Summer Dance Program

Artist Bios

Seán Curran, Director of Seán Curran Company, NY
Seán Curran (Artistic Director) began his dance training with traditional Irish step dancing as a young boy in Boston, Massachusetts. He went on to make his mark on the dance world as a leading dancer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for his performance in Secret Pastures.

A graduate and guest faculty member of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Curran was an original member of the New York City cast of the Off-Broadway percussion extravaganza Stomp, performing in the show for four years. He has performed his solo evening of dances at venues throughout the United States as well as at Sweden's Danstation Theatre and France's EXIT Festival.

Current and recent projects for Curran include productions of Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream for The Shakespeare Theater, the twentieth anniversary production of Nixon in China and Street Scene at Opera Theater of St. Louis; choreography for the New York City Opera productions of L'Etoile, Alcina, Turandot, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Capriccio, and Acis and Galetea; the Playwrights Horizons' production of My Life with Albertine; Shakespeare in the Park's As You Like It. He recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut choreographing Romeo and Juliette. Curran's work has appeared on Broadway in James Joyce's The Dead for Playwrights Horizons and The Rivals at Lincoln Center Theater. He has created works for Trinity Irish Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre's studio company, Denmark's Upper Cut Company, Sweden's Skänes Dance Theater, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Ririe Woodbury Dance Theater, and Dance Alloy, as well as for numerous college and university dance departments.

Curran has taught extensively at the American Dance Festival, Harvard Summer Dance Center, Bates Dance Festival, and Boston's Conservatory of Music. Irish American Magazine selected Curran as one of its "Top 100" in the year 2000. Curran was awarded a Choreographer's Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2002.

Happiest when making new work or performing, Seán Curran hopes to continue being an ambassador for the art of dance by building and educating the dance audiences of tomorrow.

Joanna Berman, Former Principal San Francisco Ballet
Joanna Berman was born and raised in San Rafael, CA, where she received her dance training at the Marin Ballet under Maria Vegh. In 1984, after one year at the San Francisco Ballet School, she joined the company and was promoted to Soloist in 1987. In 1988, Ms. Berman became a Principal dancer and was one of the most celebrated members of the San Francisco Ballet, retiring in 2002. She danced the lead role in Giselle, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet and numerous contemporary works. Joanna had works created for her by choreographers such as Val Caniparoli, Mark Morris, Christopher Wheeldon, Helgi Tomasson, William Forsythe and many others. In addition to her extensive performance credits, Ms. Berman is in demand as a teacher and has served as a regisseur for the San Francisco Ballet, Australian Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theater and Ballet British Columbia. She lives in Corte Madera, CA, with her husband and twin boys.

Muriel Maffre, Former Principal San Francisco Ballet
Muriel Maffre extensive career in the performing arts brought her to dance with Hamburg Ballet, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo and San Francisco Ballet where she was Principal for 17 years. She made guest appearances in eminent theaters in America, Europe, Russia and Asia. Muriel performed leading roles in the romantic, classical and contemporary repertory. She also created roles in ballets by major present-day choreographers. Muriel is a Graduate from the Paris Opera Ballet School. She is a Gold Medalist from Paris 1st International Ballet Competition, and the recipient of two Isadora Duncan Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Individual Performance for both 1990 and 2002 repertory season performances with the San Francisco Ballet. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from St. Mary's College of California. Muriel collaborated on a multi-media production of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" (2004) and created a dance and puppetry staging of his "Soldier's Tale" (2006) presented at the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival. In April, 2006, Muriel collaborated with UC Berkeley professor and conceptual artist Ken Goldberg on a solo danced to the movement of the earth. Muriel retired from the San Francisco Ballet with a Farewell Gala on May 6, 2007. Since, Muriel has been involved in dance education and visual culture through curatorial practice. She is still performing as a guest artist. She was a Visiting Fellow at Cornell University in March, 2008.

Amy Seiwert, Smuin Ballet
Amy Seiwert, a native of Cincinnati, moved to San Francisco in 1999, the same year she won the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur Choreography Competition in Quebec. A former principal dancer with the Sacramento Ballet, she currently performs and choreographs for Smuin Ballet. Her work is in the repertory of Smuin, Sacramento, Ballet Austin, Carolina and American Repertory Ballets as well as Robert Moses KIN. Named one of "25 to Watch" by Dance Magazine in 2005, she was also awarded the Gerbode Emerging Choreographers Grant in 2006. Recently invited to participate in the NY Choreography Institute by Peter Martins, she had the opportunity to create on dancers from NYCB. She also directs im'ij-re, a contemporary ballet company that collaborates with artists of other disciplines and is committed to experimental work from a classical base.

Pampa Cortés of Forever Tango, with Gigi Jensen
Pampa Cortés, the internationally famous dance star, director, and choreographer, hails from Santiago del Estero. He made his professional debut at age 15, performed with Mario Machaco & Norma Re, danced in the ballet of Santiago Ayala "El Chucaro" (the founder of the Argentine national folkloric ballet), with Celia Queiros, and in the Mallón Ballet. He is a champion dancer of 'malambos de boleadoras'—the genre of Argentine tap dancing with weapons.

Protogé of tango great Juan Carlos Copes, Pampa danced in Copes' famous dance company for six years, and served as dance captain. He was Primer Bailarín in several of the most famous tango houses in Argentina, and worked on television and film in Argentina and Japan. He has performed and taught tango and folkloric dance in Europe (France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy), Japan, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, and of course, Argentina.

In the U.S., he was choreographer in "Tango Revue", which toured the Eastern seaboard. He was an original principal of "Forever Tango" from 1994–1996. Mr. Cortés has performed as a guest artist in many stage productions in Europe, Central & South America, Canada, and in the U.S. He lived in the Bay Area 1996–2002. He is highly respected here for his teaching and performing. He has trained dozens of young dancers who went on to professional careers.H is a member of the Argentine Tango Maestros Association.

Pampa directed two Bay Area dance companies that performed in the 1997 San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival: Los Tangueros de San Francisco (tango) and Pampa y Estrellas (all-women malambos group). He also directed "Ballet Argentino de Pampa" from 1999 to 2001.

He co-founded Tango A Media Luz in 1998 with Patricia "Gigi" Jensen. He was the artistic director, choreographer, and maestro during his tenure. The company produced several full stage productions including "Así se baila el tango", "Argentina: Tango y Malambos", "Fantasía Argentina", and "Destino de Tango". He was commissioned to set a tango ballet for Khadra International Dance Theatre named "Rosendo: un carrero de San Telmo". He performed in World Arts West's "People Like Me" program introducing Argentine folkloric dance to hundreds of school children, and returns for this year's PLM run for the months of March and April. He is currently Artist in Residence for Tango & More—Argentine Dance.

Capoerira Jogo De Corpo with Mestre Sueli
Mestra Suelly (Suellen Einarsen) has been practicing the art of capoeira since 1983. She began teaching in 1990 and received the prestigious title of Master (Mestra) in 2000, being the first American woman to do so and one of a small but growing number of women anywhere to receive this title in a male dominated art form. She has taught extensively through different venues locally and at many capoeira events abroad. Suellen also runs the Berkeley chapter of the United Association with the capoeira world respected Mestre Acordeon. Suellen also has the movement perspective of a dancer, having studied and performed since 1975. She was a founding and principal dancer with the critically acclaimed Joe Goode Performance Group from 1987 to 1997. Teaching many workshops with the JGPG she has had the opportunity to introduce many dancers to full bodied capoeira -influenced movement. She prefers to show them a little more of the capoeira world.

Holly Furgason, Certified in Stott Pilates
Holly Furgason is an active performer, choreographer, writer, teacher, technologist, and innovator in the art of dance. Holly completed her Bachelors of Dance Arts at the University of Michigan in 2001, where she explored dance history, theory, and choreography as well as Graham, Cunningham, and Limón techniques. She was also introduced to various rich media technologies used to create graphics, music, and video and began to integrate these technologies into her dance work. In 2006, she completed her MFA in Choreography and Performance at Mills College, and began teaching movement courses as an adjunct professor at the College of San Mateo.

Patricia "Gigi" Jensen
Colombian born Patricia "Gigi" Jensen has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1980. She graduated with a BA in graphic design from San Francisco State University. She began dancing Argentine tango in 1998, studying extensively with Argentine dance star Pampa Cortés. She has worked with several other famous Argentine dance stars hosting them in workshops and dance events. With her husband, she has taught Argentine dance since 2005 in the East Bay. Her dance studies include ballet, ballroom, and ethnic dances both in the Bay Area and in Argentina. Her performance credits include the 2007 San Francisco Chilean Festival, the Blossom Festival in SF's City College, EBMUD's Latino Heritage Month celebration, and the Jewels in the Square program produced by the Bay Area Argentine Tango Association. Dancing Argentine tango, she tied for first place in the 1998 San Francisco International Grand Ball's Grand Prix Championship as well as receiving several First Place awards in additional ballroom competitions.

In July 2007, Ms. Jensen was invited as a guest artist to teach Argentine tango at the Artecentro Cultural Graciela Andrade de Paiz in Guatemala, returning at their request in November 2007. She was a technical consultant and also performed at Guatemala City's inaugural Argentine tango milonga (an evening of tango dancing).

In 1998, Gigi founded Tango A Media Luz with Pampa Cortés. While she focused her attention as Administrative Director, she also served as dance teaching assistant and translator for Maestro Cortés. This included work in Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Sacramento, and around the Bay Area. Ms. Jensen has narrated at tango and folkloric performances at the California Academy of Sciences, Mills College, Santa Clara University, and in San Francisco's Union Square, to name but a few.

Mrs. Jensen founded Tango & More—Argentine Dance in 2006, which is fiscally sponsored by World Arts West. She directs two troupes for the company: DanzArgentina (tango) and Ballet Folklórico Argentino de San Francisco (folkloric). The company produced its first full-length stage show in January 2008 at CounterPULSE Theater in San Francisco.

Gigi is currently a panelist for the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards (2005–2008), works as a consultant for World Arts West (San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival), and is a consultant for San Francisco Grants for the Arts. She has served on Theatre Bay Area's CA$H granting panels for both dance and theatre. She has served three times as a judge for Carnaval San Francisco, She has written articles for Danza Hoy (international dance webzine in Spanish) and the "Ballroom Dancer's Rag".

Nadia Oka, RYT
Nadia Oka, CMA, RYT, MFA, is a choreographer and dancer who has performed and taught movement in New York and the Bay Area. She is a Certified Movement Analyst from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies and a yoga teacher from Alison West's Yoga Union. In 2007 she earned an MFA at Mills College in Choreography and Performance. She has studied yoga with Alison West and kinesthetic anatomy with Irene Dowd and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen.

Nadia's teaching style is a blend of Hatha, Iyengar and Vinyasa styles. Her classes are based on the sensing of body, breath and alignment. As a dancer, she strives to bring awareness to the kinesthetic and anatomical relationships between each movement in order to discover new relationships within the body. Deeply informed by the concepts found in Laban Movement Analysis, the Bartenieff Fundamentals and Body-Mind Centering, Nadia utilizes a thoughtful approach to the connections among body, breath and our relationship to space.