David Vaughn, Dance Magazine
Bios
Nancy Karp
Nancy Karp has been making work in San Francisco for four decades. She has created more than 80 dance works for her San Francisco Bay Area company Nancy Karp + Dancers founded in 1980. Karp and the company have toured throughout the U.S. and abroad, including extended artist residencies in Germany, Croatia, Serbia, India, and Japan. She has been awarded commissions by the Für Augen und Ohren and the Sprachen der Künste Festivals in Berlin, the Cabrillo Music Festival, and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco, among others. As an artist-in-residence at the Kyoto College of Art in Japan, she choreographed Terrace Canon, a site-specific work for 32 performers as part of the Kyoto International Contemporary Music Forum. Site-specific performance work has been an important part of Nancy Karp + Dancers’ programming.
Performances have included site pieces commissioned for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum, and a commission for the Choreographers’ Festival at Yerba Buena Gardens for the work, La Processione with music performed live by the Green Street Mortuary Band. She has received numerous grants and awards for her work, to include the Sustained Achievement Isadora Duncan (Izzie) Honoree Award in 2024, the Bay Area Dance Week Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005, a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship (1995-96) to India where she worked for five months with dancers and actors from the Kerala Kalamandalam, choreography fellowships and dance company grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, the Rockefeller Foundation/MAP Fund and numerous local foundations and other government agencies.
An active member of the San Francisco Bay Area arts community she served as a trustee of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, chairing its Arts Committee from 1993-2000 and was a mentor in the CHIME Program, Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange in 2004-05. She has published three limited boxed editions. The first in 1986 “Six Dances/Nancy Karp”, is an edition of early dance scores, a second edition in 2003 of photographs, scores, essays and drawings entitled “Nancy Karp + Dancers: Dances 1977-2003” with the music CD, “Four Dances: The Music”, a selection of music commissioned by the New Arts Foundation/Nancy Karp + Dancers for her choreography. In 2019 Nancy published a third limited edition, “Memory/Place”, a collection of selected drawings from Karp’s notebooks of this work. Nancy Karp + Dancers’ archives are now held at the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library.
Dancers
Rachel Garcia
Sonsherée Giles
Sonsherée Giles is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and costume designer. Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, she attended Mills College where she received an MFA in performance/choreography. She worked for AXIS Dance Company for over 16 years as a performing/teaching artist, rehearsal director and associate director. She has taught dance and performed for audiences in the United States, Germany, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Russia, Scotland, Canada, China, and Japan. Sonsherée received an Isadora Duncan Award for ensemble performance, and a Homer Avila Award for Excellence in the field of integrated dance. Sonsherée is honored to be dancing with Nancy Karp + Dancers for the past eight seasons, and will also be performing with Amy Lewis and Jo Krieter this fall.
Photo Credit: Trib LaPrade
Anna Greenberg Gold
Katie Kruger
Katie Kruger is a dedicated dance artist and movement educator. Since earning a B.A. in dance at UC Santa Barbara, she has had a fruitful career in the Bay Area for 25 years. Her performance credits include collaborations with notable choreographers including Randee Paufve, Abigail Hosein, and Rogelio Lopez. Katie has had the pleasure of working with Nancy Karp + Dancers since 2015 where she has been featured in the premiere several new works. Katie is deeply committed to bringing dance education to people of all ages, helping students build confidence, and experience the joy of dancing.
Amy Lewis
Amy Lewis holds a BA in theater from UCLA, an MFA in dance from Mills College, and an MLIS from San Jose State University. As a dancer, she has performed with Nancy Karp + Dancers since 2015 and was featured in the premieres of several new works. She has also performed in the works of Sonya Delwaide, Molissa Fenley, Sonsherée Giles, Margaret Jenkins, and Alex Ketley. Her choreographic work has been supported by the West Wave Dance Festival, San Francisco International Arts Festival, ODC’s Pilot Program, Meridian Gallery, SAFEhouse Arts, 8x8x8, SPACE 124, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency, and RAWdance’s CONCEPT series. Amy will be premiering her new work “My Osession with Hamletmachine” at the Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco, November 7-16, 2025.
Nol Simonse
Nol Simonse is from Washington, D.C., and trained at the Boston Conservatory of Music. He moved to San Francisco in 1997, and helped form the punk rock dance company, Kunst-Stoff. He has worked extensively in the Bay Area, with Stephen Pelton, Eric Kupers, Kara Davis, Christy Funsch, Janice Garrett, Charles Moulton, Sean Dorsey, Carey Perloff, and Val Caniparoli. Nol currently teaches modern technique at the Lines Dance Center, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, ODC, and Dance Mission Theater; and he has taught choreography and repertory workshops to teens and adults. He has been awarded an Izzy, a GOLDIE, Luna Dance Institute’s Choreofund prize, and was a CHIME artist in 2017 with mentor Margaret Jenkins.
Calvin L. Thomas, Jr.
Elizabeth Zepeda
A Bay Area native, Elizabeth Zepeda holds both a B.A. and an M.F.A. as a graduate of the Saint Mary’s College and Mills College dance programs. Over the last 20 years, she has danced in the works of many local choreographers including Nina Haft, Deborah Slater, Della Davidson, Janice Garrett, Stacey Printz, and is a founding member of Angela Demmel and Dancers. Most recently she has worked with Randee Paufve, Andrew Merrell, and Bianca Cabrera. Elizabeth has been dancer with Nancy Karp + Dancers since 2022. She works for Shawl-Anderson Dance Center as the Youth Program Coordinator and Social Media Associate.
Collaborators
James Tenney
James Tenney (August 10, 1934 – August 24, 2006) was a music theorist, composer, and performer. He attended the University of Denver, the Juilliard School of Music, Bennington College (B.A. 1958), and the University of Illinois (M.A. 1961). His teachers and mentors include Eduard Steuermann, Chou Wen-Chung, Lionel Nowak, Carl Ruggles, Lejaren Hiller, Kenneth Gaburo, Edgard Varèse, Harry Partch, and John Cage. Tenney was a co-founder and conductor of the Tone Roads Chamber Ensemble in New York City (1963-70), and wrote works for a variety of media, both instrumental and electronic, many of them using alternative tuning systems. He was the author of several articles on musical acoustics, computer music, and musical form and perception, as well as two books. Tenney received grants and awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and the Jean A. Chalmers Foundation. He taught at many institutions and was named Distinguished Research Professor in 1994 at York University in Toronto. His music is published by Sonic Art Editions (Baltimore) and the Canadian Music Centre, and is distributed by them and by Frog Peak (Lebanon, New Hampshire). Recordings are available from Artifact, col legno, CRI, Hat[now]ART, Koch International, Mode, Musicworks, Nexus, oodiscs, SYR and Toshiba EMI, among others.
Samuel Adams
Samuel Adams is a composer whose music weaves acoustic and digital sound into “mesmerizing” (New York Times) orchestrations. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, he has received commissions from a broad range of organizations including San Francisco Symphony, Carnegie Hall, New World Symphony, The Australian Chamber Orchestra, and Spektral Quartet, and has collaborated with performers and conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Robertson, MTT, violinists Anthony Marwood, Jennifer Koh, Karen Gomyo, and pianists Emanuel Ax, Sarah Cahill, David Fung, and Joyce Yang. Adams was Mead Composer In Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2015 to 2018 and in the 2021-22 season was the Composer in Residence with Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He has held residencies at Civitella Ranieri (Umbria, IT), Djerassi Resident Artists Program (California, USA), Ucross (Wyoming, USA), and Visby International Centre for Composers (Gotland, SE).
David A. Jaffe
Hailed by The San Francisco Chronicle for its “resourceful intricacy and variety of writing,” David A. Jaffe’s music traverses an expansive landscape, from American bluegrass to Yiddish folk melodies. A protege of composer Henry Brant, Jaffe has written over a hundred works spanning all genres of classical music. He received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stanford University and has taught at Princeton University, Melbourne University and the University of California San Diego. His works have been presented by the San Francisco Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Russian National Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Lithuanian Opera and Ballet Theatre Orchestra and numerous chamber ensembles; and featured at such international music festivals as Other Minds, the Berlin Festival, the Bergen Festival, the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Venice Biennale, and the American Festival in London. He has been awarded commissions from the Kronos Quartet, Chanticleer (as their National Endowment for the Arts Composer-in-Residence), Cello Octet Amsterdam, the Lafayette String Quartet and others. His music has been recorded extensively.
Jay Cloidt
Jack Carpenter
Jack Carpenter designs lighting and scenery for Dance, Music, Theater, Museum Exhibits and Opera. His work can be seen with the Bishop Museum, Oakland Museum, Exploratorium, SF Ballet, SF Symphony, Kronos Quartet, Detroit Symphony, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Joe Goode Performance Group, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, ODC/SF, Project Bandaloop, Eureka Theatre. Notable productions for Mr.Carpenter include design and direction for Inspired By America for Cypress String Quartet, Kristallnacht, for Nancy Karp + Dancers, the world premiere of Angels In America, for the Eureka Theater Company, Harboring, and Bound(less), for Project Bandaloop, Beauty Queen of Leenane for Berkeley Repertory Theater, Traveling Light, and Rambler, for Joe Goode Performance Group, Concerto Romantique for San Francisco Ballet, and MLADA for SF Symphony. Mr. Carpenter was recently appointed lighting design lecturer at UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance,and Performance Studies, has received four Bay Area Critics Circle Awards, and five Isadora Duncan Awards.
Sandra Woodall
Sandra Woodall is a visual artist and scenic and costume designer. Ms. Woodall has contributed scenic and costume designs to San Francisco Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet, and the national ballet companies of Finland, Georgia and Norway, the State Opera Ballet of Austria, Dance Theatre of Harlem, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Project, and Singapore Dance Theatre as well as Nancy Karp + Dancers, on many occasions. She has received five Isadora Duncan awards in dance, and many Critics Circle awards in theatre. In 2015-16, Ms. Woodall contributed scenic and costume designs for the premiere season of Theatre Above in Shanghai, China, working with playwright and director Stan Lai. In 2019, she again worked with Mr. Lai in Berkeley and in Shanghai on the premiere of his six-hour production AGO. She has worked with many other choreographers, including Val Caniparoli, Jorma Elo, Trey McIntyre, Yuri Possokhov, Amy Seiwert, Michael Smuin, Helgi Tomasson, Della Davidson, Victoria Mordan, Adam Hoagland, Margaret Jenkins and Brenda Way, among others.
Chelsea Marie Hill, Company Manager and outreach program lead instructor
Chelsea holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Contemporary Dance from Michigan State University, and her Master’s of Arts in Dance Movement Therapy & Counseling from Columbia. She began studying yoga and personal training in 2013, to better understand the science and philosophy behind the human trinity – body, mind, and soul. Chelsea has lived in the Bay Area for 11 years, performing with Roxanne Gray, Cat Call Choir, Sarah Bush Dance Project, Stephanie Unger & Co., and Caroline Liviakis & Co. She has studied Aerial Dance with Bandaloop and Flyaway Productions, and produced a dance film featured in the Bliss Dance Film Festival. She assisted in managing Margaret Jenkin’s Dance Company’s 50th season, and is elated to be on the Nancy Karp + Dancers team.
Iyanno Ford, outreach program dance associate
Iyanno holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in Dance Performance from Central Washington University. She has been a dancer for her entire life and trained in a variety of styles including ballet, tap, jazz, modern, cheer, and hip hop. At Central Washington University she was a member of the Orchesis Dance Company, where she performed in both student and faculty pieces. During her time in Orchesis Dance Company, she choreographed two of her own pieces. Iyanno moved to the Bay Area in 2021, following her graduation. During her downtime she explores new dance styles and classes, and has continued to choreograph new phrases while working in biotech. She has since moved forward with passion for teaching the next generation of dancers.
Alexa Janezell, outreach program dance associate
Alexa has been dancing for 11 years, beginning her journey with a newly established hip-hop by the name of Talent Allstars. She was introduced to a variety of styles including Jazz, African, and Pom (cheer), all while being able to travel, to compete, and perform. After 5 years with Talent Allstars, she joined an organization called Project Level, a non-profit that encourages youth to pursue the arts. This work inspired Alexa to pursue dance as a career. She began taking classes, auditioning, and engaging in conventions throughout California. Alexa is a senior at Saint Mary’s College of California, studying JCL (Justice, Community, and Leadership) in order to earn her elementary teaching credential, as well as a Dance degree. She is expanding her movement language studying new styles such as modern, Ballet Folklorico, and West-African dance.
