Instructors

Aurora Corsano has danced in the work of post-modern choreographers Yoshiko Chuma, Mary Fulkerson and Angus Balbernie in Europe and New York.  From 2001 - 2003 Aurora performed through out the Netherlands and Spain as a solo aerial dancer with the experimental improvisation electronic music group, “Kreepa”.  She also completed a six month residency with the group at STEIM, an institute in Amsterdam for the development of human/technology interface in the arts. From 1990 - 2001, she danced for the New York City based spectacle performance company, “Pink Inc”. She toured with them throughout the US and has presented her own choreography in venues in NYC, Europe and Vermont. Upon returning home to Vermont in 2003, Aurora founded Luminz which began as a artist’s happening called Luminzcircus and grew to become a dance school and interdisciplinary performance company.

Gina DeFrietas is an AFAA certified fitness instructor. She choreographs and teaches many different classes from Dance Aerobics to Step, Bosu, Rebounding and Ball. Gina also teaches Jazz, Ballet, Tap, and Latin dance, and has taught instructors how to teach fitness classes. She teaches group fitness & dance classes in Manhattan, and does private Zumba parties.

x

Cyndal Ellis is a graduate of Smith
College in dance and anthropology. She’s been studying, choreographing, and performing dance for 15 years with particular emphasis on modern dance, ballet,
and most recently, belly dance, tribal fusion, and international folk dance. She has
choreographed and performed tribal fusion for Smith College, Luminz Studio, Luminz Dance Theater Company, and haflas throughout New
England.

~

Amanda Goble Amanda Goble is a multiply certified Pilates instructor and personal trainer.  She has taught Pilates to a wide range of clients in a variety of class formats, including providing instruction to teachers-in-training. With a background in gymnastics, dance, and circus arts, she has choreographed and performed both ground and aerial circus/dance acts as a soloist, one half of a duo, and in group collaboration.  She currently teaches Pilates locally in her studio (www.eqpilates.com), and circus in MA.  With a detailed and attentive teaching style, Amanda is dedicated to her students’ success, insight, and discovery of inherent body wisdom.

Susan Hebson has been teaching Tai Chi for 13 years in and around the Brattleboro area. She is certified to teach Sun Style and has studied with a master in Japan, as well as with Dr. Paul Lam and Master Jay Van Schelt. She lived in Japan for 31/2 years where she studied The Simplified Form of Tai Chi. She also studied Zen Meditation and Chado (Japanese Tea Ceremony) with a Master. Both practices have a strong association with Tai Chi. She is certified to teach Sun Style Tai Chi, which has proven to help with many health related problems, as well as alleviate pain. She has studied Tai Chi with Dr. Paul Lam from Australia as well as Master Jay Van Schelt a Thrid Degree Shaolin instructor. She teaches regular, weekly classes at Brattleboro’s Gibson-Aiken Center, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, Brattleboro Retreat, the Brattleboro School of Budo and Luminz Studio.

Kristin Horrigan has taught contact improvisation across the East Coast and Midwest and in Germany and Argentina at festivals, jams, dance centers, and universities. She is a modern dancer and choreographer, who came to Brattleboro in 2006 to serve as Faculty in Dance at Marlboro College. She remains the Artistic Director of the Dance Generators, an intergenerational dance company in Northampton, MA.

~

Trixie Little Long ago in Charm City, before there was Trixie Little, there was Tiny T. Tiny T was born into a large circus family. Unfortunately, Tiny T was also orphaned at a young age after a terrible elephant tight rope accident. Things got worse for Tiny T when she was forced to live with her mean Uncle Tosso…The Knife Thrower…and his mean monkey, Muddles. Life with Tosso was hard. Until one day when Tosso’s trailer was struck by a bolt of PINK LIGHTNING! This bolt of lightning killed Tosso immediately! And froze Tiny T at her prepubescent height, amplified her cuteness to heroic proportions, and imbued her with super-human spanking powers! Creating the sassy burlesque superstar that is Trixie Little! This same bolt of lighting had an effect on Muddles as well. Muddles had become terribly twisted under Tosso’s tutelage. And the powerful electric shock turned an already mean circus monkey into The Evil Hate Monkey! Thusly juxtaposed, Trixie Little and The Evil Hate Monkey have been fighting, dancing, flipping and stripping for the opposing forces of good and evil, ever since.

Leah Mutz graduated with a degree in dance and movement studies from Antioch College. She has performed with Sandglass Theater, The Company of Strangers, and The Hibakusha Peace Project and performed and directed for Luminzcircus. She has taught movement to children and adults with a focus on core strengthening and lengthening of the body into space. Inherent in her work is the understanding that in order to approach our world with generosity and positivity we must first understand ourselves and our bodies as deeply good and intrinsically beautiful.

Cathy Nicoli earned her BA Cum Laude in Dance and Performance Studies from Roger Williams University and her MFA from Smith College. She is a two-time recipient of both the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts’ Choreography Award and the Rhode Island Foundation’s Joseph Cirino Scholarship for Arts Education. The American College Dance Festival has honored Cathy by inviting her to perform her solo work at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Cathy can be seen in the Ben Folds Five MTV music video Underground - to which she was also Assistant Choreographer. She has worked with students in private and public schools, inner-city arts programs and college and university settings including Brown University, Providence College, Rhode Island School of Design, Roger Williams University, and the Five College Dance Department - where she currently teaches as an adjunct faculty member. She was Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at Hampshire College Spring 2005-2008, and during that time received both the Hewlett Faculty Development Grant and the Project Pericles Civic Engagement Course Development Award. Presently, she is part of the dance faculty of Keene State College. In addition to teaching and choreographing independently, Cathy is a member of Heidi Henderson’s elephant Jane dance, and for the last nine summers has directed a children’s day camp at Bearnstow - an arts retreat in Mt. Vernon, ME. She just moved to Putney last year.

Lauren Reedy has been dancing, in one way or another, since childhood, first with The Washington Ballet, later with Keshet Dance Company and New Mexico Ballet Company, and most recently with Island Breeze Productions on the Big Island of Hawai’i. She most enjoys her weekly West African dance classes and modern dance. She received her MA in Dance/Movement Therapy and Counseling Psychology in 2006 from Antioch, and has facilitated movement groups in the Brattleboro area and in Hawaii since this time. Her focus is on using movement to access one’s inner experience, as she believes the body, mind and spirit are inextricably linked. What is held in the body, is held in the mind, and vice versa. In her moving experiences, she hopes to provide access to expression, creativity, clarity, grounding and relaxation.

Joan Sanchez has been teaching modern dance and performing for over 20 years. She studied extensively with modern dance great Erick Hawkins and his company in New York and was a visiting faculty member at the Erick Hawkins School of Dance from 1993-95. She was a guest teacher in dance at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine and served as adjunct faculty in dance there from 1988-90. As a founding member of Motion Collective Dance Company in Ellsworth, Maine, she brought the fun and excitement of improvisational dance to the community. During her years in Maine, she also taught at the Town Hill Dance Academy and the Maine Dance Center. In New York she performed in the dance companies of Nancy Mehan, Beverly Brown, Nancy Zendora, and Phyllis Rose.

Sakura Shimada studied modern dance, ballet, Jazz, Japanese fusion dance in Japan where she is originally from. She moved to New York City in 1997 to study dance. In New York City, she studied modern dance, contemporary dance, ballet, improvisation and worked with Shua Group, and collaborated with visual artists Ei Arakawa, Songiy Kim, Zsolt Koloknai(Budapest), a musician Attile Dora( Budapest), a dancer Aydan Turker( Istanbul) and presented her own work in down town venues. Since in 2002, she has been studying and working with Daniel Lepkoff (www.daniellepkoff.com) and she has traveled supporting his work and performing in Europe, Russia, Turkey, South America and Japan. Daniel’s work has been a big influence on her own work. She is currently an Artist in Residence at a dance and performance organization called Movement Research in New York City.

Carrie Towle began her dance training in Brattleboro, Vermont and went on to study at the Boston Ballet, the New York School of Ballet, was a dance major at SUNY Purchase and performed with the Purchase Dance Corps. Carrie taught for several studios in Albuquerque while also dancing and teaching for the New Mexico Ballet Company. Carrie has taught ballet to all ages and levels for over fifteen years. In Vermont and Massachusetts, she has taught for Deerfield Academy, The Stoneleigh Burnham School, The Brattleboro School of Dance, the Perfoming Arts/Dance Program of the Windham Regional Career Center, Vermont Academy, Marlboro College, The Williston North Hampton School, and Kelly’s Dance Academy. She holds a MA in Counselor Education from the University of New Mexico and lives in Dummerston with her three beautiful children

Meg Van Dyck has taught, choreographed, and performed throughout New England and New York City over the past fifteen years. She received her dance training at the Stoneleigh Burnham School Community Program in Greenfield, Ma and continued her studies at Smith College. Meg has danced with Dodge Dance Company in New York City, Sorvino Dance Project in Western Massachusetts, and currently dances with Luminz Dance Theater.  She has shown her own work throughout the area including The Northampton Center for the Arts, The Shea Theater, and The New England Youth Theater.  Meg has served as the artistic director of dance for the Journey East Program to China at Leland and Gray High School and has taught dance at Foreign Language School International- Tufts University, Theater of Dreams in New York City, and Deerfield Academy. She enjoys sharing her love for dance with others.