Collaborators — Be a mover

Alex Tenreiro Theis

Originally from Colorado, Alex Tenreiro Theis earned her BFA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. As a freelance performer in New York City for ten years, she had the pleasure of working on projects with Yoshito Sakuraba, Jonah Bokaer, Pamela Pietro, Rohan Bhargava’s ROVACO, Eryc Taylor Dance, Angie Moon Dance Theatre, Netta Yerushalmy and Gregory Dolbashian to name several. She has had the opportunity to perform internationally at Mash International Choreography Festival (Israel), Masdanza International Contemporary Dance Festival (Spain), Avant Garde International Dance Festival (Mexico), ASWARA University Building Bridges Workshop (Malaysia) and the FIDCDMX Festival (Mexico). As rehearsal director and company member of Yoshito Sakuraba’s Abarukas, she led numerous workshops and artistic residencies surrounding the contemporary form at institutions such as Barnard College, Martha Graham School, MoveNYC Summer Intensive, Manhattanville College, and Fini Dance Festival among others.

Brandon Welch

Brandon Welch is a dancer, teaching artist and creator with a passion for utilizing movement as a catalyst for social change. He holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance with a semester on exchange at the Western Australian Academy of the Performing Arts. His performance career includes being a company member of Momix Dance Illusionists, Doug Varone and Dancers, Hannah Kahn Dance Company, Helanius J. Wilkins/SALT and Gibney Dance Company. During his time with Doug Varone, Brandon participated in Dance Motion USA’s cultural diplomacy program to South America and performed in Les Troyens at the Metropolitan Opera. Brandon has additionally performed works by Twyla Tharp, Zvi Gotheiner, Stephen Petronio, Hilary Easton, Reggie Wilson, Joanna Kotze and Ohad Naharin.

His performance career parallels a hunger to listen and bring people together through integrating dance, social action and spirituality. Beginning as an Artistic Associate of Gibney Dance, Brandon facilitated movement workshops for survivors of Intimate Partner Violence with guidance from Clinical Advisor Beth Silverman-Yamm. In 2018, his work in dance education expanded to include rehabilitative movement workshops in correctional facilities throughout Pennsylvania and Colorado. Moving Meditations, created in collaboration with Abby Corrigan, offered continuing education credits for incarcerated men through the Denver University's Prison Arts Initiative.

Brandon currently resides in Fort Collins, Colorado and is a dancer, co-conspirator and community engagement coordinator for The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geo-Political Quilt to Re-Body Belonging, created by Helanius J. Wilkins. He continues to teach contemporary dance forms and acrobatics across the globe including DOCH University (Stockholm), Mimar Sinan University (Istanbul), HIGHFest Masterclass (Yerevan), MuDa Africa (Dar Es Salaam) and Dance Ensemble Singapore. Recent creative commissions include the Lamont Opera Theatre, Ucross Artist Residency, Mariposa Collective and the Whitney Center for the Arts.

Breegan Kearney

Breegan Kearney is a Denver-based movement artist, choreographer, and dance educator whose work blends storytelling, humor, and musicality. Trained at Interlochen Arts Academy and SUNY Purchase, she performed professionally in New York City with artists such as Pam Tanowitz, Nelly van Bommel, and Nicole Wolcott. Since relocating to Denver, she has danced with Hannah Kahn Dance Company, T2 Dance Company, and Stacey Temple Dance. Breegan’s choreographic project, the breegan dance show :), showcases her playful, narrative-driven style through site-specific and experimental performances across the Denver/Boulder area.

Bridget Ryan

Bridget Ryan is a dancer and trauma-sensitive yoga instructor based in Boulder, CO. She holds a degree in Dance and International Studies from Denison University and has worked with choreographers including Molly Shanahan, Sandra Mathern-Smith, Michael J. Morris, Momar Ndiaye, and Julie Fox. Bridget is curious about dance as a practice of holding multiplicities, cultivating presence and connection (with the earth, space, others, self), and expanding possibility. She currently dances with Wild Heart Dance, and she finds daily joy in the way that her body experiences and responds to life.

Celia Grannum Perarnaud

Celia was born in Barbados and completed a B.F.A. in Dance at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She pursued a career as a freelance dancer, choreographer, actress and teacher in the Caribbean, U.S., United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland and The Netherlands. She has worked with the likes of Tony award winning choreographer Wayne Cilento and Rafael Bonachela, Artistic Director of Sydney Dance Company, and was a founding member of London’s renowned ‘Ballet Black’.

Along her dance journey, Celia has had the pleasure and honor of dancing for Antonia Franceschi, Irek Mukhamedov, Stephen Sheriff, Denzil Bailey, Sheron Wray, Union Dance Company and Kim Brandstrup in the U.K.; Sanne van der Put, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Jennifer Hannah in the Netherlands; Nishida Yukio in Japan; and Gus Solomons, Michael Mao and Monte/Brown Dance in the U.S..

Celia was the founder and director of, and choreographed for ‘The Movement Network’ in Amsterdam. Her choreography has also been commissioned for and performed at The Place Prize, Resolution!, the Bridewell Theater, National Youth Dance Wales and the HIP Dance Festival, in the U.K.; Biennale de Danse in Martinique; L’Artchipel en Danse in Guadeloupe; the Rode Loper festival, Open Ateliers Jordaan and Podium Mozaïek in the Netherlands; Boulder Arts Outdoors and The Mariposa Collective’s 30th Anniversary ‘Emergence’ performance in Boulder, Colorado.

As a film maker, Celia’s films have been selected for several festivals, including the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, Boulder Ballet Dance Film Festival and The Nederland International Film Festival, and have won awards of Best Choreography at Indiedance Film Festival, Best Short in Bridge Fest and Best Film at the Feedback Romance and Relationships Film Festival.

Celia’s dance career has been balanced by the study and practice of Thai Yoga Massage, regression therapy and Homeopathy and she brings her understanding of the physical and energy bodies and systems into the dance studio to inform her teaching and choreographic style. Celia was a recipient of the Boulder Ballet Dance Direct Space Residency program award for October - December 2024. She used this time to conduct educational research for the development of The Eternal Spiral, a holistic system fostering deep embodiment and connection and the establishment of new movement patterns for dancers and non-dancers alike.

Emmy Spaar

Originally from Finksburg, MD, Emmy Spaar grew up training at Studio Dans under the direction of Dana Keane and graduated from DeSales University in 2018. She has been honored to perform works by Antony Tudor, Doug Varone, Trinette Singleton, Colby Damon, and Er Dong Hu. She was also seen in the 2016 and 2017 seasons of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival in their productions of West Side Story and Evita. In New York City, she danced with the Chase Brock Experience, the Nathaniel Hunt Project, Neville Dance Theatre, and Alma Collective. Since moving to Denver in 2022, she performed with Hannah Kahn Dance Company and is currently a member of Animus Movement. Emmy is thrilled to present the Redirect with this open-hearted group of dancers!

Erin Robertson

Writers and Writer-in-Residence for Friends of Coal Creek. Her poetry has been published in the North American Review, Cold Mountain Review, Poet Lore, Deep Wild, and elsewhere, and has been performed by Ars Nova Singers and recorded by The Crossing choir. Past honors include being a guest artist hosted by the U.S. Consulate in Kazakhstan, Voices of the Wilderness Artist in Alaska, Boulder County Artist in Residence, and awards in the Michael Adams Poetry Prize and Columbine

Poets Members' Contest. She is the author of two books of poetry: What the River May Bring: Impressions of Interior Alaska, forthcoming from Raw Earth Ink, and Singed Seeds: A Marshall Fire Year, accepted for publication by Alternating Current Press. She lives in Louisville, and her remarkable husband, two sons, parakeet, and pup teach her about wonder every day. She thanks the dancers and choreographers for allowing her into the intimate space of their rehearsals. erinrobertson.org, @bocowildwriters

Esther van Zyl

Esther van Zyl is a South African-born actress, director, and educator with a background in devised performance and ensemble-based storytelling. Trained in theater arts at Stellenbosch University and later in film acting at the New York Film Academy, she has performed and created original works with ensemble companies in New York City and is the founder of DraMagic! Theater Group in Colorado, which creates educational, inspiring, community-centered theater with kids. www.dramagictheater.com

Eva Wilder

Eva Wilder is a movement educator and dancer interested in dance and the body as a lens for healing. After classical ballet training, she continued study at The School of Contemporary Dance in Oslo (Norway); SEAD (Austria); and earned a B.A. in World Arts and Cultures/Dance from UCLA. She has worked with Victoria Marks, Barak Marshall, site-specific Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre, Elia Mrak (USA) and Martín Piliponsky (ARG), and 3rd Law Dance Theater. Eva is on faculty at Boulder Ballet School and maintains a healing movement practice at GYROTONIC® Bodhi. Endless gratitude to the many who make the village.

MacKenzie Schuller

MacKenzie is a modern dancer based in Boulder, CO. Her dancing and teaching are infused with a sense of play, curiosity and wonder. MacKenzie’s embodied practice is shaped primarily by the study of release technique and contact improvisation. While her interests are constantly expanding, she is always playing with the foundational dynamics of effort and ease, finding fluidity in and out of the floor, and moving to the point of exhilaration. She is inspired to move with appreciation and the capacity to be influenced and changed, always available to the moment that creative energy is ready to take direction and form. As much as technique, MacKenzie's classes orient towards building a malleable relationship with the body, and listening for how the body wants to express and experience itself. Her life has shown her that presence with her body positions her as a conduit for deeper connections with her environment and everything that resides within it.

Mira Kaplan

Mira Kaplan began dancing in Vermont at a young age, drawn to the expressive power and freedom of movement. She continued her formal training at the Gelsey Kirkland Academy, and The Nutmeg Ballet Conservatory, later earning her BFA in Dance Performance from the Hartt School at the University of Hartford in 2021.

Now based in Colorado, Mira is expanding her passion for movement through teaching the GYROTONIC® Method alongside her ongoing work as a professional dancer. She has performed works by acclaimed choreographers including Ihsan Rustem, Andrea Miller, and Gabrielle Lamb, and her repertoire spans classical ballet, modern, and contemporary.

Montes’ Pirtle

Montes’ Pirtle has performed with many dance schools and companies including BC, Visceral Dance, Ballet Virginia, Lines Ballet, and DTH. He started his training at SSDA with Larry Brewer and went on to study at Ballet Chicago on full Scholarship. Shortly after he left to attend the Ailey School on full scholarship. Montes’ has worked with renowned choreographers such as Judith Jamison, Robert Battle, Robert Garland, Virginia Johnson, Ray Mercer, Gary Abbott, Kevin Iega Jeff, Lydia Roberts-Coco, Dwight Rhoden, Nick Pupillo, and Nadege Hottier. He has performed soloist/principal roles such as Arabian Prince, Blue Bird Variation, Ukrainian Babka Solo, Man I Love Pas De Deux and Liza Solo.

Óscar Trujillo

Óscar Trujillo is an embodiment practitioner with The Embodiment Institute whose practice bridges somatic education, the expressive arts, bodywork and intuitive energy reading. Óscar currently makes movement work in Kansas City and performs with Joe Goode Performance Group in San Francisco.

Rebecca Allen

Rebecca, a New York City native, is a graduate of LaGuardia H.S., and the Dance Conservatory at SUNY Purchase. She also studied in Perth, Australia at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, focusing on contemporary dance and aerial circus silks. Beck danced professionally in NYC for 8 years, and started her own dance company, Animus Movement in 2021. She relocated to Colorado in 2022 where she started a second company, as well as dancing for T2 Dance Company. She is super excited to be a part of The Redirect!

Samatha Fruhwirth

Samantha's artistic journey weaves together the precision of architectural design with the poetry of movement. Beginning her classical training at the age of seven in Pennsylvania, she performed principal roles with Repertory Dance Theater and later danced with American Repertory Ballet. She continued as a freelance dancer in NYC while earning her architecture degree from Columbia University, discovering that both disciplines share a deep understanding of how space and movement impact human wellbeing. Now based in Boulder, she channels this philosophy designing animal wellness spaces with Animal Arts and collaborating with Boulder Ballet on sets and costumes..@sfruhwirth @she.felt.studios