 |
guest artists
Dianne Walker
Andy Wasserman
Jill Crosby
Kenneth Metzker
Valeria Pinheiro
Gail Benedict
Augusto Soledade
Heather Barinaga
Katya Kuznetsova
 DIANNE WALKER
The press has dubbed her “America’s First Lady of Tap” and “The Ella Fitzgerald of Tap”.
Savion Glover and his contemporaries call her “Aunt Dianne” in acknowledgment of her unique place
as mentor, teacher and confidante. And, in appreciation of her personal style and elegance as a
performer and as well as her eloquent and passionate commitment to the art of Tap Dance, her
peers and mentors always refer to her as “Lady Di.”
On May 25, 2003, she received the Flo-Bert Award for Lifetime Achievement, presented to her by
the New York Committee To Celebrate National Tap Dance Day. In 1998 she became the youngest
dancer and first woman to receive the “Living Treasure in American Dance Award” from the Oklahoma
City University. In St. Louis, she received the “Savion Glover Award for Keeping the Beat Alive”
and in Boston she was presented with the “Tapestry Award”, for excellence in teaching.
She is a frequent guest artist at Tap Festivals around the world including Italy, Germany, Prague,
Finland, Chicago, St. Louis, Colorado, Portland, Minneapolis, Montreal, Atlanta, Texas, Vancouver
and numerous others. Often seen in Jazz clubs around the country, her most memorable was an evening
of jazz at the Rainbow Room in New York City with Ruth Brown, Sir Roland Hanna, Al McKibbon and
Grady Tate. Jazz Festivals appearances include North Sea (The Hague), Pouri (Europe), Chicago and
Montreal with Gregory Hines and Jimmy Slyde. She was featured with Jimmy Slyde and Savion Glover
in a thirteen city Dance Umbrella tour, entitled “Fascinating Rhythms”. She has also appeared at
the Smithsonian honoring such distinguished artists as Cholly Atkins and Jeni LeGon. In 2001 she
completed a year long tour with Savion Glover’s Concert Show, entitled “Footnotes” with Jimmy Slyde,
Buster Brown and Cartier Williams.
Ms. Walker, who holds a Master’s degree in Education, has taught at Harvard, Williams College, the
University of Michigan, UCLA, and on numerous other campuses. She has been the recipient of grants
from the National Endowment for the Arts, Jacobs Pillow, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the
New England Foundation for the arts. She is on the board of several tap dance organizations and was
appointed, by the governor of Massachusetts, to a seat on the board of the Massachusetts Cultural
Council, a post she has held since l996.
Dance training began in Boston with Mildred Kennedy-Bradic. She began her professional career in
1979 under the watchful eye of her mentor, Leon Collins. After his death, she continued to direct
his school in Boston/Brookline until 1997. The Slyde Brothers, Jimmy “Sir Slyde” Mitchell and Jimmy
Slyde have also contributed enormously to her dance education. She has been influenced and touched
by the generosity of the many legendary tap figures with whom she has worked as both performer and
choreographer.
Dianne Walker, who shares her Boston home with her husband Rodney and two tap-dancing Bichon Frise’s
named Curly and Mo; is the proud mother of a daughter, Michelle, who sometimes tap dances and a son,
Michael, who does not, but has provided her with three exceptional grandsons, Rahjene, Michael Jr. and
Nicholas.(top)
 ANDY WASSERMAN
Andy Wasserman was musical director for Brenda Bufalino from 1973-76 and appears in the historic video
documentary "Great Feats of Feet" playing piano for members of the Copasetic Club: Cookie Cook, Honi Coles,
Bubba Gaines, Buster Brown, Ernest "Brownie" Brown and Gip Gibson. He has since performed as musical director,
pianist and drummer at numerous tap events accompanying such luminaries as Savion Glover, Jimmy Slyde, Dianne
Walker, Jane Goldberg, Jason Samuels, Sam Weber, Fayard Nicolas, Van Porter, and his wife Dorothy Wasserman,
among others. Andy was raised in Manhattan, attended the High School of Music & Art and earned a degree in Jazz
Studies at New England Conservatory of Music. His mentors include legendary masters Dwike Mitchell (piano),
Ladji Camara (African drumming) and George Russell (Lydian Chromatic Concept/Composition). He has recorded 3 CDs,
composed music for television, conducted music workshops and taught master classes in schools and universities
since 1979.(top)
 JILL CROSBY
Jill Flanders Crosby currently teaches music-based jazz dance and West African dance forms at the University
of Alaska Anchorage. Her dance studies have carried her to New York City, Ghana, West Africa, and Cuba.
Jill earned an Ed.D. from Teachers College Columbia University researching the roots of jazz dance. While
in New York she studied with Billy Siegenfeld and took multiple classes in West African dance forms. She has
performed alongside Katherine Kramer, Valeria Pinheiro, Heather Cornell and Jeannie Hill, and was a featured
guest artist with the XSIGHT! Performance Group of Chicago. She has choreographed or created new dance works
and arrangements with Brian Jeffery, artistic director of XSIGHT! Performance Group, Heather Cornell, and
Katherine Kramer. Jill received a 1998 Fulbright research grant that took her to Ghana, West Africa where she
taught jazz dance at the University of Ghana. In addition to her research in Ghana, Jill has also taught jazz
dance to members of the Havana-based modern dance company DanzAbierta, and continues to conduct research in Cuba.
(top)
 KENNETH METZKER
Kenneth Metzker holds a Bachelors Degree in Music Performance as a Percussionist. He is currently working with
“Brazz”, an Afro-Brazilian dance company in Miami, FL directed by Augusto Soledade. He began his Afro-Cuban studies
with Michael Spiro, which led him to study with many other notables in the Afro-Cuban genre. He traveled to Matanzas,
Cuba to study Afro-Cuban folkloric music with world renowned Los Munequitos de Matanzas. His work has taken him to
Cuba, Brazil, Europe, and the Caribbean as a performer, instructor and student. He recently spent time in the
northeast of Brazil collaborating and performing with various bands and dance companies, including Cia. Vata and
Dona Zefinha, with whom he performed in both Olinda and Recife, in the state of Pernambuco for Carnaval.
He has taught at the University of Whitewater
summer percussion workshop, at past Rhythm Explosions in Montana and at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, Jazz Week
in 2005, where he also performed with Rebeca Mauleon. He has worked as a dance accompanist in numerous settings,
including the Florida Dance Festival in Miami. He was a participant in the Third World Marimba Competition in
Stuttgart, Germany (2002) and has had an original composition premiered with the University of Kentucky percussion
ensemble at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (2001). He is currently residing in Miami,
Florida.(top)
 VALERIA PINHEIRO
Valéria Pinheiro fell in love with dancing by watching her rancher
father do the folk percussive step dances of the Northeast of Brazil.
After learning American tap dance, she abandoned her degree in civil engineering
to travel through Brazil, researching its rhythms and traditions. For
the last twenty years, Valéria has developed her unique dance hybrid,
combining tap with the African-based rhythms and dances of Brazil, and
she teaches, choreographs, and performs throughout her native country.
In 1999, her company Vata appeared at New York City's National Tap Dance
Day Tap Extravaganza. In 2000, her work Brazil and its Rhythms toured
Germany, and last year her new dance/theater musical, Bagaceira (Sugar
Cane Pulp), toured Brazil, winning several prestigious awards, as well
as government support. This piece is a culmination of her years working
to develop a "hybrid body": putting together tap, contemporary
dance, theater, music, percussion, and text to make a contemporary statement
about Brazilian culture. (top)
 GAIL BENEDICT
Gail received her B.F.A. in Theatre and Dance from the California Institute of the Arts. Out of school she began
her professional career as assistant choreographer to her mentor, Donald McKayle, on her first Broadway show
Dr. Jazz. She subsequently played principal roles in many Broadway shows, including A Chorus Line, Me and My Girl,
Raggedy Ann, 42nd Street, and Bob Fosse’s Dancin’, for which she directed and recreated Mr. Fosse‘s choreography
for most of the national and international companies. Her feature film roles include Eloise in The Best Little
Whorehouse in Texas, and Leslie in The Fan. Throughout the U.S. and Europe she has choreographed and/or directed
such shows as West Side Story, A Chorus Line, Brigadoon, Anything Goes, Pirates of Penzance, Cinderella,
42nd Street, Kiss Me Kate, Crazy for You, The Crucible as well as many national commercials and independent films.
For Actors’ Theatre she has performed in or choreographed In Darkest America, The Pink Studio, Cocoanuts, The Beaux
Strategem, A Christmas Carole, To Kill a Mockingbird, Jack and Jill, and the Frank Sinatra review My Way.
Gail holds her M.F.A. in Directing and Choreography from the University of Louisville and is currently teaching
Musical Theatre and Dance at the Youth Performing Arts High School in Louisville, Kentucky; working on a doctoral
degree in Psychology; and authoring new musicals based on the lives of great, little known women of
history.(top)
 AUGUSTO SOLEDADE
Augusto Soledade, a native of Bahia, Brazil, is a performer, choreographer and currently serves as a full time Assistant
Professor in Dance at Florida International University in Miami and as Founder Artistic Director of Brazz Dance Theater.
From 2000 to 2004 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor and Graduate Advisor at Smith College, Massachusetts. Other Positions
at Universities and Colleges were: Visiting Assistant Professor in the Dance Department at the University Of Michigan at Ann
Arbor in 99-00. Guest Artist Instructor at Wells College, NY and adjunct instructor at University of Rochester in 98-99.
He received his M.F.A in Dance from SUNY Brockport, where he was a Teaching Fellow and a member of SANKOFA African Dance and
Drum Ensemble and the assistant to the director and choreographer Clyde Alafiju Morgan, as well as a member of DANSCORE -
Modern Dance touring company. He received the 1998 Pylyshenko-Strasser Graduate Dance Award and was the finalist in the dance
category for the 1998 Thayer Fellowship. He has been awarded multiple grant funds from the Northampton Arts Council and Smith
College to develop choreographic as well research projects. He was invited to perform as a contestant for the First International
Ballet and Modern Dance Competition in Japan, in 1992. He has performed extensively in Brazil. He has performed in Trinidad/Tobago
and throughout New York State and New England. He taught in Rochester City School District’s Artist-in-Residence program. He was
an adjunct instructor at Monroe Community College as well as SUNY Morrisville. His dance training started at the Federal University of
Bahia, Brazil in a program with strong modern dance emphasis and has had training with Garth Fagan, Clyde Morgan, Susannah Newman and
James Payton. At the Federal University of Bahia, he worked as an Afro-Brazilian dance teaching assistant and has won awards performing
modern dance. He also holds a degree in journalism from the Federal University of Bahia.(top)
HEATHER BARINAGA
Heather has explored Rhythm and Dance as an instrumental part of her life for over fifteen years. It is with a fierce passion and
equal respect that she pursues, most enthusiastically, the study of tap from celebrated hoofers Katherine Kramer, Jane Goldberg,
Michelle Dorrance, Andrew Nemr, and their contemporary “podiatric musicians.”
Heather grew up in saucy Miami, Florida and, as a teenager, was part of a local tap company that performed at various competitions
throughout the Southeast and the annual Florida Dance Festival. Over the last few years, she has been most influenced by tap master
Katherine Kramer, who helped her develop a deep connection and respect for the history of tap while also exploring newer relationships
between Latin jazz and tap. Heather taught in Florida for several dance studios and has recently performed in the art and tap
collaboration For Heaven’s Sake, the WDNA Miami Jazz Festival, and Moving Jazz, a concert of music, tap, and improvisational dance.
She also taught and performed at the Dance on the Beach Festival in Florida.
Heather currently lives in New York City, studying and tapping with Michelle Dorrance, Andrew Nemr, and Barbara Duffy. She brings
to the floor a parfait of styles and rhythmic influences that she strives to preserve, tweak, and paddle on…bringing the past to
the Here and Now.(top)
 KATYA KUZNETSOVA
Ekaterina (Katya) Gennadievna Kuznetsova is originally from Magadan, Russia. Her training in dance began at the age of eight with
competitive ballroom dance. Since 1996, she has been living, studying and teaching primarily in Anchorage, Alaska. Her training now
includes music-based jazz, social and modern dance. She has studied with a variety of well-known teachers, including Brian Jeffery,
Katherine Kramer, Billy Siegenfield, Nancy Stark Smith, Eddie Torres and Brigitta Winkler. As an educator and choreographer, Katya
has worked with the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), Academie de Danse Anchorage, Maui Community College, Anchorage Classical
Ballet, Ballroom Club of Fairbanks, Alaska Dance Theater and Alaska Theater of Youth. Currently, she is finishing her MA in Dance
and Adult Education, co-directs the UAA Dance Ensemble and teaches Jazz, Modern, and recreational Latin dance for
UAA.(top)
|
