2001 Barrons spearheaded Motor City Butoh, a weeklong workshop with the Tamanos at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. From 1999 to 2002 she was the Associate Producer of Dance Network's San Francisco Butoh Festival. In 2002 Molly helped facilitate an article by Bernice Yeung entitled The Bizarre World of Butoh, a cover story for The SF Weekly. In 2004 she was interviewed for a documentary commissioned by KQED for Spark, a Bay Area arts program. Currently she facilitates Metropolitan Butoh, an independent network for Butoh information, and offers weekly classes called Mission Butoh.
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Gail Barton Publicity Sub-Committee
Fall 2006 - 2007

Gail Barton has been on dance faculty at City College of San Francisco since 1980, where she directs & choreographs for the College’s Folk & Ballroom dance groups. Her MA, Secondary Credential, & BA were earned at San Francisco State University. She has served on the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival judging panel, the California Arts Council dance panel, and as a Vice President for California Dance Educators Association (CDEA). In addition to serving for nine years as dancer, choreographer and Assistant Director for Khadra Ethnic Music & Dance Ensemble, Barton has performed with The SF Chamber Dancers, Pacific Ballet. and as a “super” with American Ballet Theatre, National Ballet of Canada & Stuttgart Ballet.

Sheila Baumgarten (Executive Committee) has worked in arts administration since 1982 including Shakespeare/Santa Cruz, Tandy Beal & Company, the New Pickle Circus, and Dance through Time. She is currently the Development Director for A Traveling Jewish Theatre. In addition to her service on the Izzies, Sheila served for four years as a member of the Northern California Hillel Board of Advisors and for five years as Co-chair of the Santa Cruz County Japanese Cultural Fair Committee. Over the years she has participated in numerous grants panels and community arts committees. For more than a decade she worked in Regional and Community Planning for the County of Santa Cruz.
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Dudley Brooks is a choreographer, composer, and dancer, who is Artistic Director and co-founder of Run For Your Life!...it’s a dance company!, Associate Choreographer of Peninsula Ballet Theater, and Artistic Director of Voices/SF. He has choreographed for City Summer Opera (San Francisco) and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has taught at the San Francisco School of Circus Arts (now The Circus Center) and served on their Board of Directors, and was Resident Choreographer and Stage Director for Bay Area Youth Opera. He performed with the Nikolais Dance Theater in NYC and with San Francisco Dance Spectrum, and has taught workshops and master classes in Ballet, Modern Dance, Mime, Improvisation, Composition, and Physical Comedy, throughout the United States and in Europe. He currently performs Balinese music with Gamelan Sekar Jaya. Mr. Brooks has served as a juror panelist for the Marin Arts Council, Theater Bay Area CA$H Grants, and the SF School of the Arts. He has a BA in Mathematics from UC Berkeley, and has tutored and taught Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science.
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Regina Calloway Biography not available.
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Ruth Yafonne Chen, a Contributing Writer for Asian Week and a member of the Dance Critics Association, helped to launch Bay Area Celebrates National Dance Week in 1999. Trained in classical ballet, Chinese and modern dance, Ms. Chen is currently an ensemble member of the Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company and General Manager for Chinese Cultural Productions. Ms. Chen danced with Unbound Spirit, the resident modern dance company of Asian American Dance Performances. She received her BA in English with Humanities Honors from Stanford University, where her studies culminated in a senior thesis on prophetic worship dance in 20th century American dance. An avid member of the Bay Area dance community, Ms. Chen has worked in various writing and administrative capacities for non-profit arts organizations including The San Francisco Ballet Association, ODC/San Francisco, Theater Artaud, Asian American Dance Performances, and California Lawyers for the Arts.
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Mary Cochran was Assistant Professor at Mills College. She was a principal dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company from 1984-1996. She directed Taylor 2, Taylor’s second company, during its '98-'99 season. Ms. Cochran is a certified reconstructor of the Paul Taylor repertory and has staged numerous Paul Taylor works for Taylor 2 and for dance departments throughout the country. As a choreographer, Ms. Cochran has been commissioned to create works for the Oakland Ballet, Tenth Street Danceworks, Full Force Dance Productions, the University of Michigan, Purchase College, Southern Methodist University, Mills College, and Agnes Scott College. Her works have been produced in New York City, domestically, and abroad. Currently director of the Mills Repertory Dance Company, Ms. Cochran is the former Artistic Director and co-founder of NCNY Dance, and.directed the modern dance company of the Roanoke Summer Institute for the North Carolina School of the Arts. Ms. Cochran continues her performing career as a guest artist with Sara Hook Dances. Renowned as "an interpreter of Paul Taylor's work who absorbs technique into her bones", Ms. Cochran has performed and taught on every continent except Antarctica. Ms. Cochran has been a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan, Agnes Scott College, and at Mills during the '97-'98 academic year. Additionally, Ms. Cochran was a member of the Nikolais Dance Theatre from 1981-1983 and trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts and with her mother, Jerry Bywaters Cochran
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Ben Collins has been a dance fan since 1962 when at age 15 he spent his hard-earned summer money to see Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev at the Seattle World’s Fair. He has lived most of his adult life in San Francisco where he has worked at Zuni Café, 544 Natoma Performance Gallery, and Project Inform. He serves on the board of Stephen Pelton Dance Theater and was the event chairman for the Izzies Committee for the 2004 awards ceremony.
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Helen Dannenberg is a choreographer, performer, teacher and Certified Activity Program Coordinator. She performed with Michele Larsson, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, and Doug Skinner, among others. Her teaching has included Sonoma, Hayward, and San Jose State Colleges, as well as the Arts Conference at Star Island, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A recipient of several NEA Choreography Fellowships, she was an artist-in-residence with the Artworks Program of the Mt. Zion Institute on Aging. In a previous residency at a senior housing complex, sponsored by the California Arts Council, she directed residents in creating autobiographical performance pieces. She co-taught a workshop, The Courageous Body ™ for the Institute of Spirituality and Aging. Her work has been performed throughout the Bay Area as well as at Dance Theater Workshop in New York City. Ms. Dannenberg was a founding member of Circuit Network. She is a member of the advisory board of Legacy Oral History Project and was head of the Activity Department at a skilled nursing facility, at which she is now a social worker. She is interested in the continuum of her own and other dancers’ performing from young dancers through the middle years and on to elderhood.
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John W. DeRoy is a longtime supporter of Dance in the Bay Area and the Izzies. He is a chiropractor for dancers and sits on the advisory board of Kunst-Stoff Dance Company. His generosity to the dance community is demonstrated in many ways, from being a constant audience member to annually contributing flowers to the annual Izzies Award ceremony.
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Dr Zak Diouf is the founder and director of Diamano Coura West African Dance Company. Born in the African nation of Senegal, Dr Diouf received his PhD in Ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley. Dr Diouf has combined a brilliant career as a choreographer and performer with teaching. He has done extensive research into African music and dance along with choreographing some of the best dance and dramatic pieces for renowned companies such as African-American Dance Ensemble, Dimension Dance Theater of Oakland, CA, Harambe Dance Company, a variety of dance companies in New York, and Diamano Coura. Dr Diouf's expertise has extended to consultancy on the Classical/African fusion choreography Lambarena with the San Francisco Ballet, and the Ballets of Utah, Florida, Indiana, Singapore, and South Africa. From 1958-62, Dr Diouf was director of the Mali Ensemble, a multinational company representing the unity of the West African countries of Mali, Senegal and Guinea. He became director of Les Ballets Africaines in 1963, and later the Senegalese National Dance Company, from 1964-68. In 1969 he joined the faculty of Southern Illinois University while working with Ms Katherine Dunham. Dr Diouf's knowledge and expertise in African art and culture was so valued that in 1970 he was among performers invited to the White House Conference for Children. In June of 1996, Dr Diouf was one amoung hundred drummers selected to attend the World Drum for Peace Parade in Atlanta, Georgia, as a prelude to organizing the opening of the Olympics. Since 1973, Dr Diouf has taught at San Jose State University, Sonoma State University, University of San Diego, UCLA and UCSF, and CSU Hayward. Dr Diouf currently teaches West African music, dance, and history at Laney Community College in Oakland, is an Artist-In-Residence teaching free women's Sabar Drum techniques along with weekly classes in music and dance at the Alice Arts Center in Oakland, and does consulting and workshops in drum-making, choreography, African history and performing arts.
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Austin Forbord's artistic and professional pursuits include documentary filmmaking, choreography, performing, photography, and videography. Austin co-directs the Rapt Performance Group with his wife Shelley Trott. Their work was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Award for Performance in 2001 and Design in 2003. Austin has performed with a diverse group of local companies in addition to Rapt, including AWD, Scott Wells & Dancers, On-Site Dance Co, Kunststoff and Sara Shelton Mann/Contraband. He has created video backdrops for performances by Joe Goode Performance Group, Robert Moses' Kin, Sara Shelton Mann/Contraband, Stephen Pelton, Erling Wold, and Motion-Lab. Rapt is also a film company, and Austin recently finished directing and editing dance films for Anna Halprin and Deborah Hull. Rapt is responsible for the critically acclaimed full length documentary, Artists in Exile: A Story of Modern Dance in San Francisco. Currently Austin is directing and editing two new documentaries, Bay Area Dance: The Early Years and Normal People, a film about Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. For more information about any of these projects please visit www.raptproductions.com.
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Carrie Gaiser Awards Nominations Chair and Governance and Policy Chair
Member 2004 - 2007

Carrie Gaiser is PhD student in Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.  Her research interests include twentieth century ballet, dance historiography, and religion and performance in traditional and avant-garde Japanese dance (Noh and butoh). She holds a BA, summa cum laude, from Smith College, and in 2003 received an Andrew W Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies. Carrie also trained as a full-scholarship student at the Kirov Academy in Washington, DC, graduating with distinction under the tutelage of Alla Sizova. She danced professionally as a member of the Fort Worth Dallas Ballet (Paul Mejia, Artistic Director) from 1993-1997. She currently enjoys practicing flamenco, capoeira, and yoga.

Maritza Gueler
Membership Sub-Committee and Publicity Sub-Committee Co-Chair

A native of Argentina, Maritza Gueler immigrated to the United States in 1999 after over a decade as a professional journalist specializing in the arts. In 2001, she founded DANZAHOY, the first Spanish-language magazine about ballet, modern dance, jazz, tap, and ethnic dance, with special emphasis on topics and trends of interest to Latinos/ Hispanics in the US, Latin America, and Europe. publisher of DANZAHOY, Ms Gueler has developed web content, established relationships with national and international dance companies, and provides journalistic translation services for arts-related organizations.
Ms. Gueler served as managing editor for arts sections of several magazines in Argentina. During her first year in the US, she was West Coast correspondent for Balletin Dance, an Argentinean magazine specializing in ballet. Simultaneously she served as general managing editor for the start-up of the website Televisa, a leading broadcasting company based in Mexico. Ms Gueler also was a writer and reviewer of ballet and film for Latino.com. Her experience includes education in theater, modern dance, Spanish dance and jazz dance.
Ms Gueler graduated from Universidad Católica de Argentina in journalism, and philosophy and psychology from Universidad Católica de Santa Fe. In Argentina she was a member of the Board of Directors of ACE (Asociación de Cronistas del Espectáculo—Association of Entertainment Journalists), assigned to select the best performances of the year in Theatre, Dance, Choreography, Musicals, and Set Design. She served as a juror for various competitions of provincial theatre festivals and the Certámenes Metropolitanos de Espectáculos para Niños (Metropolitan Show Contests for Children), to select the best performances of the year for kids.
Ms. Gueler’s journalistic credits include the magazines Noticias, Luna; Teatro; Balletin Dance; Noticias Buenos Aires; the newspapers La Razón, Perfil, and Diario del Tango; and the CDs Los clásicos argentinos, selecting relevant musical themes related to the history of tango music and its lyrics, and Los grandes poetas del tango, selecting works of the most famous authors of tango lyrics. She was ballet and theatre commentator in the radio shows La palabra, el deseo y la locura and Detrás del espejo, and produced and directed cultural shows in Santa Fe, Argentina.
She is authored the children’s musicals and plays Camila, una historia de amor y muerte (Camila, a story of love and death, commissioned by the National Institute of Theatre); Quinquela, el carbonero de La Boca (Quinquela, the coalman of La Boca, commissioned by the National Secretary of Culture); and Con la boca abierta (Dumfounded, a journalistic investigation on the influence of theater and arts on children in the slums).

Jennifer Gwirtz’s interdisciplinary career has spanned the classical dance, contemporary dance, performance art, and fine art scenes. As a young person, artists such as Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, The Judson Church artists, John Cage, Neil Gaiman, and others formed her ideas about what art could be. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s she took four years away from a degree in sculpture to perform with small ballet companies. She danced for the Atlanta Ballet and at the same time began to show work that used sound, space, objects, and action in underground galleries in downtown Atlanta. In 1995 she performed her solo video/movement piece Makeup at the ICA in Boston as part of the Digital Personae exhibit. After receiving her MFA in New Genres and the MacMillan Award from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1997, her critically acclaimed Electroencephalograph Series toured California and New Zealand as part of the group show, Neural Notations. She has danced for Megan Nicely & Dancers (1998-9), Spinning Yarns Dance Collective (1999-2002), Maxine Moerman Dancetheatre (2004-present), and Mary Armentrout Dance Theater (2003-present). In 1998, she and co-conspirator John Baumann created Right Brain Performancelab. They have shown their work all over the Bay Area, including co-productions with Spinning Yarns Dance Collective, such as Woven Tales & Branching Thoughts (2000,) a fusion of words and movement, and Terraffirma (2001,) a full season of indoor and outdoor site-specific works about personal, public, and political space during the economic boom. In 2001 they performed their first full-length duo show, Not a Step, in Auckland, New Zealand. Jennifer continues to make work that takes conceptual and political risks. She has created work for group shows, such as her Meat State trilogy, and Hegemony Cricket, a Right Brain Performancelab collaboration. She has been a member of the Field Advisory Board since 2002 and facilitates Field workshops. Her most recent labors of love involve finding ways to generate space, community, and currency both for her work and for others’. One of these projects is The Performers’/Artists’ Voice, a publication of peer reviews written by and for local artists. She also is a certified Pilates instructor who teaches at Elevation Pilates.
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Keith Hennessy is a Canadian-born inter-disciplinary artist and citizen living in community in San Francisco. Keith started dancing around the house as a child, began the study and practice of Contact Improvisation in 1979, and became a student of Modern master Lucas Hoving in 1982. Hennessy was a member of the extreme performance collective CORE and was a founding member and principle collaborator in CONTRABAND, an award winning, internationally acclaimed dance/performance company directed by Sara Shelton Mann. He has won choreography awards from all of the local award sponsors as well as media awards for performance and organizing. Keith is the director of CIRCO ZERO, a diverse crew of circus and music artists performing experiments in risk, physical poetry, ritual and public discourse. Hennessy¹s solo work has been produced throughout the US, in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, including several Gay and Lesbian Performance Festivals. From 1998-2002 he performed with CAHIN-CAHA, cirque bâtard, a French/American, mongrel circus based in France. From 1991-2002 Keith co-directed 848 Community Space, a thriving urban gallery. He is on faculty in the Interdisciplinary MFA program at Goddard College, taught performance and public art at New College of California from 1990-96, and has been teaching unique hybrids of performance, improvisation, and public ritual for 20 years. Hennessy is a member of Alternate ROOTS, a visionary service organization for community-based artists, and serves radical cultural agendas as a
consultant, director, teacher, curator, and agitator. He was arrested twice in 2003 for blockading the San Francisco Federal Building and Stock Exchange in attempts to stop the illegal and unjustified invasion of Iraq.
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Rachel Howard writes about dance for the San Francisco Chronicle, Voice of Dance, and Dance Magazine. She began her career as a staff arts writer for the Santa Barbara Independent and the Orange County Register, and was the dance critic of the San Francisco Examiner from 2000 to 2002. She has served as a dance division panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Village Voice. Her memoir about her father's unsolved murder will be published by Dutton in January 2005. She has a website at www.rachelhoward.com
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Monique Jenkinson has shown her work at ODC Theater, Dancers' Group, Venue 9, Cellspace, the Lab, Studio Valencia, and 848 Community Space, and set Showroom Dummies (Shopping and Posing), in store windows as part of the Retail Dance Festival (2001). During her ten years in San Francisco, Monique has performed with POTRZEBIE Dance Project, Sara Shelton Mann, Steamroller, and numerous other artists working in the confluence of dance and theater. She also co-directs Hagen & Simone with Kevin Clarke. Monique graduated from Bennington College in 1992 with a BA (double major) in Literature and Dance. She has also performed with Kathleen Hermesdorf and Motion Lab
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Angela Lynne Johnson has worked in various capacities with non-profit groups, arts organizations, producing and presenting entities, community organizers and municipal and other government agencies throughout the Bay Area. Currently she is an independent consultant working with non-profit arts and community organizations. Her current projects include the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, Cultural Odyssey, and the Berkeley Arts Festival. She is active with Americans for the Arts. Ms. Johnson is a member of the Association of American Cultures and a founding member of the Berkeley Art Museum’s Community Advisory Committee. She served as the City of Oakland's Cultural Arts Division Manager and the City of Berkeley’s Civic Arts Coordinator, and was one of the house managers for Zellerbach Auditorium. Ms. Johnson has volunteered as a board member and advisory committee member for the Berkeley Art Museum Community Advisory Board, the Clayton Lewis Institute for Arts and Ecology, the Downtown Berkeley Association's Design Review and Promotions Committees, UC Berkeley African-American Mentorship Program, Dance Bay Area, and Theater Artaud's African-American Leadership Committee. Ms. Johnson holds degrees from the University of California at Berkeley in Ethnic Studies and Mass Communications.
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Jenefer Johnson Governance and Policy Sub-Committee and Membership Sub-Committee
Fall 2003 - 2006

Jenefer Johnson has taught Dance Studies in the Department of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley since 1985. She is also currently on the faculty of Mills College, San Francisco Ballet School and the Acupressure Institute in Berkeley. She performed with the Dayton Ballet, the Central Pennsylvania Ballet, the Shawl Anderson Dance Company, and the Sacramento Theatre Ballet; has taught ballet technique at UC Berkeley, Shawl Anderson Dance Center, and Berkeley Conservatory Ballet. She has a private Acupressure practice in Berkeley.

Jared Kaplan, (Choreographer/Dancer; Associate Director of Dancers' Group) was born and raised in New York City and received a BA in Dance from Wesleyan University in 1999. In the Bay Area he has danced and collaborated with Sara Shelton Mann, Kim Epifano, David Dorfman, Scott Wells and Dancers, Annie Rosenthal & Co, Steamroller and others. He has also created and performed his own work at ODC Theater and Dance Mission. He was awarded two Merit Scholarships to the Bates Dance Festival, and has studied with Ron Brown, Bebe Miller, David Rousseve, Nancy Stark Smith, Shelly Senter, Doug Varone, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Mabiba Baegne, Augusta Moore, Susan Schell, Sean Curran, Tigger Benford, and many more. He served on the Advisory Board of Epiphany Productions in 2001 and is currently producing Dancers' Group's Summer Dance Festival 2002, creating new dances, and making a short dance film. He joined the Izzies in 2001.
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Alex Ketley is a nationally recognized choreographer and the artistic director of his own company, The Foundry. Formally a member of the San Francisco Ballet and Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet, he retired from dancing full time in 1998 to more deeply explore his interests in choreography, improvisation, mixed media work, and collaborative process. He has been a guest choreographer at the North Carolina School for the Arts and Florida State University and has done commissioned works for Jim Vincent of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and Robert Moses for his company KIN. Ketley is currently the Resident Choreographer of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance.
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Mary Ann Kinkead has served as Provost and Dean of the Faculty of Mills College since 1995. Previously she served as Dean of Fine Arts (1992-95) and as Chair of the Dance Department from 1988-1992. She held the Mary Metz Professorship for outstanding teaching from 1992 to 1994. Mary Ann has published two books on Labanotation and continues to teach in the Dance Department. While President Janet Holmgren was on Sabbatical, Mary Ann was Acting President from January through July, 1998.
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Debra Lammam Production Sub-Committee, Chair and BADA Liaison
Fall 2004 - 2007

Bio for Debbie Smith (Lamman) comming soon...

Kimun Lee’s interest in dance, music, and other the arts goes back many years and has included positions on the boards of several local arts organizations, including Chanticleer and Film Arts Foundation in the past, and Chinese Performing Arts Foundation, San Francisco Ballet, and CAL Performances currently. Professionally, Lee is a business advisor.
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Zari Le’on is the creator of Zari Le’on Dance Theater, a Hip Hop dance theater company created to produce stories about the culture of women. Zari Le’on is a 2005-2006 recipient of the CHIME grant, a project of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Zari has performed and toured with Newstylemotherlode, Punany Poets, and Robert Henry Johnson, in Hip Hop, Modern, and Spoken Word performances. Zari is the director of The College of Hip Hop, Inc., a modular school that travels to underrepresented communities to teach young women self-esteem and body awareness through Dunham technique fundamentals and Hip Hop dance. She currently directs the program through Aspire Public Schools, and recently obtained a grant through the East Bay Community Foundation to implement The College of Hip Hop in ten schools over the next three years.
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Leigh Lightfoot, MFA in Dance, MA in Somatic Psychology, has been an arts educator, director/choreographer, and reviewer for over 25 years. In 1993 she received an Izzie for Sustained Achievement for co-producing KPFA Radio's Dance on Air series. She is currently completing licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist, and continues to combine arts and psychology in her work.
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Raquel López began her flamenco dance studies in Seville, Spain, where she trained extensively with Matilde Coral, Rafael El Negro, and Manolo “El Mimbre”. She has also studied with the Spanish artists José Galvan, Manolo Marín, Pilar Montoya, Ansonini del Puerto, Miguel Funi, and Rosario Montoya “La Farruquita.
Raquel’s performing credits include performances with Theatre Flamenco, Rosa Montoya’s Bailes Flamencos, Cruz Luna’s Ole! Ole! Spanish Dance Company, Flamenco Vivo, Aire de Sevilla, Los Flamencos del Valle, Duende Flamenco, and Arte Flamenco de San Jose. For seven years she was a featured soloist with Los Flamencos de La Bodega at the Old Spaghetti Factory in San Francisco. She is Artistic Director and Co-founder of the critically acclaimed flamenco ensemble El Cuadro Flamenco and her student dance company, The Flamenco Dance Ensemble. She has been a guest lecturer in World Music and Dance classes at Sonoma State University and Golden Gate University in San Francisco.
In the area of arts management, Raquel has been the Executive Director of Kitka and the Dance Brigade, Publicist for Festival at the Lake, and Artist Liaison for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Dance Series and was Chair of the Izzies Committee in 1995. In addition, Raquel has served as a grants review panelist for the City of Oakland and the California Arts Council and was a member of the Funding Advisory Committee for the City of Oakland Cultural Affairs Commission. In 1998 Raquel was the recipient of an Isadora Duncan Dance Award in Costume Design for the 1997-1998 season.
Raquel has retired from performing and teaching. She now devotes her time exclusively to her flamenco costuming business, Designs.
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Crystal M. Mann, dancer and teacher, began her work in San Francisco as a member of the Welland Lathrop Dance Company and later served as a founding board member of the Bay Area Dance Coalition. A staff member of the San Francisco MOMA for ten years, she initiated the use of the galleries for performance and classes. She has taught on the faculties of both ODC and Margaret Jenkins schools and opened her own studio in San Francisco. Her early training included studies and performance with Virginia Tanner, Jose Limon, Lucas Hoving, Doris Humphrey and Eugene Loring. A National Endowment for the Arts consultant, panelist and master teacher for the Artists in Schools residency program, Ms. Mann has completed over 50 dance residencies in the United States, Europe and Australia. Ms. Mann developed a workshop training series for the John D. Rockefeller III Fund and served as a consultant to Harcourt Brace and contributer for an elementary level series on the arts. She served as program director for the 544 Natoma Performance Gallery and taught for the San Francisco Ballet in its initial outreach program to the public schools. She is currently a member of the steering committee for Bay Area Dancing - A Living Legacy, a project of Peters Wright Creative Dance.
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Virginia Matthews (Executive Committee), graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in dance under the mentorship of master teacher Bessie Schoenberg. Arriving in San Francisco in 1972 she became a founding member of The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, as well as the SF Bay Area Dance Coalition (later known as Dance Bay Area). After leaving the company in 1980 she was co-artistic director of Dances for 1 and 2, a founding member of Circuit Network (a management organization), and later the artistic director of The Virginia Matthews Dance Company. Her career as a dancer, educator, and choreographer has spanned almost 30 years. She is currently living and working in Sonoma County, and served as the co-chairman of The Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee.
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Maxine Moerman is the artistic director of Maxine Moerman Dancetheatre and the Executive Director of The Field San Francisco. Her choreography has been presented in London, Montreal, Toronto, Los Angeles, Washington DC, San Francisco and extensively in New York City. Ms. Moerman has been creating work for more than 15 years and holds an MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College. She has received support from The Foundation For Contemporary Performance Arts, The Independent Artist Challenge Fund, The Zellerbach Family Fund, C.A.S.H., and the San Francisco Art Commission. Currently she is teaching dance at the Creative Arts Charter School in San Francisco.
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José Navarrete studied theater at the National Actors Association’s Institute Soler, and dance at the National Institute of Fine Arts, in Mexico. He also has a BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley. He has performed with Joanna Haigood’s Zaccho Dance Theater, June Watanabe In Company, Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians, Shakiri/Rootworkers, and Sara Shelton Mann. He has also performed at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Boston’s Dance Umbrella, Dancing in the Streets in New York, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. José’s choreographic work has been presented by the Bay Area Dance Series, the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival, Summerfest, Theater Artaud, ODC Theater, and Dance Mission Theater. This year he is the recipient of a Bessie Schönberg Choreographers residency at The Yard, and a Djerassi artist-in-residence fellowship.
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Juliet Neidish danced throughout Europe, America, and Japan as a founding member of NovAntiqua Dance Company and Oskar Schlemmer's Bauhaus Dances. She was acclaimed for her performances of reconstructions of works by Michio Ito, modernist choreographer of the 1920s. She studied folk dance in Hungary, performing in this idiom with the troupe Ungaresca. Juliet has served as a dance reviewer for the New York State Council on the Arts, and has also published in Dance Perspectives.
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Nemesio Paredes, born in San Francisco of Filipino ancestry, began dance training at an early age with San Francisco ballet and later with Spanish classical and flamenco dance teachers in San Francisco and Spain. After service in the Navy, he earned a degree in dentistry from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, University of the Pacific School of Dentistry. Concurrently he pursued a career as a classical Spanish and flamenco dancer. He has appeared in San Francisco Opera's La Traviata and Carmen, and with Bailes Flamencos, Cuadro Español, Bailes Españas, and Theatre Flamenco of SF. He was a featured soloist in SF's Ethnic Dance Festival, the Men Dancing Series, Dance Action Series, Stanford University's Music Festival, SF's Stern Grove Summer Festival, and with the Tulare and San Jose Symphonies. He has appeared with Tango Argentine Folk Ballet, and has performed and toured with Smuin Ballets/SF. He was a recipient of the California Artists Series Achievement Award, and was featured in an article and on the cover of Filipinas Magazine. Now retired from dentistry, he takes flamenco workshops and coaches and teaches. He was on the dance faculty of San Jose Dance Theatre and performs on occasion.
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Paul Parish, former Rhodes Scholar, writes for Ballet Review in New York and locally for San Francisco Magazine and for alternative weekly papers. He has taught criticism at UC (Berkeley and Santa Cruz campuses) and at the Silesian Dance Theater Festival in Bytom, Poland. He was the best rock-and-roll dancer in his high school. He has studied ballet with Sally Streets and Debra Isaacson, Limon with Joan Lazarus, Cunningham with Ellen Cornfield, contact improv with Robert Funk and Sharon Tomsky, Sevillanas with Raquel Lopez, Lindy hop with Paul and Sharon and Belinda Ricklefs. He performed in Dance Brigade's Revolutionary Nutcracker Sweetie for ten years.
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Denise Pate Fundraising Sub-Committee and Production Sub-Committee
Fall 2005 - 2007

Denise Pate has spent over 20 years working in the dance community as a dancer, choreographer, teacher, administrator, and arts advocate.  She is currently Associate Director of Operations for California College of the Arts’ Center for Art and Public Life. In the 1980s she performed with Dimensions Dance Theatre, and directed Oakland Parks and Recreation’s City-Wide Dance Program. Her past affiliations include Young Audiences of the Bay Area, Wolftrap Institute, S.F. Ethnic Dance Festival, Youth in Arts, and CitiCentre Dance Theatre. She received her BA from Dominican University, where she studied modern dance with Bay Area luminaries June Watanabe and former Graham dancer Lar Roberson.  She also holds an MBA from the University of Phoenix. Some of her current board and advisory committee memberships include Dancers' Group, Luna Kids Dance, Oakland Funding Advisory Committee, and Black Choreographers Festival.

Stacey Prickett, Ph.D., (Executive Committee), is a former dancer who specializes in dance history and the sociology of dance. Her essays and critical reviews have appeared in Dance Research, Dance Theatre Journal, DCA News, Dance Chronicle, Studies in Dance History, and in the collections Dance in the City (edited by Helen Thomas, 1997) and Fifty Contemporary Choreographers (edited by Martha Bremser, 1999). She has lectured in dance at Sonoma State University, and presented lectures at University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, Stanford University, Roehampton Institute, Laban Centre in London, and London Contemporary Dance School. She is leading a seminar on Dance Theory and History at UC Santa Cruz in Spring 2000. She is an outgoing Co-chair of the Dance Critics.
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Anandha Ray is the founder and artistic director of Moving Arts Dance Collective. She has choreographed over 50 works, receiving national awards and grants, and has had her choreography presented in honorary concerts across the nation. She was one of five choreographers showcased in performances sponsored by the Martha Graham Company, her choreography has been commissioned /performed by RDT of Utah, several universities and colleges, and in festival performances across the United States and in Europe. She has performed the choreography of several leading choreographers including Tandy Beal, Bill Evans, Doris Humphrey, Margaret Jenkins, Cliff Keuter, Alwin Nikolais, and Anna Sokolow. Ms. Ray has developed an award-winning choreographic process called Expressive Movement Processing, based on a synthesis of processes from authentic movement and choreography. Ms. Ray has been Assistant Professor and Director of Dance at UOP, Director of the Dance Division at Yavapai College, dance faculty at Santa Monica College, and guest faculty at universities, colleges, and festivals. She has a BA in Dance Education from ASU (with honors), two MA degrees from UCLA (Choreography /Kinesiology, and Dance /Movement Therapy), and holds the Dance Therapy Registry from the American Dance Therapy Association. She has performed with Moving Arts Dance Collective, ARK III Dance, The Anandha Ray Collective, the UCLA touring Company, A Ludwig Company, Clarence Teeters and Dancers, ASU's touring Company, and festival and workshop performances across the nation and in Europe. Ms. Ray has appeared in television shows and commercials nationally and in France.
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Renee Renouf (Executive Committee) has written professionally on dance in the Bay Area since 1960. Her credits include publications in the major metropolitan newspapers of the Bay Area during the ‘60s and ‘70s, plus The Christian Science Monitor, Dance News, Dancing Times, and Dance International. Her reviews of Asian classical dance have appeared in Hokubei Mainichi, Asian Week, and various English language newspapers published in Asia. A member of the Dance Critics Association, she currently writes for ballet.co on the Web and serves on the Board of the New Orleans International Ballet Conference and the organizing committee of A Ballets Russes Celebration, June 1-4, 2000, in New Orleans.
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Danielle Robinson is a doctoral candidate in Dance History and Theory at the University of California, Riverside. She holds a masters degree in Theatre Arts from Northwestern University. She has taught dance history and analysis courses at University of Texas at Austin and UC-Riverside. Most recently, she has guest lectured at Sonoma State University, UC-Santa Cruz, and UC-Berkeley. Her writing has appeared in Dance Theatre Journal and in the edited collection I See American Dancing (2002). She has presented her research at several scholarly conferences, receiving graduate awards for her research from the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) and the American Theatre focus group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE).
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Jessica Robinson Fundraising Sub-Committee
Fall 2004 - 2007

Jessica Robinson is the Executive Director of CounterPULSE, a nonprofit that provides support and resources for emerging artists. She ushered CounterPULSE through an organizational merger and relocation, tripling the budget of the organization during her tenure as director. She designed and implemented CounterPULSE's successful Artist in Residence program, and has curated dozens of performances and workshops. She has also served as guest curator for organizations such as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the San Francisco International Arts Festival. She is a writer, performer and political activist and her dance writing has been published in In Dance and on CriticalDance.com. She has worked in administration, production, and publicity for artists and arts organizations including Jess Curtis, Keith Hennessy / Circo Zero, Dance Through Time, and the Erika Shuch Performance (ESP) Project. More recently, she provided directorial assistance for "Orbit" by the ESP Project at Intersection for the Arts. Jessica is an adjunct faculty member at the New College of California where she has designed and implemented courses including "Activist Arts Synthesis", "Arts Administration and Cultural Organizing" and "20th Century US History through the Arts." During her tenure on the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee she has been responsible for curating and co-producing the annual awards ceremony known as the "Izzies." She serves on the Arts Advisory Board of the Oakland Noodle Factory, the steering committee for San Francisco Arts Forum, and the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of Alternate ROOTS, a service and granting organization for community-based artists and organizations in the Southeastern United States. She has been the recipient of awards and scholarships from Dance/USA and the Bill T. Shannon Leadership Institute.

Lizz Roman, Artistic Director of LIZZ ROMAN & DANCERS, has been dancing and choreographing in San Francisco since 1984. In 1998 she received a SF Weekly Black Box Award for In Her Dreams, a site-specific installation piece commissioned by ODC Theater. Roman’s most recent work was commissioned by The San Francisco Butoh Festival and Yerba Buena Gardens for their 2004 Gardens Dance Festival. Roman and her company specialize in creating site-specific dances in spaces like Danzhaus ( Here Is Good, 2003), ODC Theater (8½ x 11: Playing In Stable Places, 2001-2002), and CELLSpace (Cell Dance, 2001), all of which played to sold out audiences and received critical acclaim for being “Breathtaking”, “Exhilarating”, “Captivating”, “Wondrously Poetic” (SF Bay Guardian), and “An Involving and Extraordinary Experience” (SF Gate). In 1999, Ms. Roman took on a staircase that towered 12 feet into the air, to present Always Falling, which played to sold out houses at Brady Street Theater. Later that year Roman participated in the ODC Loft Series, where she premiered Hall Dance. In 2000, Roman created site-specific dance for Theater Artaud as part of The National Dance Week. From 1999-2003, Ms Roman worked with large groups of dancers in performance workshops as part of the Workshop Performance Series at Rhythm & Motion Dance Center in San Francisco.
Ms. Roman has trained in Modern, Ballet, Contact Improvisation, and Yoga. She currently teaches modern dance at ODC and SF Dance Center. A certified Pilates trainer, Roman heads the rehabilitation program at the Ellie Herman Studio in SF, where she teaches yearly rehabilitation workshops for local and national Pilates trainers. Before moving to SF in 1984, Roman lived in Chicago, where she studied theater at the Goodman School of Drama. She attributes much of her choreographic style to her years as a student and performer of improvisational theater and dance in Chicago and St. Louis.
Her dances have been seen at Theater Artaud, ODC Theater, Danzhaus, Brady Street Theater, Dancers’ Group, CellSpace, Dance Gallery in Santa Cruz, and Yerba Buena Gardens. Additional teaching credits include: UC Berkeley, Rhythm & Motion Dance Center, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, Luna, the School of the Arts (SF), San Mateo Parks and Recreation Summer Dance Program, and Berkeley High School.
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Janice Ross Dance Division, Department of Drama, Stanford University.
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Kathryn Roszak Artistic Director Kathryn Roszak has performed with San Francisco Ballet and as a soloist with the San Francisco Opera Ballet. She is a graduate of the Advanced Training Program at the American Conservatory Theatre. As a choreographer Roszak has worked with Kent Nagano's Berkeley Symphony, ACT., California Shakespeare Festival, Opera San Jose, Sacramento Opera, Marin and Oakland Operas. In 1995 with visual artist/ composer Christopher Castle Ms. Roszak founded ANIMA MUNDI Dance Company.ANIMA MUNDI means soul of the world. The company creates works linking the arts, environment and humanity. ANIMA MUNDI has performed locally at Theatre Artaud, the Cowell Theatre and Grace Cathedral, and has been presented by La MaMa ETC in New York, The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, Copenhagen Festival in Denmark, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. Recent performances include Dance Mission, San Francisco, Richmond Art Center, College of the Redwoods in Eureka and Summerfest Dance Festival at the Cowell Theatre, San Francisco.
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Rupal S. Shah is a practitioner of Kathak, a classical North Indian dance form that relies heavily on intense rhythmically structured footwork, dramatic expression, and the subtlety of soft movement. She is also a writer, editor, and journalist.
Rupal has written about a number of national and international dancers and dance companies, such as Akram Khan, Pandit Chitresh Das, the Abhinaya Dance Company of San Jose, and Pandit Birju Maharaj, among others. Her many assignments covering the works of classical and contemporary Indian musicians such as Zakir Hussain, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, Karsh Kale, and Talvin Singh have helped her to better understand the dynamics and relationship between dancer and musician, which is the crux of many Indian dance forms.
In addition to writing about dance and the arts, Rupal writes regularly about food, travel, immigration, social and civil issues, and government policy, and has featured several people of interest, from political and social activists to inventive pioneers. She is the recipient of a New California Media Award in journalism and her poetry has been published in the Cold Mountain Review and The Midwest Poetry Review. A book-length collection of poetic works entitled A Shiver in August has also been published.
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Deborah Slater (writer/director/choreographer) has worked in dance and theater for the past 25 years. Selected companies include the Magic Theater, A Traveling Jewish Theater, Dell 'Arte, Theaterworks, San Diego Rep, and The Pickle Family Circus, as well as solo artists, including Bill Talen, Rinde Eckert, and Sarah Felder. She is a co-founder of Circuit Network and Studio 210, founder and Artistic Director of Art of the Matter Performance Foundation, and Artistic Director of Deborah Slater Dance Theater. Ms Slater and DSDT are recipients of numerous awards, Izzie nominations (most recently 2003 for The Sleepwatchers), and grants, including nine NEA fellowships, California Arts Council, Fleishhacker, Vanguard, Zellerbach Family Fund, Haas Family Fund, Grants for the Arts/Hotel Tax, and the San Francisco Arts Commission, etc. Ms Slater serves as Vice-President on the Executive Committee of the Djerassi Resident Artist Program. DSDT is a roster company for Young Audiences of the Bay Area and SF Hotel Tax/Grants for the Arts. Ms Slater is a mentor for the Vision Series for high school and young professional choreographers.
Artistic collaborators include composers Erling Wold and Bill Talen; directors Julie Hebert and Jim Cave; filmmaker Chris Beaver; costumer Beaver Bauer, and lighting designers Elaine Buckholtz and Jack Carpenter.
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Anne Smith Biography not available.

Debbie Smith (formerly Debbie Lammam)

Debbie is originally from Austin, Texas, but now makes her home in San Francisco. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. In her senior year, she received the Rappoport-King Fellowship to conduct research for a senior thesis project analyzing the aesthetic relationship between Arabic music and dance.

She has studied and performed Middle Eastern dance since 1990, exploring regional dance styles from North African to Persian, and eventually specializing in Egyptian raqs sharqi and folkloric styles. Her teachers, influences and role models include master teachers such as Shareen el Safy of Santa Barbara, Elena Lentini of New York, Karen Barbee of San Antonio, and Amina Goodyear of San Francisco and many notable dance artists from Egypt such as Mona Said, Raqia Hassan, Magda Ibrahim, and others. She has performed at numerous theatrical venues and at seminar shows throughout the country. Since 2005 she has been a member of Al-Juthoor Palestinian Folk Dance Company.

Debbie has worked for Dance Brigade’s Dance Mission Theater, a multicultural dance school and theater in San Francisco’s Mission district, since August 2001. As Program Manager she oversees daily operations of the school and theater, as well as programming the theater’s spring and fall seasons and coordinating all aspects of production and publicity, serving dancers, choreographers, technicians and other artists from a wide range of dance styles and backgrounds. In addition, she works part time as Cultural Events Coordinator for San Francisco’s Arab Cultural and Community Center, assisting with cultural programming, grant writing, and outreach.

An active member of the San Francisco arts community, she serves on the Isadaora Duncan Dance Awards (Izzies) committee and has participated in a number of panels and committees relating to dance, arts funding, and other related subjects, in addition to volunteer stage management, production assistance and consultation for a number of San Francisco artists and venues. She continues to read and study widely in the fields of dance history and ethnology, ethnomusicology, and performance studies.

Marty Sohl has been documenting dance through her photography for over twenty years. A professional ballet dancer for ten years, Marty was inspired to learn photography as a means of staying involved in the dance world she loves. Early in her photography career, she shot rehearsals in the dance studio and on stage, using only available light. Over the years, she has developed her own unique style of studio lighting. Marty has been official photographer for San Francisco Ballet for twenty years, and for San Francisco Opera since 1982. Her images of Lines Contemporary Ballet have become icons of the company. Marty has worked for American Ballet Theatre, Luis Bravo's Forever Tango, Oakland Ballet, American Musical Theatre of San Jose, Cleveland San Jose Ballet, California Shakespeare Festival, and the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, as well as numerous other dance and theater companies. Her photos appear regularly in Dance Magazine and Opera News. In 1996, Marty received the Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Sustained Achievement for two decades of contribution to the San Francisco Bay Area Dance Community. Marty is the featured photographer for the Year 2000 Dance Magazine Calendar.

Leyya Tawil ( is a performer, choreographer, educator and artistic director of Leyya Tawil's Dance Elixir. She has held artistic residencies and faculty positions at numerous institutions, including the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of San Francisco and Sonoma State University, and is currently Artist in Residence at Middlebury College (VT). As Artistic Director of Dance Elixir, her work has been presented throughout the U.S., including the Arab American National Museum (MI), Oakland Art Gallery (CA), Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit and Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco. Leyya is also co-director of the Temescal Arts Center, a low-cost performance and rehearsal space in Oakland. She served on the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee (" the Izzies") from 2003-2006. Leyya received degrees in dance from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (BDA) and Mills College-Oakland (MFA).

Aimee Ts’ao, dancer, choreographer, dance critic and reviewer, is West Coast Bureau Chief of The Dance Insider, reviewer for Bay Area Reporter, and has written for Dance Magazine.
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Katherine Warner is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher who has danced throughout the United States, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe, with San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Dance Spectrum, Zaccho Dance Theater, San Francisco Opera, and Santa Fe Opera. She is a founding member of Alonzo King's Lines Contemporary Ballet, with whom she performed as a principal artist from 1982 to 1996.. She was honored as a finalist by the Isadora Duncan Awards Committee while dancing with Lines. She is a member of New Shoes, Old Souls Dance Company of San Francisco and has had two works commissioned by NSOS. Her choreography was called "intriguing and innovative" by Dance Magazine reviewer Rita Felciano. Ms. Warner is a juror panelist for The Marin Arts Council and for The San Francisco School of the Arts, and teaches ballet at San Francisco Dance Center
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Scott Warren grew up in Philadelphia. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School and was a Fellow at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University where he received his Masters of Fine Arts in Choreographic Theory and Practice. Mr. Warren has been a member of the Alberta Ballet, the Oakland Ballet and the Pennsylvania Ballet companies. He has danced the works of such noted choreographers as Antony Tudor, Paul Taylor, Sir Kenneth McMillan, May O'Donnell, Bronislava Nijinska and George Balanchine. Mr. Warren was co-director of Summerfest in 1994 and 1995. He was Director of Development at the Dallas Theater Center for five years, Deputy Director of Philanthropy at the Foundation for National Progress, which publishes Mother Jones magazine, and is currently Director for Institutional Advancement at Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center.
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Mrs Naomi Washington Diouf is the Artistic Director of Diamano Coura West African Dance Company. She has a BA in Sociology and minor in African History from UC San Diego. In 1986, she choreographed The African Womanhood, a chronicle of works by traditional African female choreographers, displaying the qualities of African womanhood. These productions remain the definitive treatment of traditional African dances on the modern stage. After several successful stage presentations, it was videotaped for broadcast by PBS. In 1999, Naomi's contributions to Oakland’s Arts-In-Education and cultural arts community were documented for KTVU's Family to Family. Naomi was born in Monrovia, Liberia, where her artistic career was greatly influenced by dances she learned at the Kendeja Cultural Center for indigenous performers. Beginning dance at the age of 10, throughout her dance career Naomi also studied with prominent dancers and musicians from other West African countries. In 1973, Naomi studied ballet and modern dance under Ms Constance Taul of the Paris Ballet, and has done extensive research and comparative analysis of dance forms from around the world. As an expert in West African dance, she has assisted and choreographed works for numerous performing companies, including: the Dutch Theater Van Osten in the Netherlands and Belgium, UC Berkeley's Drama Department, Dimensions Dance Theater in Oakland, and Kankoran Dance Company in Washington DC. In 1998 and 1999, Naomi collaborated with the San Francisco Ballet in the premiere of the ballet Lambarena for Utah, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Ballet of Florida, and the Singapore and South African Ballets. Naomi is a strong advocate of Arts-In-Education and has conducted and organized various projects that introduce the arts to youth and merge acdemics, music, and dance. For 15 years she has worked with the Arts Through Education programs in the San Diego, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Oakland, Richmond, and Alameda School Districts to promote cultural literacy. Naomi currently teaches West African dance and culture at Berkeley High School to over 400 young teens a semester, at Laney College and the Alice Arts Center in Oakland. Naomi also consults and conducts workshops in costume design, cultural event/program coordinating, and West African culture.
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Joe Williams Lighting designer.
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Margaret Wingrove has created over 80 works for the Margaret Wingrove Dance Company . She has also been a frequent guest choreographer for other dance companies. These hosts have included the Palo Alto Ballet, Berkeley Ballet, San Jose Dance Theater, Janlyn Dance Company, and dancers from the San Francisco Ballet and the San Jose Cleveland Ballet. Wingrove has performed and studied extensively on both the east and west coasts with modern dancers Paul Sanasardo, Norman Walker, Lucas Hoving, and Richard Gibson. She also trained at the San Francisco Ballet School. She earned her BA in Dance from San Jose State University and her MA in Education from the University of San Francisco. She has toured to the Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival, the David Howard Showcase, the San Francisco Dance Festival, and festivals in Bournemouth, Litchfield, and Bath, England. She has had work commissioned by Opera San Jose, San Jose Taiko, and the San Jose Symphony. She is a San Jose State University Schools of Music and Dance Honored Alumnus for her Contributions to the Field of Dance, and has been awarded the Women of Achievement Award for the Arts and an Arts Council of Santa Clara County Individual Artists Grant, and was a 1986 San Francisco Isadora Duncan Award Choreography Finalist.
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