Five College Dance Department : Guest Artists and Teaching Fellows

Guest Artists and Teaching Fellows

Vanessa Anspaugh is a Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 2nd year. Originally from Los Angles California, Vanessa began her performing career at age 13 dancing with Pacific American Ballet Theatre. After taking a few year hiatus from dancing to pursue her love of visual art making, Vanessa returned to dance at Antioch College. There she discovered Modern dance and her desire to create multi-disciplinary performance pieces. After Antioch, Vanessa moved to New York City where she danced with, Fly by Night Dance Theatre, Artichoke Dance Theatre, Annie Sailor Dance Company, and others. She taught creative movement in New York’s public schools as well as Hatha Yoga at Kentler Drawing Space in Brooklyn. She and a fabulous group of dance artists Susan Golab, Pheobe Moriss, and Elizabeth Ward, also performed her work through the city. Vanessa is currently juggling making experimental video as well as live dance performance pieces, both addressing the simple awkward nature of what it is to be human and to be present inhabiting this form.

Aretha Aoki (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 2nd year) received a BFA in Dance and Communication from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. She has danced for independent choreographers and companies, choreographed for both site-specific and traditional venues and has collaborated with visual, media and theatre artists. She is co-founder of kitchen, along with visual artist Cindy Mochizuki and theatre artist and playwright Tricia Collins. A cross-disciplinary collective, kitchen initiates, develops, and produces new works that challenge boundaries and investigate new forms of cultural-hybridity. kitchen creates projects through highly collaborative processes that integrate the respective disciplines of dance, theatre, video, film, installation, writing and music. Aretha is also a programming committee member of the Powell Street Festival, a grassroots Japanese arts and culture festival.

Audra Carabetta (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 1st Year) received her BFA in dance from UMass Amherst in 1997. She has been dancing and teaching in the Boston area for the past 10 years. Audra has been a faculty member and guest artist at Holy Cross College, Ballet Arts Center of Winchester, Green Street Studios, and Topf Center for Dance Education. She has performed with choreographers and companies such as: Lorraine Chapman The Company, Caitlin Corbett Dance Company, Brian Crabtree, Marcus Schulkind, Weber Dance, and the Ken Pierce Baroque Dance Company. Choreographically she has received attention via awards and grants and her work has been presented at various venues. Audra received an Emerging Artist Award and a grant-based award through the Massachusetts Cultural Council for choreographic projects at Green Street Studios in Cambridge Ma.

Maura Donohue (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 2nd year), graduated cum laude from Smith College with a BA in Anthropology and Dance in 1992 and is thrilled to be back in the Happy Valley. She founded her performance troupe In Mixed Company (www.inmixedcompany.com) in NYC in 1995 and has toured her work extensively across the US and to Canada, Europe and Asia. As Artistic Advisor for Dance Theater Workshop's Mekong Project (www.dtw2.org/mekong) she developed, facilitated and participated in programs in and with artists from the US, Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. She has served as Asian Bureau Chief and Senior Artistic Advisor for The Dance Insider (www.danceinsider.com) and has also written about dance and performance in the US and Asia for Dance Magazine, American Theater Journal, HK Dance Journal and the NY State DanceForce. She is a member of La Mama ETC's Great Jones Repertory Company, serves on Dance Theater Workshop's Board of Directors and is most proud of Sasa and Jet, her best collaborative works with Perry Yung.

Kara Golux (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 1st year) began her professional dance career as a classical ballerina with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. She has since moved into modern dance, spending three years with Carte Blanche in Bergen, Norway. Most recently she has worked as a New York City based freelance dancer and choreographer focusing on more theatrical material ranging from the mask work of Commedia dell’arte to musical and dramatic works to dance theatre of the avant-garde. Her choreography has been presented in NYC at Joyce Soho, Flea Theater, Dixon Place, White Wave in DUMBO, and WAX. Born in Staten Island, NY, Kara is a high school graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts and earned her BA degree from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. With husband, stage director Stephan Golux, Kara now hails from East Middlebury, Vermont. Please visit web site at http://dance.goluxstudio.com/

Jillian Grunnah (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 1st year) received her BA in Art History from Bowdoin College and simultaneously got hooked on contemporary dance. As artistic director of the dance program at Studio 48 and repertory consultant with Portland Arts High School in Portland, Maine, she combined her interests in arts administration, education, and choreography. She recently danced with Sonar Dance and Jill Eng/Forward and Up. By employing the Alexander technique and studying with the Limon company and jazz great Danny Buraczeski, Jillian delights in modern, release, and jazz techniques and choreographs for dancers of all ages. While her work is ever-changing, she attempts to bring raw athleticism, playful fun, and a bit of spunk to her audiences.

Lona Lee (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 1st year) received her BFA in Dance Education from Arizona State University where her love for Modern Dance and Contact Improvisation flourished. She began her professional dance career with involvement in Dance Arizona Repertory Theatre, a resident company at ASU, which used varied methods of performance and pedagogy to reach the greater public. Upon graduation she assisted in co-founding a nonprofit contemporary modern dance company, Rayn Dance Theatre (RDT). As member of RDT Lona served as performer, educator and Director of Outreach whose partial mission was bringing dance to underserved communities. For the past three years, she has implemented her love for creative movement and childhood play by working as a Preschool/Dance teacher at the Summit School of Ahwatukee, a private PreK-8th grade art school in Arizona. Lona continues to “discover, uncover” herself and remains eager to explore how movement expression and taking risk can better educate our bodies our minds and our collective consciousness.

Kellie Ann Lynch is a recent MFA graduate of Smith College and emerging choreographer who, for the next few months, will be floating around the New England area performing, creating and resetting work at several colleges. While attending Smith College, she was awarded a Full Teaching Fellowship, the Gretchen Moran Fellowship, summer study grants and was the recipient of the Bates 2007 merit scholarship. She is a dancer for Heidi Henderson’s elephant JANE Dance, a pick up company in RI, but she currently works as a free-lance dancer. Kellie has been seen dancing for choreographers such as Cathy Nicoli, Rodger Blum, Susan Waltner, Robin Prichard, and Angelica Vessella to name a few, but more recently she has begun working with Jim Coleman and Terese Freedman; in the winter she will be working with Melody Ruffin Ward of Providence. This fall semester Kellie will be teaching courses at Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and Springfield College.

Meredith Lyons (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 2nd year) began her undergraduate studies at University of the Arts, later finishing her degree from Mercyhurst College with a Bachelor of Arts in Teaching and Choreography and a minor in Arts Administration. She has taught at Smith College, Springfield College, Connecticut College, Williams College, Russell Sage College, National Museum of Dance, Pioneer Valley Ballet, Amherst Ballet, Albany Berkshire Ballet, Southern Jersey Ballet Theater, Tricia Sloan Dance Center, Erie Bayfront Dance Center, as well as many public and private K-12 institutions. Her vast repertoire of dancing includes Ballet, Modern, Jazz, Tap and Spanish dancing. Meredith has had the honor of dancing in works by George Balanchine, Mark Morris, David Dorfman, Danny Buraczeski, Ellen Sinopoli, Tauna Hunter, Madeleine Canterella Culpo, Luis Montero, Rodger Blum, as well as many other wonderful choreographers! Most recently she has received scholarship for the Gretchen Moran Fellowship, as well as for the Summer 2007 Bates Dance Festival from Smith College. As a performer and choreographer she has received high remarks for her solo work “On the Inhale” at the 2007 Williams College ACDFA adjudication. She is very grateful and excited to perform, create, choreograph and teach in the Pioneer Valley!

Pamela Raff, jazz tap dance performer, choreographer, educator and recording artist, critically acclaimed innovator and master technician, has danced throughout the USA, in Europe and in Asia, collaborating with jazz greats Tierney Sutton, Alan Dawson, Larry Kopp, John Lockwood, Yuki Arimasa and Patrice Williamson among others, in venues ranging from Lincoln Center and Broadway’s Duke Theater to radio, television, and intimate jazz and blues clubs. A protégé of the late and legendary Leon Collins, she also studied with Myra Witt, Clint Hamblin, Norman Wallace, Brenda Bufalino, LaVaughn Robinson and Joe Stirling Beath. In a career spanning almost three decades Raff created “Jazz Youth Project” for Boston’s Public Schools, directed the Leon Collins Dance Studio for eleven years, released the hailed Feet First performance recording, choreographed for theatrical production from the avant-garde to period musical, received choreography awards from the Boston Center for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and was nominated “Jazz Artist of the Year” at New England Foundation for the Arts. Currently, Raff works privately in her own studio in Allston Ma, is on the Faculty of Roger Williams University, and is a Visiting Artist at Mount Holyoke College.

Candice Salyers (SC Guest Artist) is a choreographer, performer and teacher currently based in Massachusetts. As a performer, she has enjoyed working with Li Chiao-Ping Dance, Sukarji Sriman, Lila York, Liz Lerman, Heidi Latsky, Walter Dunderville, Peter Schmitz, Rodger Blum, Tiffany Mills, Maura Donohue, Jennifer Kayle, Amie Dowling and others. She has choreographed group and solo works, which have been produced by dance companies, universities and independently. She holds a B.L.S. in Interdisciplinary Arts from the University of Memphis and an M.F.A. in Dance from Smith College. As a guest artist, she has choreographed and taught at Amherst College, Keene State College, Smith College and Eastern Connecticut University. Her interest in connecting dance to a larger community led her to found pARTners, a volunteer organization of artists dedicated to sharing their art form with a variety of people, for which she won the Alma Bucovaz Award for Urban Service in 2001. As a solo performer, she builds layers of stage images and movement which invite the viewer’s own imagination to explore the work. Her solo commissioning projects combine her own choreography with solos created for her by other artists. These works [Belief (is a persistent angel); A History of Levitation], weave five-six separate solos together as a cohesive evening-length work around a central theme and approach the topic through a variety of perspectives and physicalities.

Daniel Trenner (MHC Guest Artist) is one of the forces behind Tango's modern revival, having begun dancing in 1986 in Buenos Aires with many of Tango's most important Milongueros, dancers from the 1940s and 50s. When Daniel arrived in Argentina there were less than 100 people under the age of 60 dancing tango. He brought social tango back to the USA in 1990; he developed a style of teaching tango by its elements, rather than a syllabus of steps (which is how Argentines of the previous generation taught); and his style has been adopted by many of tango's young generation of teachers. He traveled quite a bit in the 90's and became known as the "Johnny Appleseed" of tango in the US. He invented the tango tour in 1993 (Bridge to the Tango), founded the Tango Catalogue in 1997, sold both businesses in 2003 to the Solo Tango television station of Buenos Aires, and then settled in Northampton, MA, where he is presently teaching and writing. He has taught guest classes and seminars at Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College, Amherst College, and PVPA (Pioneer Valley Performing Arts high school). You can learn more about Daniel at www.danieltrenner.com

Jennifer Weber (MHC Guest Artist) is the founder and artistic director of Decadancetheatre-an all-female, hip-hop, dance theater company based in Brooklyn, NY. Trained in dance studios and nightclubs in NYC, Philadelphia, and London, Weber has always been a student not just of dance technique, but of the larger cultural meanings of urban movement. As an artist, Weber seeks to explore hip-hop as the key emerging language of a global youth culture. Since founding Decadancetheatre in the Summer of 2001, Weber has choreographed five original, evening-length, hip-hop ballets: I Dance (2001), Heroin(e) (2002), Behind the Beat (2004, Time Out New York Audience Choice Award Nomination), Decadance Vs. The Firebird-a Hip-Hop Ballet (2004, winner FringeNYC Outstanding Choreography Award) and Gamon (2005). The DECA Crew has performed everywhere from Jacobs Pillow to MTV and has toured all over the US and abroad including The Women’s Arts International Festival in the UK (along side Patti Smith and Urban Bush Women), B.Supreme Festival of Women in Hip-Hop (South Bank Center, London) and Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle (sharing the bill with WuTang Clan, Fergie, Joss Stone and John Legend)

Outside of DECA, Weber has choreographed for Reebok, Dance Spirit Magazine, Dancers Responding to AIDS, the ACLU, Direct Effect (MTV), Beatstock (WKTU 103.5) Bloomberg, DJ Spooky, and Team Toshiba/National Basketball League of Japan. Weber also starred in Cheryl Dunn's award-winning dance film, "Come Mute" which was showcased as part of the exhibit "Beautiful Losers" at Yerba Buena and Orange County Museum of Art. Weber’s own dance short, "Big City Lover" was shown as part of the Captured: Video Dance Series at Dance Theatre Workshop. Weber holds a BA in Communications (Cum Laude, 2000) from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently a visiting artist at Mt. Holyoke College. She has also taught all over the US, UK and Japan. In addition, Weber has been featured in XXL, Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher Magazine, Dance Spirit Magazine and American Theatre and on CBS This Morning. www.decadancetheatre.com

		Home \| Photos \| Alumni \| Calendar \| Courses \| Faculty \| Guest Artists \| The Department \| Highlights


	Guest Artists and Teaching Fellows Vanessa Anspaugh is a Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 2nd year. Originally from Los Angles California, Vanessa began her performing career at age 13 dancing with Pacific American Ballet Theatre. After taking a few year hiatus from dancing to pursue her love of visual art making, Vanessa returned to dance at Antioch College. There she discovered Modern dance and her desire to create multi-disciplinary performance pieces. After Antioch, Vanessa moved to New York City where she danced with, Fly by Night Dance Theatre, Artichoke Dance Theatre, Annie Sailor Dance Company, and others. She taught creative movement in New York’s public schools as well as Hatha Yoga at Kentler Drawing Space in Brooklyn. She and a fabulous group of dance artists Susan Golab, Pheobe Moriss, and Elizabeth Ward, also performed her work through the city. Vanessa is currently juggling making experimental video as well as live dance performance pieces, both addressing the simple awkward nature of what it is to be human and to be present inhabiting this form. Aretha Aoki (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 2nd year) received a BFA in Dance and Communication from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. She has danced for independent choreographers and companies, choreographed for both site-specific and traditional venues and has collaborated with visual, media and theatre artists. She is co-founder of kitchen, along with visual artist Cindy Mochizuki and theatre artist and playwright Tricia Collins. A cross-disciplinary collective, kitchen initiates, develops, and produces new works that challenge boundaries and investigate new forms of cultural-hybridity. kitchen creates projects through highly collaborative processes that integrate the respective disciplines of dance, theatre, video, film, installation, writing and music. Aretha is also a programming committee member of the Powell Street Festival, a grassroots Japanese arts and culture festival. Audra Carabetta (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 1st Year) received her BFA in dance from UMass Amherst in 1997. She has been dancing and teaching in the Boston area for the past 10 years. Audra has been a faculty member and guest artist at Holy Cross College, Ballet Arts Center of Winchester, Green Street Studios, and Topf Center for Dance Education. She has performed with choreographers and companies such as: Lorraine Chapman The Company, Caitlin Corbett Dance Company, Brian Crabtree, Marcus Schulkind, Weber Dance, and the Ken Pierce Baroque Dance Company. Choreographically she has received attention via awards and grants and her work has been presented at various venues. Audra received an Emerging Artist Award and a grant-based award through the Massachusetts Cultural Council for choreographic projects at Green Street Studios in Cambridge Ma. Maura Donohue (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 2nd year), graduated cum laude from Smith College with a BA in Anthropology and Dance in 1992 and is thrilled to be back in the Happy Valley. She founded her performance troupe In Mixed Company (www.inmixedcompany.com) in NYC in 1995 and has toured her work extensively across the US and to Canada, Europe and Asia. As Artistic Advisor for Dance Theater Workshop's Mekong Project (www.dtw2.org/mekong) she developed, facilitated and participated in programs in and with artists from the US, Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. She has served as Asian Bureau Chief and Senior Artistic Advisor for The Dance Insider (www.danceinsider.com) and has also written about dance and performance in the US and Asia for Dance Magazine, American Theater Journal, HK Dance Journal and the NY State DanceForce. She is a member of La Mama ETC's Great Jones Repertory Company, serves on Dance Theater Workshop's Board of Directors and is most proud of Sasa and Jet, her best collaborative works with Perry Yung. Kara Golux (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 1st year) began her professional dance career as a classical ballerina with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. She has since moved into modern dance, spending three years with Carte Blanche in Bergen, Norway. Most recently she has worked as a New York City based freelance dancer and choreographer focusing on more theatrical material ranging from the mask work of Commedia dell’arte to musical and dramatic works to dance theatre of the avant-garde. Her choreography has been presented in NYC at Joyce Soho, Flea Theater, Dixon Place, White Wave in DUMBO, and WAX. Born in Staten Island, NY, Kara is a high school graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts and earned her BA degree from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. With husband, stage director Stephan Golux, Kara now hails from East Middlebury, Vermont. Please visit web site at http://dance.goluxstudio.com/ Jillian Grunnah (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 1st year) received her BA in Art History from Bowdoin College and simultaneously got hooked on contemporary dance. As artistic director of the dance program at Studio 48 and repertory consultant with Portland Arts High School in Portland, Maine, she combined her interests in arts administration, education, and choreography. She recently danced with Sonar Dance and Jill Eng/Forward and Up. By employing the Alexander technique and studying with the Limon company and jazz great Danny Buraczeski, Jillian delights in modern, release, and jazz techniques and choreographs for dancers of all ages. While her work is ever-changing, she attempts to bring raw athleticism, playful fun, and a bit of spunk to her audiences. Lona Lee (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 1st year) received her BFA in Dance Education from Arizona State University where her love for Modern Dance and Contact Improvisation flourished. She began her professional dance career with involvement in Dance Arizona Repertory Theatre, a resident company at ASU, which used varied methods of performance and pedagogy to reach the greater public. Upon graduation she assisted in co-founding a nonprofit contemporary modern dance company, Rayn Dance Theatre (RDT). As member of RDT Lona served as performer, educator and Director of Outreach whose partial mission was bringing dance to underserved communities. For the past three years, she has implemented her love for creative movement and childhood play by working as a Preschool/Dance teacher at the Summit School of Ahwatukee, a private PreK-8th grade art school in Arizona. Lona continues to “discover, uncover” herself and remains eager to explore how movement expression and taking risk can better educate our bodies our minds and our collective consciousness. Kellie Ann Lynch is a recent MFA graduate of Smith College and emerging choreographer who, for the next few months, will be floating around the New England area performing, creating and resetting work at several colleges. While attending Smith College, she was awarded a Full Teaching Fellowship, the Gretchen Moran Fellowship, summer study grants and was the recipient of the Bates 2007 merit scholarship. She is a dancer for Heidi Henderson’s elephant JANE Dance, a pick up company in RI, but she currently works as a free-lance dancer. Kellie has been seen dancing for choreographers such as Cathy Nicoli, Rodger Blum, Susan Waltner, Robin Prichard, and Angelica Vessella to name a few, but more recently she has begun working with Jim Coleman and Terese Freedman; in the winter she will be working with Melody Ruffin Ward of Providence. This fall semester Kellie will be teaching courses at Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and Springfield College. Meredith Lyons (Smith MFA Teaching Fellow, 2nd year) began her undergraduate studies at University of the Arts, later finishing her degree from Mercyhurst College with a Bachelor of Arts in Teaching and Choreography and a minor in Arts Administration. She has taught at Smith College, Springfield College, Connecticut College, Williams College, Russell Sage College, National Museum of Dance, Pioneer Valley Ballet, Amherst Ballet, Albany Berkshire Ballet, Southern Jersey Ballet Theater, Tricia Sloan Dance Center, Erie Bayfront Dance Center, as well as many public and private K-12 institutions. Her vast repertoire of dancing includes Ballet, Modern, Jazz, Tap and Spanish dancing. Meredith has had the honor of dancing in works by George Balanchine, Mark Morris, David Dorfman, Danny Buraczeski, Ellen Sinopoli, Tauna Hunter, Madeleine Canterella Culpo, Luis Montero, Rodger Blum, as well as many other wonderful choreographers! Most recently she has received scholarship for the Gretchen Moran Fellowship, as well as for the Summer 2007 Bates Dance Festival from Smith College. As a performer and choreographer she has received high remarks for her solo work “On the Inhale” at the 2007 Williams College ACDFA adjudication. She is very grateful and excited to perform, create, choreograph and teach in the Pioneer Valley! Pamela Raff, jazz tap dance performer, choreographer, educator and recording artist, critically acclaimed innovator and master technician, has danced throughout the USA, in Europe and in Asia, collaborating with jazz greats Tierney Sutton, Alan Dawson, Larry Kopp, John Lockwood, Yuki Arimasa and Patrice Williamson among others, in venues ranging from Lincoln Center and Broadway’s Duke Theater to radio, television, and intimate jazz and blues clubs. A protégé of the late and legendary Leon Collins, she also studied with Myra Witt, Clint Hamblin, Norman Wallace, Brenda Bufalino, LaVaughn Robinson and Joe Stirling Beath. In a career spanning almost three decades Raff created “Jazz Youth Project” for Boston’s Public Schools, directed the Leon Collins Dance Studio for eleven years, released the hailed Feet First performance recording, choreographed for theatrical production from the avant-garde to period musical, received choreography awards from the Boston Center for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and was nominated “Jazz Artist of the Year” at New England Foundation for the Arts. Currently, Raff works privately in her own studio in Allston Ma, is on the Faculty of Roger Williams University, and is a Visiting Artist at Mount Holyoke College. Candice Salyers (SC Guest Artist) is a choreographer, performer and teacher currently based in Massachusetts. As a performer, she has enjoyed working with Li Chiao-Ping Dance, Sukarji Sriman, Lila York, Liz Lerman, Heidi Latsky, Walter Dunderville, Peter Schmitz, Rodger Blum, Tiffany Mills, Maura Donohue, Jennifer Kayle, Amie Dowling and others. She has choreographed group and solo works, which have been produced by dance companies, universities and independently. She holds a B.L.S. in Interdisciplinary Arts from the University of Memphis and an M.F.A. in Dance from Smith College. As a guest artist, she has choreographed and taught at Amherst College, Keene State College, Smith College and Eastern Connecticut University. Her interest in connecting dance to a larger community led her to found pARTners, a volunteer organization of artists dedicated to sharing their art form with a variety of people, for which she won the Alma Bucovaz Award for Urban Service in 2001. As a solo performer, she builds layers of stage images and movement which invite the viewer’s own imagination to explore the work. Her solo commissioning projects combine her own choreography with solos created for her by other artists. These works [Belief (is a persistent angel); A History of Levitation], weave five-six separate solos together as a cohesive evening-length work around a central theme and approach the topic through a variety of perspectives and physicalities. Daniel Trenner (MHC Guest Artist) is one of the forces behind Tango's modern revival, having begun dancing in 1986 in Buenos Aires with many of Tango's most important Milongueros, dancers from the 1940s and 50s. When Daniel arrived in Argentina there were less than 100 people under the age of 60 dancing tango. He brought social tango back to the USA in 1990; he developed a style of teaching tango by its elements, rather than a syllabus of steps (which is how Argentines of the previous generation taught); and his style has been adopted by many of tango's young generation of teachers. He traveled quite a bit in the 90's and became known as the "Johnny Appleseed" of tango in the US. He invented the tango tour in 1993 (Bridge to the Tango), founded the Tango Catalogue in 1997, sold both businesses in 2003 to the Solo Tango television station of Buenos Aires, and then settled in Northampton, MA, where he is presently teaching and writing. He has taught guest classes and seminars at Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College, Amherst College, and PVPA (Pioneer Valley Performing Arts high school). You can learn more about Daniel at www.danieltrenner.com Jennifer Weber (MHC Guest Artist) is the founder and artistic director of Decadancetheatre-an all-female, hip-hop, dance theater company based in Brooklyn, NY. Trained in dance studios and nightclubs in NYC, Philadelphia, and London, Weber has always been a student not just of dance technique, but of the larger cultural meanings of urban movement. As an artist, Weber seeks to explore hip-hop as the key emerging language of a global youth culture. Since founding Decadancetheatre in the Summer of 2001, Weber has choreographed five original, evening-length, hip-hop ballets: I Dance (2001), Heroin(e) (2002), Behind the Beat (2004, Time Out New York Audience Choice Award Nomination), Decadance Vs. The Firebird-a Hip-Hop Ballet (2004, winner FringeNYC Outstanding Choreography Award) and Gamon (2005). The DECA Crew has performed everywhere from Jacobs Pillow to MTV and has toured all over the US and abroad including The Women’s Arts International Festival in the UK (along side Patti Smith and Urban Bush Women), B.Supreme Festival of Women in Hip-Hop (South Bank Center, London) and Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle (sharing the bill with WuTang Clan, Fergie, Joss Stone and John Legend) Outside of DECA, Weber has choreographed for Reebok, Dance Spirit Magazine, Dancers Responding to AIDS, the ACLU, Direct Effect (MTV), Beatstock (WKTU 103.5) Bloomberg, DJ Spooky, and Team Toshiba/National Basketball League of Japan. Weber also starred in Cheryl Dunn's award-winning dance film, "Come Mute" which was showcased as part of the exhibit "Beautiful Losers" at Yerba Buena and Orange County Museum of Art. Weber’s own dance short, "Big City Lover" was shown as part of the Captured: Video Dance Series at Dance Theatre Workshop. Weber holds a BA in Communications (Cum Laude, 2000) from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently a visiting artist at Mt. Holyoke College. She has also taught all over the US, UK and Japan. In addition, Weber has been featured in XXL, Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher Magazine, Dance Spirit Magazine and American Theatre and on CBS This Morning. www.decadancetheatre.com