Photo by Yolanda Accinelli

Kiyohime w/Sam Blanchard, Photo by Marty Sohl

Claudine Naganuma founded danceNAGANUMA in 2001. She has served as the Managing Director of Danspace since 2002 where she teaches modern dance, ballet and composition. Her company danceNAGANUMA is in residence at Danspace and has been producing work and performing in festival settings annually. She was selected as a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Hong Kong/San Francisco exchange artist in 1999. She also received a Jack Loftis and Vibeke Strand Honorary Fellowship while at the Djerassi Artist in Residence Program. Her costume designs merited an Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award as well as two Isadora Duncan nominations for costumes in 1995 and 1992. She received her M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from Mills College and her B.A. in English Literature from Dominican College. She studied Early Childhood Education at the Mills College Children’s School and continues to teach specialty classes at Aurora Elementary School and St. Paul’s Episcopal Schools in the East Bay. Claudine served as the Artistic Director of Asian American Dance Performances from 1992 to 2004 taking it into its 32nd anniversary.

Lighting Designer
Dale MacDonald has been the resident lighting designer for Asian American Dance Performances for ten years. During that time, he collaborated deeply with the choreographers and other artists in their productions to accentuate the drama and intensity of the Asian American experience through color and projected imagery. He has been a visual and audio designer in San Francisco Bay area theater and dance since the early 80's. As a founder of the multimedia performance ensemble MAP, he created digitally-controlled environments to complement the pop sounds and absurdist topics. He has lately been taking his explorations of light phenomena in gallery installations, recently as part of St. Rubidium's Temple at SomARTS. In 2002 he joined the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus as their lighting designer. He holds an MFA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley. In a parallel existence, he recently co-founded Onomy Labs, a Menlo Park-based design firm.

Composers

Joel Davel (Sound Design) has toured and recorded with a variety of new music and jazz groups featuring original music and premiers by some of today's leading composers. He has also composed for and appeared as an on-stage accompanist for several theater and dance companies including the California Shakespeare Theater, and danceNAGANUMA. He has been a member of the Paul Dresher Ensemble for over ten years and has also collaborated and performed with him in accompaniment of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Nancy Karp + Dancers, ODC/SF, and the Allyson Green Dance Company.

Guillermo Galindo/ gal*in_dog post-Mexican Composer Guillermo Galindo's (aka gal*in_dog) artistic work spans a wide spectrum of expression from symphonic composition to the domains of musical and visual computer interaction, electro-acoustic music, opera, film music, instrument building, three dimensional installation, live performance and sound design. His music has been performed and shown at major festivals and art exhibits throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. For many years a member of Pocha Nostra, international performance art troupe, Galindo’s most recent work explores the fields of performance art, music and sound archetypes, ritual, live audience interaction, the creation of cyber-totemic sonic objects; and the conception of site specific sonic environments. www.galindog.com

2009 Dancers:

Carly Boland has a BA in Interdisciplinary Dance Studies and Recreation Administration. She now is the Administrative Manager of Danspace and the Registrar of Dance for people with Parkinson's. Carly guest performed with Astrum Ballet Company in 2004 and 20005. She was a principal dancer in the New World Ballet Company for the 2006, 07 and 08 seasons. Carly has choreographed and performed Nationally and Internationally. In summer of 2007 Carly took her choreography on tour at the Festival Estada de Internacional de Dansa throughout Spain. Carly has performed at the American College Dance Festival in 2006, 2007 and 2008, as well as the American Dance Festival in 2008. Carly also worked as technical support at the Festival, for the touring companies.

Catalina Jackson-Urueña is eleven years old and has been dancing since she was five. She has taken dance class at Danspace for five years. She takes Ballet, Modern and African dance. She has a dog and a hamster and loves drawing, jumping rope, cooking, tennis and of course dancing. She speaks Spanish. She’s in fifth grade at Berkeley Montessori School. She has been a ginger snap cookie in The Secret Nutcracker for five years. In the last two, she was on the Licorice dance and enjoyed it very much. She has been a member of danceNAGANUMA since 2004.

Frances Cuevas started dancing at age 7. She graduated from UC Davis in 2006 with a degree in Biology and worked for two years before deciding modern dance will be her future. Currently, she lives in San Francisco and takes ballet at the ODC. She is actively involved in other performing arts including singing, musical theater and ballroom dance. One day, she hopes to earn her MFA in Choreography and Performance at Mills College. This is her first year with danceNAGANUMA.

Lihong Chan is eleven years old, and she is a fifth grader at Chinese American International School in San Francisco, where she studies in Mandarin and English. She has been dancing at Danspace since she was five years old. She danced as a gingersnap in the Nutcracker with the Oakland Ballet at Holy Names University and at the Paramount Theater in Oakland. She was the littlest gingersnap under Mother Ginger's skirt for two years. She performed for two years at Children's Fairyland in Oakland, where she danced, sang, and acted. She sang in Piedmont Choir for three years, and studies piano at Berkeley Academy of Music.

Julia Milani is nine years old and in the third grade at Head-Royce School in Oakland. She began dancing at school as a kindergartener and enrolled in ballet class at Danspace in the Fall of 2007. In December 2007, Julia danced as a gingersnap in Ron Guidi’s production of the Oakland Ballet Nutcracker at the Paramount Theatre and Holy Names College. An Iranian-American, Julia is learning Farsi.

Julia Yoshino began her ballet training in Wisconsin and was a member of Madison Ballet's Youth Company. After moving to the Bay Area in 2002, she became an active member of The Movement, a jazz, hip-hop and swing dance group at UC-Berkeley. Since graduating from Cal in 2006, Julia has been working at the Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland. She has been a member of danceNAGANUMA since February 2007.

Sierra Joe Lash, 14, began studying modern dance at age six and at eight began studying ballet with Claudine Naganuma at Danspace in Oakland, California. She first performed in Ms. Naganuma's "Faerie Birds" as a work in progress in 2001. She is currently in middle school and actively involved in other performing arts, especially singing and acting, and someday hopes to study fashion design.