Past Strictly Seattle Faculty (2008)
Paige Barnes Partnering Technique and Advanced Choreography
Paige is a Seattle based choreographer, performer and teacher. She is a co-founding member of Open Flight studio and a certified instructor of Gyrotonic Expansion System. Since 1996, Paige has performed and produced independent shows in Ecuador, Mexico, Cuba and throughout the Seattle area. She has received choreographic and educational awards from Artist Trust and danceWEB, among others. She directed multimedia projects "Molt" and "Stenophobia" which performed at On the Boards, Consolidated Works and Velocity. "Molt" also toured through Velocity's SCUBA national touring program. Recently, she choreographed and performed in a five-city tour to Ecuador with Pablo Cornejo. Paige's Partnering Technique class is a research lab for the creation of authentic partnering. She will facilitate a practice based in ease, momentum and individuality to create honest, risk-taking composition.
Corrie Befort Advanced Modern
Corrie recently returned to Seattle after a three-year residency in Tokyo/Yokohama where she has been teaching and producing internationally cast performances and dancing in the Japanese commercial entertainment industry. She has trained, taught, performed and presented her choreography and award-winning dance films across the US, Europe and Japan. In Seattle she danced for many years with Scott/Powell Performance, and received her BFA from Cornish College in 1999. Corrie's classes are structured to expand individual technique and hone specificity of line, intent and quality while giving everyone plenty of room for ferocious dancing. Release generated momentum, ballet finesse, yoga and Pilates conditioning, and intriguing choreographic challenges combine to encourage strong and articulate dancing.
Pablo Cornejo Adult Beginning Modern and Choreography
Pablo was born and raised in Quito, Ecuador. He relocated to Seattle in 1998 and founded Locate Performance Group with Paige Barnes. Pablo's work has been presented in Mexico, Cuba, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, San Francisco and Seattle, most notably at On the Boards and Bumbershoot. He has choreographed for Cornish College of the Arts, d9 Dance Collective, Arizona State University, Glendale Community College and Dance Gallery Bellingham. Pablo toured his work to five cities in Ecuador last December, and taught and choreographed for La Compania Nacional de Danza. He teaches at Open Flight studio, where he is a co-founding member. Pablo's class will focus on grounded movement with proper alignment, using a full range of dynamics to explore space and investigate challenges within the modern vocabulary.
Amii LeGendre Advanced Modern Technique and Improvisation
Amii makes dances with narrative, text, film, live music and messy edges.
She has taught regularly at Cornish College of the Arts and Velocity Dance Center for almost a decade, and has performed or taught in Ecuador, Peru, Hong Kong, Canada, and in the US in Washington DC, Ohio, Texas, Massachusetts, California, New York, Oregon and all over Washington state. She recently made work with students in residency at Connecticut College and Weslyan College. Amii lives and works in Seattle by summer and NY the rest of the year. Interested in the place where technique and improvisation meet, both of Amii's classes will explore the clarity and permission necessary for surprising performances, and create a lab environment where improvisation acts as the primary language.
Troy Lucero Yoga
Troy has been practicing yoga asana for 20 years, almost exclusively in the Ashtanga Yoga Tradition. He has been teaching in Seattle since 2003. Before that he spent seven years teaching at Richard Freeman's Yoga Workshop in Colorado following his apprenticeship with Tim Miller in California. In 1993, Troy traveled to India to study with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. Troy draws out the natural intelligence inherent in each student with humor and patience. He has a rare ability to assess and understand each student's body and yoga practice. His teaching style is simultaneously vigorous and contemplative; his adjustments are skillful and astute.
Michele Miller Intermediate Modern
Michele moved to Seattle to join the Pat Graney Company in 1992 and founded Velocity Dance Center with KT Niehoff in 1996. She is currently on faculty at Cornish College of the Arts and teaches Pilates. She was the Artist In Residence at the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts and taught at Bates Dance Festival, Guandong Dance Festival, and throughout the US. Michele holds a third degree black belt in Kajukenbo Kung Fu and won a Junior Division championship in Tai Chi in 2005. She co-founded the d9 Dance Collective and performed with the LeGendre Performance Group, 1999-2004. Michele's modern class contains elements of Pilates, Lewitzky technique, Simonson technique, gymnastics and martial arts. The class emphasizes proper alignment, core support, breath, upside down work, and phrases that challenge ideas of verticality and momentum in movement.
Tiffany Mills Advanced Modern and Professional Choreography
Tiffany is a choreographer, teacher, performer and artistic director of the NYC-based Tiffany Mills Company. Her work is fueled by collaboration across mediums and she has most recently worked with filmmaker Ela Troyano, and composers John Zorn and Ikue Mori. The Company's collaborative work has been performed in NYC and nationally at: Guggenheim Museum Works & Process, Wexner Center for the Arts, Dance Theater Workshop, P.S.122, Joyce SoHo and TBA Festival, among others. Tiffany guest teaches at the Trisha Brown Studio, ADF/NYC, ACDFA, as well as colleges and universities across the country. She originally hails from Eugene, Oregon (BA University of Oregon, MFA Ohio State). Tiffany's class offers an opportunity to work in-depth on body alignment, physical clarity and movement initiation so the dancer can connect his/her inner and outer worlds. Time will be given to taking risks within the phrase material, as well as manipulating and "owning" the movement.
Maki Morinoue Intermediate Choreography
Maki is the co-founder and Associate Artistic Director of Esse Aficionado dance company. She maintains a bi-coastal presence in the dance communities of Seattle and New York City, and her choreography has been presented by the Joyce SoHo, The Bridge Project at Velocity, On the Board's Northwest New Works Festival, and she is a 2007 Artist Trust Recipient. Maki is a graduate of Purchase College Conservatory of Dance, where she received the Dance Faculty Performance Award and performed with Donna Uchizono's Company. Since 1999, she has contributed a vast amount of repertoire to Esse Aficionado.
KT Niehoff Advanced Modern Technique and Choreography
KT is a 2001 Artist Trust Fellow and a 2006 Choreographic Fellow at the Maggie Allessee National Center for Choreography. Since 1998, her major creative platform has been her company, Lingo, which has been presented worldwide including Japan, Ecuador, Seattle, NYC, San Diego and Nashville. KT has taught at The SNDO (Amsterdam), Oberlin College, The Hong Kong Academy and Cornish College of the Arts, among others. She was co-founder/director of Velocity from 1996-2006. The intellectual goal of her class is to cultivate artists interested in artistic dialogue. The physical goals are maximum range of motion, rebounding relationships to gravity, and investigations of energy's correlation to expansion, momentum and torque. Students will practice the balance of having an inner dialogue with the biology while maintaining an external awareness, and contextualize the political, personal and artistic meaning behind why we move.
Kara O'Toole Advanced Ballet
Kara is the Executive Director of Velocity. She has an extensive background as a dancer, educator and artistic administrator within the Seattle and national dance community. She is a founding member of Seattle-based dance organizations DanceNet newspaper, the d9 Dance Collective and Kick, a dance service organization. She has performed professionally with the Pat Graney Company and the Chamber Dance Company. Kara has been on the faculty of Cornish College of the Arts, George Mason University and University of Memphis, and taught for 10 years in the University of Washington Dance Program, where she earned her MFA in Dance. Kara has been teaching ballet for modern dancers since 1989. Her class is inspired by a love of space eating movement, musicality, dynamic expression, and the power of anatomically sound alignment.
Ellie Sandstrom Beginning Ballet, Intermediate Modern and Choreography
Ellie has been performing for over 20 years. She is originally from Minneapolis, where she began her movement training with Minnesota Dance Theater and later, BalletArts MN. Ellie is a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, where she received her BFA in dance. In Seattle, she has been working consistently with Scott/Powell Performance and locust since 2000, and touring nationally with both companies since 2005. She has been known to bring many other projects into the mix, including working with Mark Haim on the remounting of his Goldberg Variations at On the Boards in 2006. Ellie teaches Modern technique at Velocity Dance Center, Hip Hop (w/history) at the Northwest School, and Ballet wherever and whenever she can.
Violette Tucker Intermediate Ballet Barre
Violette is a dance artist, teacher and performance coach who explores movement and artistry through integration of body and intellect. She is a graduate of Ohio State University, where she earned an MFA, with an emphasis on dance performance. Notably, she has worked with Claire Porter, Coriolis Dance Project, EBA Dance Theatre, Molly Shanahan/MadShak Dance Company, and with local choreographers Carrie Sargavakian and Lasara Jarvis. Violette and her partner Misha Kaschock have formed the dynamic music/movement duo The Test Pilots, whose work has been featured in Velocity's Next Fest NW 2006 and The Bridge Project 2008. Violette teaches Ballet at Velocity and her influences include modern dance, avant-garde performance, gritty, joyful expression, phenomenology, poetry, and everyday, habitual movement.
Allison Van Dyck Gyrokinesis
Allison is a performer, choreographer and teacher with over ten years of professional experience in Seattle and abroad. She was a core member of Scott/Powell Performance for seven years, and currently dances for Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey. In 2001, Allison was awarded a danceWEB Scholarship to study in Austria and co-founded SOM Performance with Luke Allen, which produced dance/sound/video work for the stage and was featured at Consolidated Works, On The Boards, Bumbershoot and the Seattle Art Museum. Allison discovered Gyrotonic while treating a back injury, and in 2004 she received her certification and became a staff member at the Gyrotonic Movement Center, working with dancers and therapeutic clients. Her teaching style is deep yet relaxed, and informed by dance, anatomy, and imagery.
Hannah C. Wiley Advanced Ballet
University of Washington Donald E. Petersen Endowed Professor, Hannah received her BA with a major in drama from the UW in 1973, and her MA from New York University in 1981. From 1977 to 1987, she served on the faculty of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts where she also chaired the Five College Dance Department. In 1987, Hannah joined the UW faculty and served as director of the Dance Program until 2001. From 1999 to 2003, she served as director of the UW Summer Arts Festival. Her research has been published in Dance Research Journal, Graduate Research Journal, Foot and Ankle, Impulse and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Hannah is founding artistic director of the Chamber Dance Company. Since 1995 Hannah and musician Paul Moore have collaborated on creating a "user-friendly" ballet class that focuses on musicality, expressivity and anatomical/biomechanical efficiency.