Committee Members 2009-2010

Angela Amarillas
Anna Botelho
Patricia Bulitt
Brooke Byrne
Wan-Chao Chang
Stephen Goldstine
Joanna Gewertz Harris
Nancy Lyons
Corrine Nagata
Aliah Najmabadi
Paul Parish
Renee Renouf (Hall)
Miguel Santos
Charlotte Williams

Biographies of the Isadora Duncan Committee Members for the years 2009 – 2010. 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.

Anna Botelho
Awards Nominations Sub-Committee Chair
Member since Fall 2009

Anna Botelho started dancing through musical theater, jazz, and world dance in Palo Alto, CA. However, she found her true passion in ballroom dancing at Yale University. Since college she has been teaching, competing, and performing in all four disciplines of ballroom dance – Rhythm, Smooth, Latin, and Standard – rising to the top 10 ranked female pro/am competitors nationally. She travels with her dance partner nationally and internationally to teach and perform.  Most recently she has expanded her work to include more world dance, particularly Bollywood dance, which she is teaching at Google, Oracle, and many mid-Peninsula locations. She enjoys choreography and was please to present her work at the recent GoogleMela show and Oracle Diwali performances.

Brooke Byrne
Production Sub-Committee 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
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 Chair
Member since Fall 2007

Since arriving in the US in 1995 from Taiwan, Chang has performed with critically acclaimed companies such as Ballet Afsaneh, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Gadung Kasturi Balinese Dance and Music, Harsanari Indonesian Dance Company, Chinese Folk Dance Association, and Westwind International Folk Ensemble, which she directed from 2001-2002. Following her passion, celebrating the harmony of world dance and bringing her diverse disciplines togethe, in 2008 she founded Wan-Chao Dance, an ethno-contemporary dance company which aims to create new works rooted in traditional dance forms. Her goal is to sensitize audiences to the human commonality, while embracing the diversity and beauty reflected in society through the language of dance.

Stephen Goldstine
Member since Fall 2009

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.

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.

Corrine Nagata
Fundraising Sub-Committee Chair
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.

Aliah Najmabadi
Member since Fall 2009

Aliah Najmabadi is a performer and scholar of Central Asian and Iranian dance. Committed to the preservation and development of these performing arts practices, she travels extensively to Central Asia to study, and conduct fieldwork within the dance communities of Tajikistan. In 2008 Aliah created a dance resource & performance center in the Republic of Tajikistan through her ongoing work as program manager of the Tajik Dance Initiative NGO, a project of the Afsaneh Art & Culture Society. More locally, Aliah performed for ten years with Ballet Afsaneh and served as assistant director from 2005-2006. Presently Aliah dances with Wan-Chao Dance Company. Aliah is co-founder of Samaa Arts & Culture Foundation and dance program manager for Zambaleta World Music & Dance School in San Francisco. Aliah holds a B.A. degree in both World Arts and Cultures and Iranian Studies from UCLA and a Master’s degree in Performance from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, UK.

Paul Parish
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
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.

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.

Charlotte Williams
Publicity Sub-Committee Chair
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.