Explore Panels By Creative Discipline

Dance

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Previous Dance Panelists

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James “Bear” Graham

  • 2025 Panelist
    James “Bear” Graham is a San Francisco-based choreographer, performer, and educator. Graham produces DANCE LOVERS...duets by couples, crushes, and comrades, each year around Valentine's Day in San Francisco. He is currently studying Psychology/Drama Therapy at CIIS. He is a certified Gaga teacher and has been on faculty at UC Berkeley since 2015.

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  • 2025 Panelist
    Saharla Vetsch is a Somali American multidisciplinary artist based in the Bay Area. With a degree in Performing Arts and Social Justice from the University of San Francisco, her work focuses on the transformative power of movement. Through teaching and performances, she celebrates intersecting identities and fosters connection in queer nightlife, early childhood dance education, and collaborative performances.

Saharla Vetsch

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  • 2025 Panelist
    Sarah Chou is a freelance dancer based in San Francisco, California. A 2020 Cum Laude graduate of Wellesley College with a B.A. in History, she danced extensively in Boston before completing the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program in 2022. She has performed with SFDanceworks and ODC/Dance Company and channels her passion for creativity and equity through her work on the Finance team at Intersection for the Arts.

Sarah Chou

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Ronnie Reddick

  • 2025 Panelist
    Ronnie Reddick is a San Francisco-based choreographer known for blending hip-hop, jazz, fashion, and theatrics to create a very dynamic and explosoive style of dance. His innovative approach has made him one of the most sought-after choreographers andn dancers in the Bay Area and beyond, working with artists, designers, and fashion brands worldwide.

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Nadia Adame

  • 2025 Panelist
    Nadia Adame is a Spanish award-winning multidisciplinary artist and performer. Trained at the Royal Dance Conservatory of Madrid, she holds a BA in Theatre from the University of Colorado. She has worked with renowned choreographers like Stephen Petronio, Bill T. Jones, Asun Noales, and Rafael Bonachela across the UK, Spain, the US, and Canada. Nadia is the Artistic Director and Choreographer at AXIS Dance Company.

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Raissa Simpson

  • 2025 Panelist
    Raissa Simpson is an award-winning choreographer, artistic director of PUSH Dance Company, and an arts educator at Stanford University. Her choreography has toured to over 50 venues across the United States including Ferst Center for the Arts, Aspen Fringe Festival, Joyce SoHo and many more. As an administrator, Raissa operates the Sanctuary, a dance studio in downtown San Francisco.

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Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş

  • 2023, 2024 Panelist
    Maxine is an award-winning poet, choreographer and former US-UK Fulbright candidate from Northern California, holding recent residencies from Djerassi Resident Artist Program and The Center at Eagle Hill. She was a finalist for 92NY’s Future Dance Festival (New York) and a featured choreographer for World Stage Design (Canada). She currently directs Roco Dance’s youth modern dance company, BodyLanguage and dances for eMotion Arts under the direction of Mariana Sobral.

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Rama Hall

  • 2024 Panelist
    Rama is a professional dancer based out of the Bay Area, California. He’s been studying street dance styles for the last 15 years, House Dance being his main style. Rama has been a core member of the acclaimed Bay Area dance theater company Embodiment Project for 14 years and a staple teacher of dance in the Bay Area for both adults and youth for over 10 years. He is currently a Co-Director of the youth dance theater company “Seeds” based out of ODC Dance Commons.

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Clare Schweitzer

  • 2024 Panelist
    Clare is a freelance dance a film professional based in Oakland, CA. She graduated in 2012 from Mount Holyoke College with a B.A. in Dance and Mathematics cum laude with high honors and moved to London to complete an M.A. in contemporary dance in 2014. She has performed as a dancer around the SF Bay Area and her films have screened at festivals worldwide. Clare currently works as a Programming Associate with Dance Film SF (which presents the annual San Francisco Dance Fim Festival), as a videographer/editor for Rapt Productions, and is a co-host on the podcast Frameform.

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  • 2024 Panelist
    Kim has been an artist and educator in the Bay Area for over 40 years. She has performed and taught all over the world with Epiphany Dance Theater and founded the free San Francisco Trolley Dances 20 years ago. Kim has been awarded artist residencies including the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, Space 124 Theater Artaud and the Air Residency at Intersection for the Arts. This is her 12th year as artist in residence at Bessie Carmichael Elementary School through Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Kim received her MFA in Choreography Arts from UC Davis.

Kim Epifano

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Carma Zisman

  • 2024 Panelist
    Carma is the Executive Director of ODC/Dance. She has been providing leadership for organizations and projects, working with dynamic community groups, artists and entrepreneurs, philanthropists, businesses, and academic programs for the last 35 years. Carma was previously the Director of Institutional Advancement for The Walt Disney Family Museum.

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Paulina Vo-Griffin

  • 2024 Panelist
    Paulina Vo-Griffin has served youth in the South Bay Area through various roles in nonprofit organizations and as a middle school teacher. She’s worked with City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley, YMCA of Silicon Valley, Summit Public Schools, and AACI. She occasionally teaches dance classes throughout the Bay Area.

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Christell Lewis

  • 2023 Panelist
    Christell Lewis is an actor, poet, and singer who has performed on many stages on the East and West Coasts. She toured as a performer educator for Kaiser Permanente's Educational Theatre programs, performing in K-8 live theatrical productions all over Northern CA. She is an alum of Voices of our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA) and is developing new work as a writer and playwright.

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Julie Phelps

  • 2023 Panelist
    Julie Phelps is the Artistic & Executive Director of CounterPulse, and a celebrated curator and performance artist. As Artistic & Executive Director of CounterPulse, she combines grassroots community engagement and institutional frameworks to create a dynamic home for art and culture. Most recently, Phelps raised $7 million to renovate and acquire CounterPulse’s building, launching a new model for placing arts at the center of community development as the pilot project of the Community Arts Stabilization Trust.