Founding Members:
Amber Ortega-Perez
Dora Ruffner
Jayne King
Kristina Kuest Mistry
Active Members:
Carrie Vicana
Alejandra Diaz-Berrio
Ellen Chappell
Laura Vriend
Christy Walsh
Ashley Martinez
Georgina Morgan
Jayne King
Jayne King recently moved to San Antonio from the San Francisco Bay Area, where she was the Artistic Director of Janlyn Dance Company. From 2000-2004 she created more than twenty original choreographic works for the contemporary dance ensemble, as well as three full evening programs of dance and theater. Jayne has performed throughout the San Francisco area as well as in New York City . Her two youth outreach performances for Janlyn Dance Company toured with Young Audiences, a national network of presenters that specializes in bringing artists to public schools with performances and residencies. Jayne has a Masters in dance from Mills College in Oakland , CA . Before moving to San Antonio to join the full-time faculty in Kinesiology and Dance at Northwest Vista College , she taught dance at Cabrillo Community College and directed the school's annual Spring Dance Concert. Since moving to San Antonio she has also enjoyed making dances with members of the new Co-Lab performing group, including a site-specific performance for the opening of the Radius, and several pieces that have appeared at Jumpstart with the WIP. A Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner, Ms King maintains a small private practice in neuro-muscular retraining for performing artists.
Ashley Anne Martinez
Ashley Anne Martinez, born in Chicago and raised in Minneapolis, received her first dance training at Summit School of dance and her first glimpse of modern dance at Zenon Dance School. While studying her B.A. at the University of Pittsburgh, Martinez helped implement a dance minor program. While working toward her Political Science degree, Martinez choreographed, performed, taught, and attended the Florida Dance Festival in Miami. She cultivated her modern skills in Miami, studying Graham and Limon technique. Martinez choreographed five modern dance pieces during her undergraduate career and also a modern / Arabic fused piece which she showcased at ACDFA. Martinez also danced with Pittsburgh Dance Connection, a modern Pittsburgh-based company. She taught at the Jewish Community Center, Dancespace304, and upon arrival in San Antonio, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. Martinez teaches Latin jazz, hip-hop, salsa, modern, Afro-modern and is passionate about choreography and dance education. She currently teaches at Today's Stars Arts Center and is a new member of the Modern Dancers' Co-Laboratory.
Kristina Kuest Mistry
Kristina Kuest Mistry is a free-lance choreographer / dancer / engineer in the San Antonio area. Her training began here, mostly at St. Mary's Hall and with San Antonio Dance Theatre, where her primary focus was ballet. She attended Boston University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and continued her dance training at both B.U. and Boston Ballet School. During the seven years that she performed with the Boston University Dance Theatre, she both choreographed and danced extensively in student and faculty concerts. She participated in many workshops in the Boston area, especially in modern dance and contact improvisation. She has studied with Deborah Bluth and Sean Curran and has also enjoyed retreats at Earthdance and festivals like American College Dance Festival. She serves on the Board of Directors of the San Antonio Dance Umbrella as WIP co-chairperson and as webmaster. She is also a founding member of the Modern Dancers' Co-Laboratory. She has performed at Young Tongues, several WIPs, and a night of improvization at Jumpstart. More on her dance can be found at http://www.kuestcorp.com/kristina/dance/dancer_girl.htm.
Georgina Morgan
Georgina Morgan is Artistic Director and choreographer for Georgina Morgan & Co., Contemporary Dance (GM&Co). Founded as a "pick-up" company in 1997, GM&Co. consists of a culturally diverse group of professional dancers, some of whom are resident artists, others whom are visiting artists. Morgan's movement is influenced by her varied dance training, which includes Flamenco, African, Caribbean and Jazz in addition to formal training in Ballet and Modern. Ms. Morgan's work has been featured in music videos, television, film, dance festivals, plays and other major events such as the grand opening of ceremonies for the Nelson A. Rockefeller enter for Latin American Art, a fund raiser in which President Clinton was the guest of honor, and several collaborations with museums. Other highlights of her professional dance career include guest performance in Woody McGriff's (of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Co.) "Mirrors" which was filmed for PBS and a tour of the southern United States with Boston Flamenco Ballet Company. Ms. Morgan holds a BA in dance from the University of Texas and has trained with Jose Greco, Mark Morris, Ron Brown, Donald Byrd, Urban Bush Women, Jose Limon Dance Company, among others. Teaching engagements include the Jofferey Workshop, the University of the Incarnate Word, and Treehouse Dance Space, home to GM&Co in San Antonio . An honor of which Ms. Morgan is most proud was bestowed by the SA Express-News (December 1999) naming her one of San Antonio 's "Top 100 Creative Influential People of the Millennium".
Amber Ortega-Perez
Amber Ortega-Perez is a native of San Antonio, Texas. She holds a BFA in Modern Dance from Ohio State University where she lived for 5 years studying and performing contemporary dance. She has had the opportunity of dancing in an eclectic environment and therefore has accumulated a multi-lingual movement vocabulary. She is honored to say that she has studied with such artists as Susan Hadley, formerly of the Mark Morris Dance Company, Susan Van Pelt, Karen Woods formerly of Merce Cunningham Dance Co., Ron Brown/Evidence, Jowalle Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Women, Dayton Contemporary Dance Co., Irene Hultman, Demetrius Klein and many others.
While in Ohio she danced with the University Dance Company of the Ohio State University dance department and Folclor Hispano, as well as performed her own work and that of faculty and local choreographers. Since moving to San Antonio , Texas she has choreographed and performed with Marissa Nesbit, Compania Arte de Danza Regional Mexico y Espana, Arathi Indian Dance Co., Javier De Frutos and filmmaker Isaac Julien. Amber also has shown her own choreography at Texas Women's University and Art Salad in Dallas, DiverseWorks in Houston, San Antonio Dances, Dance for USA, W.I.P. and Young Tongues in San Antonio and also was a member and guest choreographer for Georgina Morgan & Company of San Antonio.
Currently Amber Ortega-Perez is a founding member of the Modern Dancers' Co-Laboratory, a cooperative of San Antonio modern dancers. She currently teaches ballet and modern dance at Sarita's Dance Studio and she can still be found on the Texas Commission on the Arts Touring Roster. She can be reached at ortegaperez2002@yahoo.com
Dora Ruffner
Dora Ruffner has an MA in Dance Education from New York University and teaches dance and yoga at Palo Alto Community College . Dora is the City Porgram Coordinator for the Boulder based inter-generational dance-theater company, Turning the Wheel Productions and is a memebre of the San Antonio Modern Dance Co-Laboratory. She choreographs and directs intergenerational multi-media dance-theater productions. In addition to her love of the arts ingeenral, and of movement arts in particular, Dora is interested in Native American learning traditions, oral history, service-learning, practicing yoga, and hiking in beautiful places.
Carrie Vicana
Carrie Vicana has a Bachelor of Science in Dance , as well as a Bachelor of Science in Environmental and Resource Management from Southwest Texas State University , where she was on the Dean's list for 4 years and was honored for outstanding academic achievement by the Education Department. She has also completed all teaching certification courses at Southwest and was an assistant teacher at Goodnight Middle School in San Marcos . Carrie has 9 years of Ballet and 8 years of Modern Dance experience, and received her training from Kathy Marfin's Dance School , Performing Arts School of Classical Ballet , Connally's Dance Workshop , San Antonio College , and Southwest Texas State University . Carrie is also a teacher at Northwest Vista College with classes in Ballet , Modern , Jazz , and Swing . This is Carrie's third year with Kathy Marfin's Dance School.
Laura Vriend
Laura Vriend is a recent graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, PA. Laura holds a BA in dance and anthropology. While at Bryn Mawr Laura pursued modern dance and composition, choreographing and producing two evening length concerts, "RainDance" in 2004 and "A Vast Confusion" in 2005 with collaborator Courtney Lewis. Also while at Bryn Mawr, Laura studied with Philadelphia area choreographers Amanda Miller (Co-director of Miro Dance Theatre, and formerly of the Pennsylvania Ballet and Phrenic New Ballet) David Brick (Co-director of Headlong Dance Theater) and Madeline Cantor and Linda Caruso-Haviland (co-directors of the Bryn Mawr dance program and independent choreographers in Philadelphia). Laura also performed in numerous dances including a new work by Tania Isaac (formerly of Urban Bush Women) and a reconstruction of Trisha Brown's Line Up. In her choreography Laura draws from and makes use of text, autobiography, pop culture and social with the goal of creating multimedia movement based performance that is provocative, humorous, moving and accessible.Since her performance in 2002's contact improv WIP, with Amber Ortega-Perez and Kristina Kuest, Laura has also been highly compelled by questions of kinesthetic and bodily intelligence that improvised dances call attention to. Since returning to San Antonio , Laura has been thrilled to be working with the Modern Dancers' Co-Laboratory.
Christy Walsh
Christy Walsh is a native of Norfolk, Virginia where she danced with Virginia Ballet Theater, Virginia Beach Ballet, Cordova Dance Theater, Chamber Ballet of Williamsburg, Elbert Watson and others. In other places in the North and Southeast she danced, studied, choreographed or taught for; Steps On Broadway, Pennsylvania Dance Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, Arlington Dance Theater, Metropolitan Ballet Theater, Richmond Ballet, Richmond Performing Arts Collective, Rochester Institute of Technology Dance Ensemble, Southwest Virginia Ballet, (as a dancer) many independent choreographers, and (as a teacher) schools in Queens, Brooklyn and New Jersey. In New York in 2001, she founded stringdance+media, the mission of which was to create dances that addressed technological issues both in live performance venues and kinetic media. stringdance performed at traditional and unconventional venues in New York and New Jersey, and stringmedia screened videos at festivals in New York. In 2004, Christy moved to Southwestern Virginia where she worked with Southwest Virginia Ballet as a teacher, dancer and choreographer and created two site-specific solo shows under the auspices of stringdance+media. Having recently relocated to San Antonio, she was a guest teacher for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center 's summer intensive.
