Committee Members 2008-2009

Angela Amarillas
Zenon Barron
Patricia Bulitt
Brooke Byrne
Wan-Chao Chang
Jill Guillermo-Togawa
Joanna Gewertz Harris
Patricia “Gigi” Jensen
Nancy Lyons
Dennis Mullen
Corrine Nagata
Paul Parish
Renee Renouf (Hall)
Miguel Santos
Danica Sena
Kimberly Stinson Serrano
Debbie Smith
Kimberly Valmore
Charlotte Williams
Tyese Wortham

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Sheila Baumgarten
Dudley Brooks
John DeRoy
Rachel Howard
Jez Kuono`ono Lee

Biographies of the Isadora Duncan Committee Members for the years 2008 - 2009. For more information about the committee, read about our policies.

Angela Amarillas trained and performed in classical ballet, modern dance, and Spanish dance with the West Coast Ballet Theater and Festival Ballet in San Diego. During her first year at Stanford University she was invited to be the teaching and performing partner for Richard Powers, an internationally acclaimed master in historic and living traditions of social ballroom dance. Since then, she has been teaching, choreographing, and performing in the Bay Area, nationwide, and internationally, most notably the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, Lincoln Center in New York City, Academia Nazionale di Danza in Rome, Michelle Nadal’s Arts et Mouvement in Paris, and Dvorana Dance in Prague. Ms. Amarillas is a former board chair of the Bay Area’s Young Women Social Entrepreneurs and currently serves on the board of Black Label Movement, a modern dance company based in Minneapolis and directed by Carl Flink.

Zenon Barron
Member since Fall 2008

Zenon Barron is internationally known as a master in Ballet Folklorico and has had his work shown throughout the world. His impressive biography includes dancing with Ballet Folklorico de Mexico of Mexico City and La Universidad de Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico. His choreographies have won him numerous awards including recognition from World Arts West of San Francisco as well as local and state governments and private and public foundations.

Brooke Byrne
Production Sub-Committee Co-Chair
Member since Fall 2006

Brooke Byrne studied classical ballet at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School and jazz, tap and musical theater at the Melodia Arts Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She double-majored in dance and theater at Bard College in New York and graduated with honors. Upon graduation, Ms. Byrne was invited to perform classical ballet and modern dance with Festival Ballet USA in England. In 1986 she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where she performed with several choreographers and became a founding member of Moving Basis, a modern dance collective, and a member of Khadra International Dance Theatre, of which she is now Artistic Director. As Artistic Director, she choreographed many notable works, specifically The Snow Maiden, Are You My Mother? and Murmuro al corazon. She is also a founding member of Las Estrellas, performing Argentine boleadoras, and has performed Central Asian dances from the ancient Silk Route as a soloist with Ballet Afsaneh, and Tango A Media Luz. On the faculty of several Bay Area dance schools, Ms. Byrne teaches ballet, modern, character and folk dance to children and adults and specializes in early pre-school movement education to children as young as 15 months.

Patricia Bulitt
Awards Nominations Sub-Committee
Member since Fall 2006

Patricia Bulitt is an interdisciplinary artist/dancer who has served for 10 years as Project Director for “Our Neighbors Dance Their Dance: A Celebration of World Dance” in association with the cities of Daly City and Berkeley. She received her M.A. from UCLA. Her numerous awards and fellowships include a National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, California Arts Council residencies, and the Outstanding Woman Artist Award from the City of Berkeley. Her work with improvisational dance and the making of site specific performances has been in association with Urban Creeks Council. Bulitt is a movement specialist at several schools teaching creative dance/movement for over 20 years in California and throughout Alaska.

Wan-Chao Chang
Governance Sub-Committee
Member since Fall 2007

Wan-Chao Chang is the founder and director of Wan-Chao Chang Dance. Born in Taiwan of Indonesian Chinese parents, she received extensive training in both Western and Eastern dance and music, and taught ballroom, ballet, modern, and folk dance locally and internationally. Since arriving in the US in 1995 she has performed with critically acclaimed companies such as Ballet Afsaneh, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Gadung Kasturi Balinese Dance and Music, Westwind International Folk Ensemble, Harsanari Indonesian Dance Company, and Chinese Folk Dance Association. Chang holds a Bachelor degree in Management from Feng Chia University in Taiwan, a B.A. in Dance Ethnology and a M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from San Francisco State University. She currently performs as principle dancer with Ballet Afsaneh, and acts as Guest Choreographer with Ballet Afsaneh, Presidio Dance Theatre, and Westwind, which she directed in 2001-2002.

Jill Guillero-Togawa
Awards Nominations Sub-Committee
Member since Fall 2007

Jill Guillero-Togawa is a native of Hawai‘i. Her career as a dancer, choreographer, artistic director and arts administrator spans more than three decades. After receiving a BA in Dance from the University of Hawai’i, she continued her professional training In New York at the schools of all the major modern dance choreographers, taught at the Graham School and performed in the company of Saeko Ichinohe. Her formal training also includes hula, folk and classical Japanese, Middle Eastern, Butoh, and Balinese dance. In the 1980’s Ms. Togawa began to choreograph her own work, and explore artistic expression that would fully reflect her multicultural background. In 1992 she founded Purple Moon Dance Project which explored intimacy and desire between women. Her work has been presented in Hawai‘i, throughout the U.S., Vancouver and China. The New York Times described Ms. Togawa’s work as ‘radiant’ and ‘filled with a quiet joy’.

Joanna Gewertz Harris
Member since Fall 2008

Joanna Gewertz Harris is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, therapist, dance historian and dance critic. She was a contributor to and editor of IMPULSE, the San Francisco annual of contemporary dance, and the first editor of American Journal of Dance Therapy. She has taught at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, Cal State Hayward, Sonoma State, Lone Mountain and Antioch College. She is currently on the faculty of Diablo Valley College, Emeritus College, instructor at the Modern Dance Center, Berkeley, and a teacher of special classes for seniors at Contra Costa Senior Living Centers. Her forthcoming book is Beyond Isadora: Bay Area Dancing, 1915-65.

Patricia “Gigi” Jensen
Publicity Sub-Committee Chair
Member since Fall 2005

Patricia “Gigi” Jensen was born in Colombia, South America, and raised in the US. Graphic designer and public school teacher by background, she co-founded Tango A Media Luz in 1998 with Argentine dance star Pampa Cortés, to present traditional Argentine dances. Gigi has worked with SF Ethnic Dance Festival, Bay Area Celebrates National Dance Week Steering Committee, Carnaval SF, and Theatre Bay Area’s CA$H Grant (dance) program. She is the publisher of the Bay Area Danceline Ebulletin, a weekly missive listing dance performances in the greater SF Bay Area.

Nancy Lyons
Membership Sub-Committee Chair
Member since Fall 2007

Nancy Lyons began dancing as a child in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she studied ballet and tap. In her early teens, she discovered the challenges and pleasures of improvisation and choreography, studying and performing with the Hanya Holm’s former lead dancer, Elizabeth Waters. She received her BA in French Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, and her MA in Dance from Mills College. She has toured her solo and group choreography throughout California, in New York City, and Yugoslavia. After studying and working with Andre Bernard for over 20 years, she continues the legacy of Ideokinesiology in her teaching. With Rebecca Fuller, former Chair of the Dance Department at Mills College, she co-authored Openings and Inner Workings, The Moving Box and The Moving Book, resources for movement exploration and choreography. Currently she is the Director of the Dance program at Sonoma State University in Northern California.

Dennis Mullen
Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee Chair, Governance and Policy Sub-Committee Chair, Publicity Sub-Committee
Member since Fall 2003

Dennis Mullen is English Editor for Ballet Art, a magazine published in St Petersburg, Russia. He danced as a soloist for the Santa Clara Ballet for 15 years in both classical and character roles. Since 1990, he has completed six Legacy Oral History Interviews, which are now part of the permanent collection of the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum.
He currently sits on the Advisory Board of Legacy, the Board of Trustees for the Santa Clara Ballet, and for Classical Dance Alliance based in New York City. He sat on the Board of Trustees of Lines Contemporary Ballet for 10 years, and consulted with numerous local dance companies on financial and non-profit management issues. He teaches tax accounting for City College of San Francisco, works for the US Treasury Department, and holds a CPA and an MBA in Finance.

Corrine Nagata
Member since Fall 2008

Corrine Nagata has recently returned to the Bay Area. She currently teaches Horton technique for the LINES/ Dominican University Bachelor of Fine Arts program. After attending San Francisco School of the Arts and the North Carolina School of the Arts, she graduated in the Advanced Placement Program. She spent eight years in New York teaching at The Ailey School, Dance Theatre of Harlem and for New York City Ballet’s Jacques D’Amboise. While in New York, she founded Nagata Dance which brings dance classes and performances into the public schools. Nagata Dance currently serves two schools in Harlem New York and five in San Francisco. Locally, Corrine has danced for Janice Garrett and Reginald Ray Savage.

Paul Parish
Membership, Production Sub-Committee
Member since Fall 2006

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 dance criticism at UC (Berkeley and Santa Cruz campuses) and at the Silesian Dance Theater Festival in Bytom, Poland. He has studied ballet with Sally Streets and Debra Isaacson, Limón technique with Joan Lazarus, Cunningham technique 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.

Renee Renouf
Production Sub-Committee and Publicity Sub-Committee
Member since Fall 2006

Renee Renouf 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 the Website ballet.co. She served on the organizing committee of A Ballets Russes Celebration, June 1-4, 2000, in New Orleans, which served as a basis for the Ballets Russes documentary. She currently is completing a history of the Asian Art Museum Docents and the memoirs of Tatiana Stepanova, a de Basil Original Ballets Russes ballerina, and the grand prix winner (Queen Elizabeth Prize) at the First International Dance Competition in Brussels, Belgium, April-May, 1939.

Miguel Santos
Member since Fall 2008

Native Californian and Mexican American from Lompoc, Santa Barbara county, Santos studied ballet with Carmelita Maracci in college and then concentrated on Flamenco–working in the companies Jose Greco (Spain/International) and Lola Montes (LA).
In 1968, he joined Adela Clara’s Theatre Flamenco Co. of San Francisco, where he has served as principal dancer, choreographer, Assist. Director, costume designer, program designer, and since l987, Artistic Director. He is a three-time NEA choreographer recipient, one of the works being Misa Flamenca. Santos danced at Old Sp. Factory on Greene St. for years. In 2006, he retired from the Theatre Flamenco and passed the reins to a new director, Carola Zertuche.
For the past 10 years he has taught Flamenco at the Fair Oaks Elementary school in Redwood City, and in an after school program at the Martin Luther King. Jr. Community Center in San Mateo.  Currently he is teaching at Khadra International Dance Center.
In 2008, Miguel received two Izzie awards: Outstanding Reconstruction and Sustained Achievement, also received Malonga Casquelourd Lifetime Achievement Award from San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.

Danica Sena
Member since Fall 2008

Danica Sena is a choreographer/performer and founder of Andanza Spanish Arts who is internationally recognized for her extraordinary energy and artistry. Her Mediterranean roots and an undying passion for knowledge has led her on a decade-long journey to master the art of Flamenco/Spanish Dance and Culture, and to the development of a unique methodology that has lauded her superior as an instructor of both youth and adults. Along with her complete and ecclectic dance training she is a consummate singer, musician (piano, flute, violin) and actor and her original choreographies have been performed throughout the U.S., Spain, Mexico, Japan and the Czech Republic. In 1996 she founded the International Ago Arena Dance Festival in Ugata, Japan which received critical acclaim and is still active today. As a performer she has shared the stage with Ojos de Brujo, Noche Flamenca and reknowned director John Mauceri at the Hollywood Bowl, Larry Vuckovich, Carmela Greco, Deepak Chopra, Compañia Rafael Aguilar, Soul Force, Rosa Montoya Bailes Flamencos, Ana Gonzalez, Daniel Doña (Baile Nacional de España,”Chanta la Mui”)and La Tania. Ms. Sena brings to her students a dedication to excellence while maintaining freshness and sincere joy in the learning process. She is proud to be on faculty at ODC/Rhythm&Motion and currently teaches both Flamenco and Fusion Rhythms Dance Workout.

Kimberly Stinson Serrano
Membership Sub-Committee
Member since Fall 2007

Kimberly Stinson Serrano is a choreographer, lecturer, performer and teacher. She holds a MA in Dance Education from Stanford University. Trained first in classical ballet, she also studied rhythm tap, jazz, contemporary dance and the dances of Hawai’i. Ms. Stinson Serrano has provided movement for American Musical Theatre of San José, CAFE Theatre, Opera Bravura, Pacific Ballet, Peninsula Youth Theatre, Portola Valley Theatre Conservatory, and West Bay Opera, among others. Her teaching style and knowledge of diverse dance forms recently earned her a position as an ARTHPATH artist-in-residence; a post enabling her to reach hundreds of school children through weekly dance sessions. She currently specializes in private sessions with actors, dancers, and athletes seeking to improve performance quality. She is founder/director of Oculus Danceworks and on the board of directors for the Carole Stinson Literacy Foundation.

Debbie Smith
Member since Fall 2008

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 oversaw 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. Currently she works full time as Cultural Events Coordinator for San Francisco’s Arab Cultural and Community Center, assisting with cultural program development, event management, grant writing, and publicity and marketing.
An active member of the San Francisco arts community, she 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.

Kimberly Valmore
Publicity Sub-Committee
Member since Fall 2007

Kimberly Valmore has had the opportunity to study and perform with many talented choreographers and teachers including Mary Ann Kinkead, Kathleen McKlintock, June Watanabe, Michael Kelly Bruce, Molissa Fenley, Tim Wengerd and Donald McKayle. In 1992, Ms. Valmore received her MFA in Dance at Mills College. For the last 22 years, she has taught Ballet at various schools including East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, Mission Dance, Danceavision, California Theater Arts, Academy Ballet, and Dance Connection Performing Arts Center. In addition to her being on staff at Danspace, Ms. Valmore holds the position of Professor of Dance at Diablo Valley College where she teaches technique classes and holds a lecture class in Twentieth Century Dance History.

Tyese Wortham
Member since Fall 2008

Tyese Wortham is currently in her 4th season as Programs Associate with World Arts West, the producers of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival and serves as a member of the Programming Committee. She has acquired over 15 years of dance experience from hip-hop to modern, from West African to Afro-Cuban dance. Tyese has performed with various Bay Area dance companies of the African Diaspora including: Obakoso Drum & Dance Ensemble, Jaranon y Bochinche Afro-Peruvian Dance and Music and Rara Tou Limen Dance Company. Currently, Tyese is a member and collaborating teacher with Emese: Messengers of the African Diaspora. In 2007, Tyese served as a panelist for the San Francisco Carnaval King and Queen Competition and recently, for the Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Fellowship program.

Charlotte Williams
Member since Fall 2008

Charlotte Williams is a choreographer, dancer, teacher and guest lecturer of hoofing and contemporary tap. Holding a BA in English from Stanford University, her dance background is rooted in Las Vegas where she studied under the legendary Tony award-winning choreographer Henry LeTang, whose protégés include the late Gregory Hines, with whom she tapped on two occasions. As an undergraduate, she co-founded the Stanford Tappers and choreographed various performances. She also joined the Stanford Steppers, a performance group of African-American step dancing, which is a precursor to tap. Most recently, Charlotte guest choreographed a contemporary tap piece for Stanford University’s 30th Annual Spring Migration Dance Concert that highlighted the dichotomous origins of tap, applying such percussive instruments as taps on pointe shoes and bottle caps on gloves. Charlotte has instructed students of all ages and levels throughout the Bay Area for the past 5 years, including Stanford University, Dance Connection and Oculus Danceworks. Her teachings have been incorporated into contemporary music concerts performed in halls across the nation and around the world. In the spirit of keeping tap alive, Charlotte has additionally lectured on tap’s rich and unique history for the Stanford Dance Division and the Stanford Continuing Studies Program.