Alan Brown
Alan Brown is a leading researcher and management consultant in the nonprofit arts industry. His work focuses on understanding consumer demand for cultural experiences and helping cultural institutions, foundations and agencies see new opportunities, make informed decisions and respond to changing conditions. His studies have introduced new vocabulary to the lexicon of cultural participation and propelled the field towards a clearer view of the rapidly changing cultural landscape. His work on assessing the intrinsic impacts of arts experiences continues to expand and evolve, with several new studies on the horizon that aim to develop new lost-cost assessment tools for cultural institutions. Through 2011, Alan is leading large evaluation and research projects for the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Dance/USA, the California Community Foundation and The James Irvine Foundation. Another focus of Alan’s work is developing survey methodologies that communities can use to reliably and repeatedly measure levels of cultural engagement, using an expanded definition of ‘culture.’ He holds three degrees from the University of Michigan: a Master of Business Administration, a Master of Music in Arts Administration and a Bachelor of Musical Arts in vocal performance.
Todd T. Brown
Multidisciplinary artist and cultural connector, Todd T. Brown's experience spans 20 years of integrating artistic disciplines and small-scale arts presenting within the context of community cultural development. In 2003, Brown founded the Red Poppy Art House, originally under the name Porfilio Is, and seeded the Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP) later that year. In 2007, together with Meklit Hadero, he co-founded the music ensemble Nefasha Ayer - The Space of In between, a recipient of grants from the San Francisco Foundation and Zellerbach Family Foundation. He has been a Resident Artist at San Francisco's de Young Museum (2009) and Residencia Otro Lado, Chiapas, Mexico (2009/10), and is an artistic collaborator and advisor for EDELO contemporary art center in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. Most recently, through a 2011 Artist Fellowship at the de Young Museum, Brown presented the performance work-in-progress Teobi's Dreaming, followed by a mixed-media visual art exhibit INHERITANCE. This fall he is piloting the ITCH (Investing in The Creative Hunch), a social-organizational network model that merges social networking with cultural projects to form volunteer-based administrative teams that support emerging arts initiatives.
John Calloway
John Calloway is a nationally recognized multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger who is known for both his prolific work in jazz, Latin jazz, Latin American and other world music styles and genres, and also for his numerous collaborations with artists from other disciplines. John has performed with Jesus Diaz, Pete Escovedo, Dizzy Gillespie, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, Max Roach, John Santos, Omar Sosa. He has collaborated in theatre, dance and multi-media projects with Carlos Baron, Kathleen McCarthy, and the Wheelworks project. His recording and writing credits are on the Grammy nominated CDs of the Machete Ensemble and Ritmo y Candela, and he has released two of his own CDs, Diaspora (2001) and The Code (2007). As an educator John founded and directs the widely popular Afro-Cuban Ensemble of San Francisco State University and is also co-founder and musical director of the Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble of San Francisco. Lastly, John holds a Doctorate of Education from the University of San Francisco, is an Arts Commissioner for the City of San Francisco, and serves as an advisor for Stanford Jazz, the San Jose Jazz Society, and the San Francisco Unified School District.
Ben Cameron
In 2006, Ben Cameron assumed his current position as Program Director for the Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in New York, NY. In that capacity, he supervises a $13 million grants program focusing on organizations and artists in the theatre, contemporary dance, jazz and presenting fields. Previously, he served for more than 8 years as the Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national service organization for the American nonprofit professional theater, significantly expanding its programs, membership base and grantmaking activities. Prior roles include his work as Senior Program Officer at the Dayton Hudson Foundation, Manager of Community Relations for Target Stores (supervising its grantmaking program) and four years at the National Endowment for the Arts, including two as Director of the Theater Program. He has served on a number of nonprofit boards, including those of the national Arts and Business Council, American Arts Alliance and Grantmakers in the Arts. He has received honorary degrees from DePaul University in Chicago and American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, in addition to an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. In 2007, he was one of five recipients of the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Eugenie Chan
Eugenie Chan is a 5th generation San Franciscan whose forefathers sold slippers in Chinatown, dry goods in the desert, and love in the bordellos. No wonder her plays tend to mix up language, reality, tradition, and history. Her work includes Madame Ho, Kitchen Table; Bone to Pick; Diadem, Tontlawald, Daphne Does Dim Sum; Rancho Grande; Emil, A Chinese Play; Novell-aah!; Pilgrim; Consent; Circus; and opera libretti, Courtside, Snakewoman. Theatres that have produced or developed her plays include the Public, Playwrights Horizons, Ma-Yi, Centenary Stage, Pan Asian Rep, and Perishable Theatre; on the West Coast: Cutting Ball Theater, Thick Description, Magic Theatre, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Northwest Asian American Theatre, Group Theatre, East West Players, and the Asian American Theatre Company, and the Houston Grande Opera: HGOco. Eugenie has received commissions from HGOco, the Magic/Sloan Science Initiative, Cutting Ball, and the San Francisco Foundation; awards fromMixed Blood Theater, NYU; residencies from Sundance, Hedgebrook; grants from the Lippman Family New Frontier, San Francisco Arts Commission, the SF and Wallace Foundations, TBA New Works, CA$H; and fellowships from the Berilla Kerr, Affymax, Tournesol, Film Arts, and George Lucas Educational Foundations. Her work is published in Alexander Street Press’ Asian American Drama and North American Women Writers and Lexington Books’ Embodiments of Asian/American and Pacific Islander/American Sexualities. She is a Resident Playwright at New Dramatists and the Cutting Ball Theater. Eugenie has also written political satire for the San Francisco Mime Troupe and screenplays which have been finalists for Nicholl and Cinestory Fellowships.
She holds a BA in Literature from Yale and an MFA from NYU.
Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang is the author of the American Book Award-winning Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of The Hip-Hop Generation and was a 2008 USA Ford Fellow in Literature. The Utne Reader named him one of the "50 Visionaries Changing Your World." His most recent work includes two articles "The Creativity Stimulus" (The Nation) and "Culture Before Politics" (The American Prospect, co-written with Brian Komar), about the role of culture in social change, and the importance of cultural strategy and cultural Organizing in movement-building.
Debra Chasnoff
Debra Chasnoff, Academy Award–winning documentary filmmaker is a nationally recognized champion of using film as an organizing tool for social justice campaigns, and a pioneering leader in the international movement working to create safe and welcoming schools and communities.
Debra’s highly acclaimed documentaries addressing youth and bias issues are widely hailed by educators and advocates as among the best tools available today to help open up dialogue and activism around many of the most challenging issues affecting young people’s lives and school environments.
Her most recent film is Straightlaced—How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up, about the gender and sexuality pressures that teens and young adults face today. Her other award-winning films include It’s Elementary—Talking About Gay Issues in School, Let’s Get Real (about bias and bullying) That’s a Family! (supporting youth growing up in diverse family structures) and the Academy Award-winning Deadly Deception—General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment. Her first film, Choosing Children, explored the once unheard of idea that lesbians and gay men could become parents after coming out.
She is the founding director of GroundSpark, a non-profit production, education, and advocacy company based in San Francisco.
Sarah Crowell
Sarah Crowell has been a performer and arts and violence prevention educator for over 20 years. She has worked with Destiny Arts Center (www.destinyarts.org) since 1990, first as the performing arts director, then as executive director and now as the artistic director. Sarah founded and co-directs the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company, a dynamic teen group that is recognized nationally for their cutting edge, socially conscious movement/theater work. She has also spoken and facilitated workshops at numerous national conferences since 2000.
Sarah received 9 California Arts Council Artist in Residency grants for her work at Destiny and a National Endowment for the Arts grant to author a curriculum guide called Youth on the Move: a teacher’s guidebook to co-creating original movement/theater performances with teens. Sarah is the recipient of the 2011 KQED Local Heroes Award, the 2007 KPFA Peace Award and the 2006 Purple Moon DreamSpeakers Award.
Sarah has performed nationally and internationally with modern, jazz and dance/theater companies in Boston and the Bay Area, including Impulse Jazz Dance Company (www.impulsedance.com), the Dance Brigade (www.dancebrigade.org) and her own dance/theater company, I am! Productions.
Dandelion Dancetheater
Dandelion Dancetheater is situated at the crossroads of dance, theater, community activism, healing, and new performance forms. Our work is built from a fascination with artistic experimentation, vulnerability, and risk-taking and a simultaneous commitment to the creation of high-quality, radically accessible art. We view the exploration of the endless possibilities of the human body as a potent means for personal and collective growth and share this exploration with diverse populations through performance, teaching, speaking, video, and writing. The company operates on the philosophy that how we make work and who is included in that process is a determining factor of the meaning of our art. The Dandelion ensemble is a diverse group of dancers, actors, musicians, and performance technicians, all collaborators in the creation process. Also diverse in terms of size, age, sexual orientation, ability/disability, and cultural background, these artists are involved in in-depth research in the ways their backgrounds and artistic forms intersect. Built collaboratively over intensive rehearsal periods, our works are both performative and an expression of community ritual. Performances dismantle the distinction between artist and ordinary person, inviting the audience to both see themselves reflected in and become a part of the experience. More info: www.dandeliondancetheater.org
Dante Di Loreto
Dante Di Loreto is executive producer of GLEE, a biting musical comedy that has become a pop-culture phenomenon. The show has received 19 Emmy and 11 Golden Globe nominations, and won four Emmy Awards and four Golden Globes. Di Loreto serves as executive producer of the GLEE albums and oversees music production on the series. The show has racked up two Platinum and two Gold albums, two Grammy Award nominations, more than 16 million song downloads, the No. 1 soundtrack of 2010 (“The Christmas Album”) and has broken the music record for the most single entries on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Over the years, Di Loreto has produced original scripted series for cable and broadcast television. He served as executive producer on the TV movie “Temple Grandin” with Claire Danes, Julia Ormond and Catherine O’Hara, chronicling a young woman’s struggle with autism and her accomplishments, which took home 16 Emmy Awards. He has also produced a variety of films and theater productions including the film “Die, Mommie, Die!,” which took home the Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize, starred Charles Busch as a fallen pop diva in an ode to the Ross Hunter-style big-screen soaps of the 60's. On Broadway, Di Loreto co-produced "Glass Menagerie" starring Jessica Lange and Christian Slater, "Festen" starring Juliana Margulies and Ali McGraw and Sir Antony Sher's "Primo".
D’Lo
D’Lo is a queer Tamil Sri L.A.nkan-American, political theatre artist/writer, director, comedian and music producer. D’Lo has performed and/or facilitated performance and writing workshops extensively (US, Canada, UK, Germany, Sri Lanka and India), having recently held workshops in LA with SATRANG and as a teaching artist with Teada Productions Theater Company. D’Lo’s work has been published in various anthologies and academic journals, most recently: Desi Rap: Hip Hop and South Asia America and Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic (co-edited by Sharon Bridgforth). D’Lo holds a BA from UCLA in Ethnomusicology and is a graduate of New York’s School of Audio Engineering (SAE).
Duniya Dance and Drum Company
Duniya Dance and Drum Company, Formed in April 2007, creates dance and music from Punjab, India, and Guinea, West Africa, as well as unique blends of these forms and beyond. The word duniya means “world” in a wide array of languages, including Punjabi, Arabic, Susu and Wolof. Duniya’s work embodies this word, as it explores the forces that have brought together the members of the company and their dance and drum styles, including, but not limited to, colonization, globalization, immigration, art, dance, music and love. Artistic Director Joti Singh is a choreographer, performer, and instructor of Bhangra dance from Punjab, India and dance from Guinea, West Africa. She was an Artist-in-Residence at CounterPULSE, in 2008. In addition Joti apprenticed Guinean dancer Alseny Soumah through the Alliance for California Traditional Arts’ Apprenticeship Program and received the organization’s Traditional Artist Development Grant. She participated in the Margaret Jenkins CHIME mentorship program during 2009, studying Mexican Folklorico dance with Zenon Barron. Joti received a Creative Work Fund grant to collaborate with Barron’s company Ensambles Ballet Folklorico de San Francisco to create a piece on the Punjabi Mexican communities of California.
Brad Erickson
Brad Erickson serves as executive director of Theatre Bay Area, one of the nation’s largest regional performing arts service organizations, with 350 theatre and dance company members, and nearly 3,000 individual members. Brad also serves as the president of the California Arts Advocates, the statewide advocacy organization for all the arts, and as the California State Captain for Americans for the Arts. He is the co-founder and co-director of Arts Forum SF, advocating for the arts in San Francisco, and is the Chair of the Mid-Market Project Area Committee of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. Also a playwright, his play Woody & Me received an NEA grant for its 2001 world premier at the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, IN and was selected as best new play in the 2000 Festival of Emerging American Theatre. His play, The War at Home, received its world premiere at San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theatre in September of 2006, and won an award for Best New Script from the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Currently Brad is developing two new plays: American Dream, el sueno del otro lado, at New Conservatory Theatre Center where it is set to premiere in 2012, and Milagro, at NCTC and Z Space Studio.
Rudolf Frieling
Rudolf Frieling was born in 1956 in Münster (GER); he graduated in Humanities at the Free University in Berlin and received a Ph.D. from the University of Hildesheim; since 2006 he is Curator of Media Arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) where he has curated the survey shows In Collaboration: Early Works from the Media Arts Collection, The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now, and Longplay: Brucer Conner and the Singles Collection. Between 1994 and 2006 he was curator and researcher at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany; since 1990 he has lectured and published internationally extensively on art and media; he co-edited a series of volumes on the history and current context of media art, most recently Media Art Net 1/2 (2004/2005); he has taught at various academies and universities in Europe and is currently also Adjunct Professor at the California College of Art in San Francisco and the San Francisco Art Institute. Lives and works in San Francisco.
Lori Fogarty
Lori Fogarty is the Director and CEO of the Oakland Museum of California, a position she assumed in March 2006. In this role, she oversees all Museum programmatic and administrative operations, which were recently transferred from joint oversight by the City of Oakland and the Oakland Museum of California Foundation to sole management by the non-profit Foundation. Lori has led the Museum’s $63 million capital campaign and building renovation and gallery reinstallation project, which has included the reinstallation of 90,000 square feet of gallery space as well as the first major enhancement to the Museum’s landmark building. Prior to her current position, Lori was executive director of the Bay Area Discovery Museum, a children’s museum in Sausalito (2001 – 2006) and was senior deputy director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), serving in various capacities at that institution for 12 years. Lori is a graduate of Occidental College, with a B.A. in English. She has served on the Boards of Head-Royce School, the Association of Children’s Museums, Children’s Day School in San Francisco, and Enterprise for High School Students.
Arlene Goldbard
Arlene Goldbard is a writer, speaker, consultant and activist whose focus is the intersection of culture, politics and spirituality. Her blog and other writings may be downloaded from her Web site: www.arlenegoldbard.com. She was born in New York and grew up near San Francisco. Her most recent book, New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development was published by New Village Press in November 2006. She is also co-author of Community, Culture and Globalization, an international anthology published by the Rockefeller Foundation, Crossroads: Reflections on the Politics of Culture, and author of Clarity, a novel. Her essays have been published in In Motion Magazine, Art in America, Theatre, Tikkun, and many other journals. She has addressed many academic and community audiences in the U.S. and Europe, on topics ranging from the ethics of community arts practice to the development of integral organizations. She has provided advice and counsel to hundreds of community-based organizations, independent media groups, and public and private funders and policymakers including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Independent Television Service, Appalshop and dozens of others. She is currently writing a new book on art’s public purpose. She serves as President of the Board of Directors of The Shalom Center.
Jewelle Gomez
Jewelle Gomez is the author of seven books including the double Lambda Literary Award-winning lesbian vampire novel, The Gilda Stories. Her adaptation of the novel for the stage, Bones and Ash, was commission and performed by Urban Bush Women Company. In the 1996 season it toured 17 US cities including New York, Seattle, Minneapolis, Iowa City, Washington, DC, and San Francisco.
Her newest play, Waiting for Giovanni, a dream play about James Baldwin, had its world premiere at New Conservatory Theatre Center (San Francisco) in August 2011.
She was on the original board of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice.
She has a BA from Northeastern University and MS from Columbia School of Journalism. She has taught at a variety of educational institutions including Hunter College (NYC), San Francisco State University, New College of California and Menlo College (CA). Her topics include creative writing, women in literature, and Black popular culture.
She was the director of the Literature Program for the New York State Council on the Arts and the director of Cultural Equity Grants for the San Francisco Arts Commission. She is currently director of grants for Horizons, the oldest LGBT foundation in the US and serves as President of the San Francisco Public Library Commission.
Her second novel, TELEVISED, is looking for a home.
Rachel Grossman
Rachel Grossman is a DC-based producing and performing artist and administrator. Rachel currently works at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company as the Connectivity Director, and is co-founder and the Director of Organizational Advancement for dog & pony dc. She spent four seasons as the Director of Education & Outreach at Round House Theatre and prior to that she managed programming in the education departments at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Arena Stage, and CENTERSTAGE.
Rachel is a founding member of Referendum: Political Arts Collective through which she produced and directed The Trojan Women, and produced and appeared in To Have and To Hold and The Burial at Thebes. Her directing credits also include Courage and Beertown (dog & pony dc), Holes and Just a Dream (Adventure Theatre), and Assistant Directing Full Circle under Michael Rohd (Woolly Mammoth). Rachel has produced work with eXtreme eXchange and Source Festival, performed with DC Playback Theatre, and adjudicated with the Helen Hayes Awards. She has served on several panels and committees with Folger Theatre, Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, AATE, DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, and TCG. She received her B.A. from Kenyon College.
René de Guzman
René de Guzman is the senior curator of art at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA). He came on staff at OMCA in 2007 to help lead the planning and execution of the reinstallation of the Gallery of California Art. His most recent exhibition includes The Marvelous Museum, a project by Mark Dion that drew from the art, history, and natural sciences collections. Previously, de Guzman was Director of Visual Arts at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco. He opened YBCA’s facility with other founding staff members in 1992 and helped establish this multi-disciplinary contemporary art center’s artistic initial vision. Over the course of de Guzman’s 15-year tenure at YBCA, he provided early support for some of the Bay Area’s leading artists, and worked with national and international emerging and mid-career artists. De Guzman’s work both at OMCA and YBCA is marked by an ongoing commitment to experimentation and innovation, and the creation of community around cultural activity. De Guzman earned his BFA in art practice at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987, after which he pursued a career as a studio artist. De Guzman’s mixed media sculptures are in private and public collections, including the Berkeley Art Museum and the San Jose Museum of Art. He has taught at educational and cultural venues around the world and is currently Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Division of the Curatorial Studies Program at the California College of the Arts.
Eboni Senai Hawkins
Eboni Senai Hawkins is a writer, curator, and placemaker. As Director of see. think. dance. she works across geographic boundaries, physical buildings, and personal space to narrow the divide between artists and audiences. see. think. dance. has curated work for The Red Poppy Art House and the Empowering Women Of Color Conference at UC-Berkeley. Supported by the Zellerbach Family Foundation, see. think. dance. created and produced 7 performance salons over 2 years for the DANCEfirst! series at The Museum of the African Diaspora. Eboni serves on the Planning Committee for the Black Choreographers’ Festival, contributing as Social Media Liaison and programmer for the REFLECT film series. Eboni was a grant recipient of the Zellerbach Family Foundation and a featured blogger for the Emerging Arts Professionals 2011 Blog Salon. Recently, Eboni has spearheaded partnerships with the Chicago arts community in light of the mayor’s renewed commitment to increased participation amongst dance audiences.
Marcelle Hinand Cady
Marcelle Hinand Cady is a management consultant with 20 years of experience working with nonprofit cultural organizations and foundations on strategy, program development and assessment. Prior to joining Helicon, Marcy was program director for the arts at the James Irvine Foundation. There she commissioned groundbreaking research on cultural engagement and initiated innovative programs to boost cultural participation. Prior to that, Marcy worked with the TCC Group, where she developed and managed the Knight Foundation's Community Partners in the Arts Access Program, among other large-scale projects. Marcy managed the Ford Foundation's $40 million New Directions/New Donors for the Arts program, and held positions at the Nonprofit Finance Fund, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds a B.A. from Skidmore College and an M.F.A. from Brown University.
Anita Sarah Jackson
Anita Sarah Jackson, is the Director of Social Media and Blogging for MomsRising.org. Working across the organization, as well as with external policy partners, MomsRising's social media strategic development has become integrated with every campaign. Reaching out in both creative and tried-and-true ways, MomsRising's social media reach is now approximately 3.5 million, including an active, engaged and influential Facebook and Twitter following. Anita holds a JD from American University's Washington College of Law.
Beth Kanter
Beth Kanter is the author of Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, one of the longest running and most popular blogs for nonprofits. She co-authored the book titled “The Networked Nonprofit” with Allison Fine published by J Wiley in 2010 that received Honorable Mention for the Terry McAdams Award. Beth has over 30 years working in the nonprofit sector in technology, training, capacity building, evaluation, fundraising, and marketing.
In 2009, she was named by Fast Company Magazine as one of the most influential women in technology and one of Business Week’s “Voices of Innovation for Social Media.” She was named Visiting Scholar for Social Media and Nonprofits for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in 2009-2012. She was a Society of New Communications Research Fellow for 2010.
John Killacky
John Killacky is currently the executive director of Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont. He was most recently the program officer for the Arts and Culture department of the San Francisco Foundation, and previously served as executive director of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for six years, and curator of performing arts for the Walker Art Center for eight years. Other past positions include program officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts, general manager of PepsiCo SUMMERFARE, and managing director of the Trisha Brown and Laura Dean dance companies. He received the First Bank Award Sally Ordway Irvine Award in Artistic Vision; the William Dawson Award for Programming Excellence from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters; Dance USA's Earnie Award as an "unsung hero;" a Gerbode Foundation Professional Development Fellowship; and a scholarship to Harvard Business School's summer intensive. Mr. Killacky has served as a panelist, lecturer, and consultant for a broad range of arts and funding organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, Jerome Foundation, Ontario Arts Council, MacArthur Foundation, Arts International, Irvine Foundation, Michigan Arts and Cultural Affairs Council, and the Japan Foundation. He has written numerous publications on the arts and written and directed several award winning short films and videos.
Lil Miss Hot Mess
Lil Miss Hot Mess: Since her official debut at Trannyshack in 2008, Lil Miss Hot Mess has been bedazzling audiences with a unique blend of camp, choreography, and radical politics. Prior to that, she got her feet wet as a cast member of Hogwarts Express: The Musical!, a queer recasting of the Harry Potter tales presented at the National Queer Arts Festival. She has since taken on numerous issues from the BP oil spill to the It Gets Better project, and has repeatedly revealed what hot messes politicians like Dan White, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin really are. In early 2010, she celebrated her Bat Mitzvah x2? with a party and by the end of the year, she was crowned San Francisco s inaugural Tiara Sensation, beating out eight other fierce queens with an electrifying presentation as a human menorah!
She has performed and curated performances at venues all over the San Francisco Bay Area, including UC Berkeley, Mills College, Dance Mission Theater, Frameline, Galeria de la Raza, LitQuake, CounterPulse, Hard French, the RuPaul s Drag Race tour, Homo A GoGo, and many a seedy gay bar. She has also been a guest performer at shows in New York, Los Angeles, and Portland. www.lilmisshotmess.com
Yeni Lucero
Yeni Lucero was born in the small town of Chalchuapa, El Salvador. Ms. Lucero began her training in West African dance at the age of 15, and soon pursued more versatile training at San Francisco State University, in which she obtained a BA in Dance and Choreography. In addition, she also had the opportunity to extend her training at the Alvin Ailey School during the summer of 2006. She has performed work by Diamanou Coura/West African Dance Company, Paco Gomes, Annie Rosenthal, Jacinta Vlach, Robert Moses'Kin, and Ron K. Brown. Ms. Lucero has taught at Lines Ballet/SFDC, teaching intermediate Afro-Modern. Also, she taught Hip-Hop and Latino Fusion Dance at Fremont and McClymonds High Schools. Most recently Lucero choreographed a piece for Diamano Coura "Bittersweet" and also had the privilege to be one out of the two instructors of flying yoga to help win, Best of the East Bay 2011 award for "Best Hybrid Exercise--ZUMBA® fitness at flying yoga". Miss Lucero is proud to be part of the instructor team at Flying-Yoga, Lines Ballet: SFDC and New Style Motherlode. E-mail: yenilucero@gmail.com or follow her on her website: www.yenilucero.com.
Jessica Lustig
Jessica Lustig, Managing Director and Founding Partner of 21C Media Group, Inc. has more than twenty years of experience working in the field of arts and culture. With an undergraduate degree in music and MBA in international business and marketing from New York University, she brings a combination of musical knowledge and business acumen to 21C Media Group’s clients. Projects include strategic planning and consulting services for Fortune 100 companies and not-for-profits, such as The World Economic Forum, Google/YouTube, The Global Fund, The Library of Congress, and many of the world’s leading concert artists, composers and cultural institutions.
Ms. Lustig began her career in artist management, working with conductors and opera singers at Columbia Artists Management, before moving to Bertelsmann Music Group where for six years she was the director of marketing for classical music at BMG Direct. In 1996, she founded her own business, 21st Century Music Management, which focused on contemporary composers, before co-founding 21C Media Group in 2000 with Albert Imperato and Glenn Petry. Ms. Lustig lives in New York City with her husband and two children.
Sarah S. Lutman
Sarah Lutman became President and Managing Director of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in November of 2008, where she has continued the organization’s commitment to innovation in its artistic leadership and audience development efforts. A classically trained musician, Lutman has had a diverse career in arts management, philanthropy, and media. Previous to joining the SPCO, Sarah was senior vice-president for American Public Media where she was responsible for all broadcast, digital, and live event programming, as well as American Public Media's national programs. She earned two Peabody Awards as executive producer of American Mavericks and The MTT Files. Lutman led the transfer of two leading classical music programs, Performance Today and SymphonyCast, to American Public Media and helped launch Classical South Florida. She also led Minnesota Public Radio’s international efforts and brought U.S. cultural programming abroad through the European Broadcasting Union. In 2005, she spearheaded the ideation, development and launch of 89.3 The Current, an alternative music station in the Twin Cities.
Prior to her media work, Lutman served as senior program officer at The Bush Foundation in Saint Paul, and executive director of the Fleishacker Foundation in San Francisco. She co-founded and co-edited the Grantmakers in the Arts Reader.
Lutman currently serves her community in Minnesota as a member of the Minnesota Women’s Economic Forum and Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Policy Study Group. She also serves on the Board of Overseers of The Curtis Institute of Music and the Board of Trustees of the Interlochen Center for the Arts. She is an active blogger at www.artsjournal.com/speaker.
Rachna Nivas
Rachna Nivas is a Kathak soloist, a member of the internationally touring Chitresh Das Dance Company (CDDC), and a community leader and teacher. She has been studying directly under world-renowned Kathak master, Pandit Chitresh Das, for 13 years. Rachna brings a fierce passion and energy to her performances, displaying the depth of her training under Pandit Das and emerging as a compelling leader amongst the next generation of Kathak artists. As a member of CDDC, Rachna has performed in several award-winning productions at prestigious venues all over the U.S. and India, such as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Roy and Edna Disney Cal/Arts Theater in Los Angeles, National Center for Performing Arts in Mumbai, National Center for Kathak Dance in New Delhi, amongst many others. On the grassroots level, she is actively involved in arts education programs at local schools and museums, and in lecture demonstrations at universities. Rachna is also a senior instructor and co-director of the Chhandam School of Kathak, one of the largest classical Indian dance institutions in the world with over 600 students.
Annika Nonhebel
Annika Nonhebel, Education Director, relocated to California in early 2006. Originally from the Netherlands, she holds a major in sign language. Whilst studying, Annika worked on a variety of different theater productions as a choreographer, director, and dance teacher with children of all ages. After graduating (cum laude) with a MA in Dutch Language & Literature in 2002, she was employed as a research assistant and later as Education Director for a sign language institute. Annika has been working for AXIS as Education Director of the Dance Access/KIDS! Community Education and Outreach Program since 2007. She is responsible for the development and growth of AXIS’ education programs, promoting those both locally and nationally. As director she manages and coaches a team of 8 teaching artists; teaches Physically Integrated Creative Dance to grades K-12; provides presentation and trainings; and coordinates, and produces all performances for youth. Furthermore Annika works on tour bookings; she also works on grant writing; web development, and is responsible for implementing AXIS’ social media plan and policies. Annika received scholarships for the Emerging Leadership Institute in 2008 and American Management Association in 2010. She is an alumni of the California Institute for Dance Learning’s Summer Institute and Advanced Summer Institute.
Ruth Price
Ruth Price, born in Berkeley, CA, was drawn to the drums as a toddler. Her foster mother noticed her attraction to music and bought her a drum set. By age seven Ruth started lessons with Donald Bailey who had played with Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins, and Jimmy Smith. At eight years old she was playing at Bay Area jam sessions alongside her teacher. She is trained in Gospel, Jazz, Classical, Funk and other styles having studied with Jeff “Tain” Watts, Babatundea Lea, Darrell Green, and Fred Dinkins. After 16 years of drumming Ruth has travelled the globe and played with such musicians as Pete Escevedo, Mulgrew Miller, Ledisi, and Branford Marsalis. Her career blossomed in Los Angeles, CA in 2006 were she attended the Musicians Institute. In 2007 she performed with Grammy Award winner Van Hunt on his world tour. This year she recorded on his album "What Were You Hoping For." She toured in West Africa this summer with Jazz & Democracy teaching in the schools throughout Gambia and Liberia. Ruth resides in the Bay Area where she free lances on the Oakland church scene, performs with Meklit Hadero, Moon Candy, Martin Luther, Corey Action, and other local artists.
Baruch Porras-Hernandez
Baruch Porras-Hernandez is a performance poet and the Co-Host/Organizer for The San Francisco Queer Open Mic. He has been a resident artist in the Spoken Word Program 2011, at the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada and Air Space (Artists in Residence) part of the Garage All Stars in San Francisco, where he developed his first solo play, Reasons to Stay on the Ground which later premiered as part of the National Queer Arts Festival 2010.
National credits include Noches de Poesia Poetry Cabaret (the 2011 Montreal Fringe Festival) the Berkeley Poetry Slam, Sparkle Series at BusBoys and Poets (Washington, DC) and Pace University’s Annual Poetry Slam (NYC). He was born in Toluca, Mexico and grew up in Albany, California. He lives in San Francisco.
Josephine Ramirez
Josephine Ramirez was appointed Program Director in January 2010, with overall responsibility for the Foundation’s Arts program. Before joining Irvine, Josephine was Vice President of Programming and Planning for the Music Center in Los Angeles, where she founded the programming department in 2003. While at the Music Center she created several groundbreaking initiatives, foremost the launch and establishment of Active Arts® at the Music Center, which offers the public more than fifty free- or low-cost events throughout the year with opportunities to play music, sing, dance, and tell stories. Previously, she was a Program Officer at the Getty Foundation, managing funding in the areas of arts leadership development, Los Angeles cultural organizations, arts education research and arts policy. Also at the Getty, she was Research Associate at the Research Institute, creating and implementing a multi-year investigation of the connections between art making and civic participation. For the city of Los Angeles, she currently serves as Vice President of the Cultural Affairs Commission. She is a Loeb Fellow alumna at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, an award that supported her research on informal, nonprofessional art making and its relationship to individual and community vitality. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Josephine earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in theater from the University of Washington.
Rashad
Rashad is a dance artist, choreographer, somatic facilitator (cmt/se) and the founder of www.afrohousehop.com a traveling dance workshop. Rashad has been a part of urban dance culture for 17 years while simultaneously studying the art of theatrical choreography and performance. He has been involved in numerous media and live theatrical work from music videos with Lulo Café featuring Nothende’s the remix version of “I Wanna Love You” (directed by Carlos Mena & Ocha Records), Choreographer for Sila's “Super African” & dancer in "Infatuation" music video for Zion-I. Rashad has performed with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Ron K. Brown/Evidence/Nick Caves: "Soundsuits", Rennie Harri's: Illadelph Legends Festival, a three year member of Jacinta Vlach/Liberation Dance Theater, appearance at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, The Hip-Hop Theater Festival SF, The Living Word Project SF and The Black Choreographers Festival. Rashad currently is an adjunct faculty member at University of San Francisco where he teaches Hip-Hop dance in the Performing Arts and Social Justice Department. (afrohousehop@gmail.com)
Michella Rivera-Gravage
Michella Rivera-Gravage is a multimedia artist, whose work tells personal and social stories. Her works employ interactive and social media to create participatory and distributed projects. In 2006, she earned her MFA in Digital Art/New Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz, specializing in social and interactive media. Michella is currently the Director of Digital and Interactive Media at the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), where she designed the social media strategy for the organization and oversees all new media projects, including hapas.us, a media-sharing site for multiracial Asians and an iPhone game called “Filipino or Not,” now available in the iTunes store. At this time, she is co-producing an educational game that integrates documentary footage from the first Nepali's women's expedition up Mt. Everest. Michella also teaches in the Film and Design & Technology departments at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Eugene Rodriguez
Eugene Rodriguez is the Founder and Executive Director of Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center in San Pablo, California. He formed youth group Los Cenzontles in 1989 through an Artist Residency from the California Arts Council and incorporated the Center in 1994. Eugene received a Master's degree in Classical Guitar performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 1991 he established the bi-national Fandango Project with support from the Rockefeller/Bancomer Fund for Culture, and in 1995 he was nominated for a Grammy for Best Musical Album for Children for Papa's Dream, a bilingual recording with Los Lobos and Lalo Guerrero. He has produced eighteen CDs for Los Cenzontles, and his productions have included noted musicians Ry Cooder, David Hidalgo, Taj Mahal, The Chieftains and Linda Ronstadt, among others. He has received recognition and awards that include the 2010 Local Hero Award from KQED television, 2009 Community Leadership Award from the San Francisco Foundation, 2002 California Arts Council Director’s Award, the Contra Costa County Arts Commission Arts Recognition Award and three awards from the U.S. Mexico Fund for Culture. Rodriguez has played a pioneering role in the revival of Mexican folk music in California and has innovated adaptations of traditional pedagogy to suit contemporary urban contexts.
Favianna Rodriguez
Favianna Rodriguez is an artist and new media organizer who has helped foster resurgence in political arts both locally and internationally. Named by UTNE Magazine as a "leading visionary artist and changemaker,” Rodriguez is renowned for her cultural media projects dealing with social issues such as war, immigration, and globalization, as well as for her leadership in establishing innovative institutions that promote and engage new audiences in the arts. In 2009, she co-founded Presente.org, dedicated to
Michael Rohd
Michael Rohd is founding artistic director of Sojourn Theatre in Portland, Oregon, a 2005 recipient of Americans for the Arts’ Animating Democracy Exemplar Award. His work there as creator/director/performer includes On The Table (2010); BUILT (presented at 2008 TBA Festival) GOOD (2008 Portland Drammy, Outstanding Production) The War Project (2005 Drammy, Best ensemble) 7 Great Loves (five 2003 Drammy awards), and Witness Our Schools (9 months of Oregon and national touring). Recent projects include Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s first company devised, site-specific work,WillFul, directing Chuck Mee's Full Circle at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington, DC as well as his own new play Wilson Wants it All at The House Theater in Chicago (Chicago Jeff Award 2010 Best New Work). Rohd is a recipient of Theatre Communication Group’s 2001 New Generations Grant, and their 2002 Extended Collaboration Grant. He is on faculty at Northwestern University’s Theater Department with a focus on Devising Performance, Directing & Civic Engagement. Upcoming work includes a new Sojourn piece called Town Hall with NYCs The TEAM premiering at Kansas City Rep in Fall 2012. He is author of the widely translated book Theatre for Community, Conflict, and Dialogue (Heinemann Press,1998).
Linda Ronstadt
LINDA RONSTADT is arguably the most versatile vocalist of the modern era, and has forged a four-decade career establishing her as one of the very important artists in one of the most creative periods in the history of modern music. She has broadened the latitudes of the pop singer, expanding the vocalist’s canvas to include country, rock and roll, big band, jazz, opera, Broadway standards, Mexican and Afro-Cuban influences, leaving no stone unturned in the pursuit of the ultimate song. With worldwide album sales of over 50 million, at least 31 gold and platinum records, and 11 Grammy Awards to her credit, Linda is the consummate American artist.
While Linda was a student at the University of Arizona, she met guitarist Bob Kimmel. The duo moved to Los Angeles, where they were joined by guitarist/songwriter Kenny Edwards. Calling themselves the Stone Poneys, the group became a leading attraction on California's folk circuit, recording their self-titled first album The Stone Poneys in 1967. The band's second album, Evergreen, Vol. 2, featured the Top 20 hit "Different Drum," which was written by Michael Nesmith. After recording one more album with the group, Linda left for a solo career at the end of 1968.
Linda’s first two solo albums - Hand Sow, Home Grown (1969) and Silk Purse (1970) - accentuated her country roots, and helped to create the burgeoning California country-rock movement..
Released in 1971, her self-titled third album Linda Ronstadt was a pivotal record in her career. Featuring a group of session musicians that would later become the Eagles, the album was a softer, more laidback variation of the country-rock she had been recording. With the inclusion of material from singer/songwriters like Jackson Browne, Neil Young and Eric Andersen, Linda became one of the premier interpreters of the new folk-rock idiom .
Don't Cry Now, released in 1973, followed the same formula to greater success, yet it was 1974's Heart Like a Wheel that perfected the sound, making Linda Ronstadt a star. Featuring the hit covers "You're No Good," "When Will I Be Loved" and "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," Heart Like a Wheel reached number one and sold over two million copies. Released in the fall of 1975, Prisoner in Disguise followed the same pattern as Heart Like a Wheel and was nearly as successful. Hasten Down the Wind, released in 1976, charted higher than Prisoner in Disguise.
Simple Dreams (1977) expanded the formula by adding a more rock-oriented supporting band, which breathed life into the Rolling Stones' "Tumbling Dice" and Warren Zevon's "Poor Pitiful Me." The record became the singer's biggest hit, staying on the top of the charts for five weeks and selling over three million copies.
With Living in the U.S.A. (1978) Linda began experimenting with new wave, recording Elvis Costello's "Alison"; the album was another number one hit. She made a full-fledged new wave record with 1980's Mad Love, recording three Costello songs and adopting a synth-laden sound. While the album was a commercial success, Linda was growing restless with rock music. After the release of 1982's Get Closer, she sensed it was time to try something new.
After meeting New York theatre legend Joe Papp, she was cast in his new Broadway staging of the classic Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, Pirates of Penzance, with Kevin Kline and Rex Smith. Following the show’s long theatrical run, Linda starred in the movie version as well. She then embarked on her most ambitious project - a collaboration with Nelson Riddle, who arranged and conducted her 1983 collection of pop standards, What's New. Against all expectations, it was a considerable hit, reaching number three on the charts and selling over two million copies. Linda’s next two standards albums, Lush Life (1984) and For Sentimental Reasons (1986), were also very successful.
At the end of 1986, Linda returned to contemporary pop, recording "Somewhere Out There," the theme to the animated An American Tail, with James Ingram; the single became a number two hit. She also returned to her country roots in 1987, recording the first Trio album with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. That same year, Ronstadt recorded Canciones de mi Padre, a set of traditional Mexican songs from her childhood. To the surprise of everyone except Linda, the album became a multi-platinum success, and is still the largest-selling Spanish language CD in the history of the U.S. music industry.
Two years later, she recorded Cry Like a Rainstorm - Howl Like the Wind -- her first contemporary pop album since 1982's Get Closer. Featuring four duets with Aaron Neville, including the number two hit "Don't Know Much," the album sold over two million copies.
Linda returned to traditional Mexican material with Mas Canciones (1991) and later recorded a Cuban influenced album, Frenesi (1992). In 1994's Winter Light, and 1996’s Feels Like Home, she returned to singing the work of her favorite contemporary songwriters. Fulfilling a long-standing wish, she also recorded a children’s lullaby album, Dedicated to the One I Love.
The long-awaited reunion record, Trio II with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, arrived in 1998 as well as We Ran. Emmylou Harris and Linda teamed up again in 1999 and released the fabulous Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions. Two years later in 2002, Linda delivered the holiday collection A Merry Little Christmas. Her 2004 release, Hummin’ to Myself on Verve Records marked her first foray into jazz and received universally high acclaim.
In 2006, Linda was honored by the Hispanic-American artistic community when she was given the prestigious ALMA Award in a ceremony televised on ABC-TV.
Discography
- 1969 Hand Sown Home Grown
- 1970 Silk Purse
- 1971 Linda Ronstadt
- 1973 Don't Cry Now
- 1974 Heart Like a Wheel
- 1975 Prisoner in Disguise
- 1976 Hasten Down the Wind
- 1978 Living in the U.S.A.
- 1980 Mad Love
- 1982 Get Closer
- 1983 What's New
- 1984 Lush Life
- 1986 For Sentimental Reasons
- 1987 Canciones de Mi Padre
- 1989 Cry Like a Rainstorm - Howl Like the Wind
- 1990 Mas Canciones
- 1992 Frenesi
- 1994 Winter Light
- 1995 Feels Like Home
- 1996 Dedicated to the One I Love
- 1998 We Ran
- 2000 A Merry Little Christmas
- 2002 What's New
- 2002 Cristal – Glass Music Through the Ages
- 2004 Hummin' to Myself
- 2006 Adieu False Heart (w/ Anne Savoy)
Compilations / Box Sets
- 1974 Different Drum
- 1975 The Stone Poneys Featuring Linda Ronstadt
- 1976 Greatest Hits, Vol. 1
- 1977 Simple Dreams/Prisoner in Disguise
- 1977 A Retrospective
- 1980 Greatest Hits, Vol. 2
- 1984 For Country Lovers
- 1986 Round Midnight with Nelson Riddle and his...
- 1999 Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions
- 1999 The Linda Ronstadt Box Set
- 2000 Three For One
- 2003 The Very Best of Linda Ronstadt
- 2006 The Best of Linda Ronstadt – The Capitol Years
Maryam Farnaz Rostami
Maryam Farnaz Rostami is a San Francisco based drag queen and contemporary performance artist from Texas. Her work deals with the complexities of the modern condition through the lens of an overachieving child of model minorities. Trained as an architect, Maryam exacerbates and collides her many hats when making performance, and engages audiences on a visual, intellectual and emotional level. She is dedicated to artistic engagement as an invitation for thinking about, looking at and talking to one another differently. Her drag persona, Mona G. Hawd, uses lipsync, movement, narrative and dance via an exaggerated high femme medium to question ownership of images in our culture. Maryam's solo show Persepolis, Texas debuted last summer at CounterPULSE. www.maryamrostami.com
Sean San José
Sean San José, works as the Program Director of Theatre for Intersection for the Arts and resident theatre company Campo Santo. He has created works with more than 500 artists in his time at Intersection, including more than 45 premiere plays for Campo Santo and over 100 with Intersection. For Intersection he works with long term resident companies Campo Santo, the Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project, the Living Word Project (Youth Speaks' theatre company), Felonious and host of composers, visual artists, and community groups. San José has overseen, developed, and helped create the first plays of Jimmy Baca, Junot Diaz, Dave Eggers, Denis Johnson, Luis Saguar, Greg Sarris, Vendela Vida, among others; while maintaining ongoing relationships with Philip Gotanda, Jessica Hagedorn, Naom Iizuka, Octavio Solis, Erin Cressida Wilson, and many others including projects with Daniel Alarcon, Luis Alfaro, Richard Montoya, Ntozake Shange.
Kevin Seaman
Kevin Seaman received his B.A. in Theatre Arts from the University of Northern Colorado and has appeared on-stage locally with various theatrical festivals and at various venues around the Bay Area. He has also toured throughout California with San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Kevin was a founding member of The Living Room, a live/work art collective in South Berkeley, and has sat on planning committees for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Big Idea Night parties. He and dance partner, Kate Dunphy, are also inaugural champions of The Institute for Aesthletic’s Drinking and Dancing Competition. More recently, Kevin has shifted his artistic practice toward performance and video art, fusing his theatrical history of over-the-top comedy, absurdism, and costume with strong DIY and Internet meme-based aesthetics resulting in work that is accessible and light-hearted. His short film SILENCE=FILTH was presented at FRAMELINE35 and has been featured on various blogs including Joe.My.God, The Bilerico Project, and Towleroad. In addition to his artistic practice, Kevin works to better his artistic community through his work in the philanthropic sector and collaborative community-building projects. His videos are viewable on his in-progress website, SeamanArt.com, as well as his YouTube channel.
Michael Shiono
Michael Shiono is a freelance electric and upright bassist, music educator and composer living in Oakland, CA. Recently Michael has performed with; Jennifer Holliday, Patrice Rushen, Joan Rivers, Ce Ce Peniston, D'Wayne Wiggins, Marcus Belgrave, Edna Wright, Rita Moreno among many others. Michael spent the month of June performing in Europe with NAACP Image Award winning Kenyan artist, Sila Mutungi. Michael teaches on faculty at Young Musician's Program via UC Berkeley. Michael's latest work is an interdisciplinary audio manual entitled, “To The Artist,” performance debut and CD release is November 13th at the Red Poppy Art House.
Mica Sigourney
Mica Sigourney is the artistic director of Ox. His work has been featured in the Queer Arts Festival (2009, 2010, 2011), in CounterPULSE's May Day and Frolic (2009, 2010, 2011) while he has performed in New York (New Museum, Dixon Place), London (Hot August Fringe) and locally at YBCA and the deYoung. His weekly event SOME THING features the talents of local fringe performers and international DJ’s. He is one of CounterPULSE's Winter 2012 artists in residence.
Bruce Simon
Bruce Simon, Director of Education, Bay Area Discovery Museum: Bruce has been at the Bay Area Discovery Museum for almost 6 years and has been in his current position for 4 years. Bruce has been instrumental in developing the innovative outreach program Connections, and has been a leader in the Museum’s audience development efforts. Prior to entering the field of informal education, he worked for over 15 years at culturally, racially, and economically diverse public elementary schools in Vallejo and Berkeley. Among his accomplishments are coordinating communications and technology curricula for a K-5 school through a federally funded magnet grant and delivering math professional development to primary teachers through the Bay Area Math Project. Bruce obtained his teaching credential at Mills College in Oakland, California and his B.A. in Art History at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.
Nina Simon
Nina Simon is an exhibit designer who has been described as a “museum visionary” by Smithsonian Magazine for her audience-centered approach to design. She is currently the Executive Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz, CA. Nina teaches in the University of Washington Museology graduate program and is the author of The Participatory Museum (2010) and the popular Museum 2.0 blog. Previously, Nina worked as an independent consultant to over one hundred museums and cultural centers around the world, focusing on interactive community engagement. Nina also served as curator at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA, and was the Experience Development Specialist at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.
Michael Gene Sullivan
Michael Gene Sullivan, is a veteran actor, writer, and director based in San Francisco, performing at the American Conservatory Theater, Denver Center Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, the Magic and Lorraine Hansberry Theaters, TheatreWorks, and at festivals in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. His one person show, DID ANYONE EVER TELL YOU - YOU LOOK LIKE HUEY P. NEWTON? (San Francisco, New York, Vancouver) was awarded the San Francisco Bay Guardian Upstage/Downstage Award and a best solo performance nomination by the Bay Area Critics’ Circle.
As Resident Playwright for the Tony and OBIE Award winning San Francisco Mime Troupe , Michael has scripted some of the Troupe’s most critically acclaimed musical comedies and dramas, including 1600 TRANSYLVANIA AVENUE, MR. SMITH GOES TO OBSCURISTAN ( with Josh Kornbluth), MAKING A KILLING, RED STATE (Nominated, San Francisco Bay Area Critic’s Circle Best Original Script, 2008), TOO BIG TO FAIL ( Nominated, SFBATCC Best Original Script, 2009), and POSIBILIDAD, or DEATH OF THE WORKER.
"1984", his stage adaptation of George Orwell's dystopic novel, premiere at Los Angeles’ Actor's Gang Theatre under the direction of Tim Robbins, and has since toured nationally and internationally.
Sri Susilowati
Sri Susilowati is a dancer, choreographer, and storyteller. She creates and performs traditional and contemporary works on the subjects of community, gender, and ethnicity through dance and multi-media combining exquisite classical Indonesian dance with a sense of humor. Her current projects include collaboration with David Rousseve on a dance-on-camera work, “Two Seconds After Laughter.” Sri recently made her directorial debut in "Shimmer," a new dance-on-camera film.
Karamo Susso
Karamo Susso is an international kora star. Growing up in a griot compound in Mali, he started playing kora as a tiny child, and was performing for large crowds before he was even big enough to hold the instrument up by himself. Fully immersed in the tradition, he learned from world-renowned players like his uncle Ballake Sissoko and his neighbor Toumani Diabate, and studied and taught kora at the Institute Nationale des Artes in Bamako, Mali. Karamo then began touring throughout West Africa, playing with such greats as Salif Keita, Toumani Diabate, Youssou Ndour, Vieux Farka Toure (son of Ali Farka Toure), and Sambou Susso the Queen of Afro-Manding. He performed for national stadiums in Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal as a featured soloist with UNESCO's Fescuao Mali, and for the President's personal events in The Gambia. He made frequent appearances on national TV and radio. In Gambia, he was Composition Director for Askan Culture (the national cultural ensemble), and advisor and lead kora player for the Female Artists' Association. A natural engineer, he rapidly boosted Gambian music with his production work at The Gambia YMCA, and went on to open his own studio, Kapamis Production.
Lise Swenson
Lise Swenson's artwork and films have been exhibited internationally and she has received numerous awards and grants, one of them the Creative Work Fund, seeding production on her feature length social justice film. “Mission Movie” is a fictional adaptation of true-life stories from the Mission District of San Francisco and was screened internationally, winning five awards, two for Best of Festival. Swenson also served as producer and assistant director on "Strange Culture", a film by Lynn Hershman Leeson. Most recently she was Filmmaker in Residence at the deYoung Museum where she produced an alternative iPhone tour entitled dYinterpretaions.
Swenson has been a media arts theory and production instructor and an active member in Bay Area media arts since the 1980s. In 1984 she co-founded ATA, (Artists' Television Access), a non-profit media arts access, exhibition and education facility. She then went on to serve for many years on the ATA board as President and was also a Film Arts Foundation board member and a member of the SF Art Institute Artists' Committee. In 1995 Swenson founded TILT (Teaching Intermedia Literacy Tools), a nonprofit that works within school programs and community organizations to teach the fundamentals of media literacy and moviemaking.
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor is Senior Interactive Producer for Arts at KQED. He is the Managing Editor of KQED's daily Arts blog and created and produces both the monthly visual arts podcast, Gallery Crawl and The Writers' Block, KQED's weekly reading series.
Michael Velez
Michael Velez has worked most notably and closely with two dance companies in Philadelphia- four seasons with the Koresh DanceCompany (Ronen Koresh) and since 2003 with Charles O. Anderson's dance theatre X on a project-by-project basis. Both of which, he’s gained the opportunity of placing choreography onto. After attending the University of the Arts (2000-2004), he continued to learn, inspire and dance for such widely recognized choreographers as Robert Moses, Kara Davis, Robert Battle, Zane Booker, Brian Sanders, Donald Byrd, and Itzik Galili (of the Netherlands Dance theater and Galili Dance). Michael's choreography and Modern Funk dance style has recently gained ample recognition in the 2008 National Ice dance Competition televised by CNN, where Kim Navarro and Brent Bommentre placed 3rd for their division, qualifying them for the 2008 Olympics. In addition to co-founding Adhesive Physical Theatre (www.adhesivept.com), Michael also leads a dynamic Modern class at the Alonzo King Lines Dance Center in San Francisco.
Marc Vogl
Marc Vogl is the Executive Director of the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), the nation's largest noncommercial media arts center. BAVC is an affordable training center, a pioneer in technology-based workforce development and youth media training, and a critical resource for independent media makers.
Marc joined BAVC in 2011 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, where he served as a Program Officer in the Performing Arts. At The Hewlett Foundation Marc managed grants to arts and arts-education organizations throughout the Bay Area, and led the Foundation's work to promote next generation leadership in the arts sector. Earlier in his career Marc co-founded the sketch comedy group Killing My Lobster and the Hi/Lo Film Festival and served as Executive Director of the Lobster Theater Project, a multi-disciplinary San Francisco arts nonprofit. Combining an interest in the arts and public policy Marc has served as a member of the San Francisco Arts Task Force, on the Barack Obama Campaign’s National Arts Policy Committee and is currently co-chair of the Funding Advisory Committee to Oakland’s Cultural Commission. In 2010 Marc won the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader award for his work to promote opportunities for young leaders in the arts sector. Marc has History and English Literature degrees from Brown University and a Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Alicia Walters-Camacho
Alicia Walters-Camacho is a community organizer by trade who has simultaneously committed herself to a life in the performing arts as a singer, dancer, and actor with a vision of creating art that furthers social justice. By founding creative::justice::works, Alicia has been able to link her activism and artistry in the areas of reproductive justice, food justice, prison reform, and beyond. Alicia is a student of the Dunham, Horton, and Graham modern dance techniques as well as Afro Cuban, Haitian, and Bomba y Plena (Afro Puerto Rican) dance forms. Her most recent projects include Deep Waters Dance Theater’s Our Daily Bread, a multi-media/disciplinary exploration of our food legacies and their sustainability which premiered at CounterPULSE Theater in April 2011, to be remounted in 2012. Alicia has also worked with choreographer Byb Chanel Bibene for several performances of the Nzoto Installation, an experimental and improvisational commentary on everyday life and Tambola Makolo. Alicia has performed as a part of the Black Choreographers Festival, at the Museum of the African Diaspora, Zellerbach Hall, Dance Mission Theater, CounterPULSE, the University of San Francisco, and more. She is currently dancing with Amara Tabor Smith’s Deep Waters Dance Theater.
Michael Warr
Michael Warr is a poet and arts educator. He is Principal at WarrConsulting and an Associate Consultant at Helicon Collaborative. He assists nonprofits in executive transition and succession, assessment, planning, cultural competency, audience development, and other capacity building. His clients include San Francisco Pride, the Bayview Hunters Point YMCA, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center, the Mill Valley Film Festival, the Wallace Foundation, the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, The City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, the House of World Cultures/Berlin, and others. He is author of “Experiences of an Ex” in About Face – A Guide to Founder Transition, published by the New York State Council on the Arts, and co-author of “Leveraging Assets: How Small Budget Arts Activities Benefit Neighborhoods,” commissioned by the John T. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation. Michael has directed several nonprofits, including the Guild Literary Complex, the Englewood Community Cultural Planning Council and DanceAfrica Chicago. A performing and published poet, Michael is the recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poets Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. His new book is The Armageddon of Funk. After years in Chicago and Addis Ababa he is back in his hometown San Francisco.
Anna Martine Whitehead
Anna Martine Whitehead uses video, puppets, sound, and movement to address disremembered histories. Working within thematic discourses of diaspora, memory, melancholia, and desire, their practice narrativizes those invisible and unwritten moments where hybrid identities and collective knowledges meet. They have presented work in galleries, bars and public plazas from Goteborg, Sweden to the Bronx Museum in New York to the Thames River in London. Anna Martine’s collaborative work with Goldie Award-winning Jesse Hewit/Strong Behavior, the National Park Service and We Players, and Violeta Luna and Guillermo Gomez-Peña has been noted in the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times, and LA Weekly. Following a recently completed MFA Social Practice from the California College of the Arts, Anna Martine has relocated to Los Angeles where they have begun working on a film puppeteered film project focusing on transgressive temporality as a tool for survival in queer and mixed-race chose families.
Marissa Wolf
Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven by Young Jean Lee (Crowded Fire co-production with Asian American Theatre Company), The Secretaries by The Five Lesbian Brothers, DRIP by Christina Anderson, Gone by Charles Mee (Crowded Fire), Act II of The Lily’s Revenge by Taylor Mac (The Magic Theatre), the Bay Area Premiere of Thom Pain (based on nothing) by Will Eno, listed as #1 on Bay Area Critic Sam Hurwitt’s 2009 Top Ten list, (Cutting Ball Theater), Truce by Marilee Talkington (Vanguardian Productions), and her experimental adaptations both of Gertrude Stein's long poem, Lifting Belly and Marguerite Duras’ story The Malady of Death (FoolsFURY Theater). She has directed workshop productions with Playwrights Foundation, the National New Play Network, Shotgun Players, and Berkeley Playhouse. Marissa previously held the Bret C. Harte Directing Internship at Berkeley Repertory Theatre for two years, where she assisted renowned directors, including Tony Taccone, Les Waters, Lisa Peterson, Annie Dorsen, Frank Galati, and Mary Zimmerman. Marissa has her degree in drama from Vassar College, and received additional training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
Lorraine Yglesias
After 20 years in the communications & entertainment industry in Los Angeles and San Jose, Lorraine Yglesias joined the Monterey Bay Aquarium as their first Hispanic Marketing Manager in June 2004. Since then, her duties have expanded to include development of sponsorships & partnerships as the Aquarium’s Senior Marketing Manager. Lorraine serves as a liaison with the aquarium’s advertising agency to ensure campaigns are tailored for Hispanic audiences, and is responsible for developing the aquarium’s relationship with the local and regional Hispanic community through promotional and advertising initiatives. She also represents the aquarium at community events and serves as a spokesperson for interviews with Spanish language media. During her tenure in Los Angeles, Lorraine worked for independent television- production and distribution companies, including Lorimar-Telepictures (later acquired by Warner Bros. TV) and the Hollywood Reporter. Her duties included developing the US Hispanic and Latin American markets for her employers. After relocating to northern California, Lorraine joined Comcast Spotlight, the advertising arm of Comcast Cable. As an Account Executive, Lorraine marketed the Spanish language cable networks to business owners in San Jose and Monterey/Salinas. She is a native of San Jose, Costa Rica, currently residing in Monterey Peninsula area with her husband and two bi-lingual speaking children.