Summer Faculty
Class Description: Fast-paced and educational, this Contemporary dance technique class will challenge participants to engage body, mind, and spirit, learn movement phrases, push beyond “technique,” and to explore their own individual performance choices throughout. Focusing on breath, alignment, rhythm and articulation, this contemporary movement experience will incorporate many influences including Africanist movement technologies, postmodern aesthetics, and modern & contemporary dance techniques with a distinct emphasis on the foundational Katherine Dunham technique.
Bernard Brown is an award-winning performer, choreographer, filmmaker, curator, arts activist, and educator who situates their work at the intersection of Blackness, Queerness, and belonging. With an extensive performing career, Bernard now serves as Director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves, choreographing for stage, specific sites, film, and opera presented globally including invitations, residencies and commissions from The Getty, On The Boards, REDCAT, Dance Camera West, American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers, Oscar-qualifying African Diaspora Cinema Festival, Seoul International Dance Festival, The Music Center, Dance Italia, Royce Hall and US Embassy sponsored tour to Burkina Faso, West Africa. His concert dance performance credits include Lula Washington Dance Theatre, David Rousseve/REALITY, Doug Elkins Dance Company, Jazz Antiqua Dance and Music Ensemble, and founding member of TU Dance. Other stage credits include Robert Wilson’s “Letter to a Man” with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Los Angeles Opera’s “Aida,” Penumbra Theater’s “Black Nativity,” Donald Byrd’s “Harlem Nutcracker,” “Treemonisha” for Skylark Opera (choreographer and performer), the titular role in Nike’s “12 Miles North: The Nick Gabaldon Story,” and the Kennedy Center’s Masters of African American Choreography, as répétiteur and performer. He has worked in films directed by Chris Emile, Janessa Clarke, and Tim Allen. He is a core member of Street Dance Activism and an ongoing collaborator with Dancing Through Prison Walls, an abolitionist project. His curatorial work has been seen at the California African American Museum, Highways Performance Space, Pieter Performance Space, and on the streets of the historic Leimert Park Village through collaborative work with LA Commons and Pacific Standard Time, a Getty Foundation initiative. Brown has conducted workshops, lectures, presentations, and master classes internationally, namely in Korea, Israel, Burkina Faso, Panama, Malta, Canada, and Brazil, and across the US, sharing his inclusive pedagogy. A first-generation college graduate, Brown earned his MFA from UCLA and BFA from Purchase College. He is an Associate Professor at UC San Diego, a Certified Katherine Dunham Technique Instructor, and was named a Cultural Trailblazer by the City of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times has called him “…the incomparable Bernard Brown…”
Photo Credit: Eric Politzer
Class description: What if how we’re moving is what we’re making? Can we organize, reorganize, and disorganize ourselves in order to arrive in our dancing, our dances? In this class we’ll wildly move through space, mess with time, destabilize our habitual patterns, and make room for risk taking and aliveness. Let’s practice generosity, care, and tenderness together.
Eric Geiger: I dance and make dances in an attempt to make sense of the world around me. Early on, I received a full merit scholarship to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. I was a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company where I also taught and served as choreographic assistant to Bill. As a member of The Lyon Opera Ballet, I performed in works by William Forsythe, Stephen Petronio, Susan Marshall, Maguy Marin, and Angelin Preljocaj. I recently left my faculty position of 14 years at UCSD. Contact Improvisation, Trisha Brown-like qualities, and performing Deborah Hay’s choreography through questioning has transformed and expanded my movement capacities. I am also a certified Feldenkrais Method practitioner. As a dancemaker I am a collaborator. I’ve made dances with Anya Cloud, Karen Schaffman, Liam Clancy, Leslie Seiters, and Jess Humphrey. I live in San Diego. Queerness guides me. Photo: Erin O’Reily
Technique: Concert Contemporary & Floorwork is a teaching practice blending all of Chelsea's loves from her hip hop & concert contemporary training. Class focuses on layering effort, sensation, musicality & performance practice. Movement Vocabulary is built through across the floor grooves, momentum based floorwork & phrase work. Process: Let's sweat & jam out! Dive into Chelsea & Kaia's, "Remain" choreographers, creative process! Building a world using theatrical practices, partnering & exploring how two contradicting ideas can exist at the same time; whether that’s inhabited in a physical, emotional, or conceptual sense.
Chelsea Roquero (she/her) & Kaia Makihara (He/Him) are dance artists & choreographers based in Los Angeles, CA. Their joint artistic journey began during undergrad at California State University, Long Beach. Drawn together through similar movement backgrounds rooted in athleticism (k - breaking & c - gymnastics), hip-hop, contemporary & floorwork. Those commonalities have brought them opportunities to work in close proximity in one another’s works & for other choreographers.
Roquero & Makihara are partners in & outside of the studio creating works that dive into emotional human experiences and character-driven story telling. Throughout the years, they have been delving into concepts of dance theatre & developing a highly rigorous and specific movement vocabulary. In 2025, they debuted their choreographic partnership creating for LANG Los Angeles & LITVAKDance.
Class Description: Ashley’s conditioning and technique class will take you through a gentle warm-up and stretch, progressive technique exercises that lead into movement exploration, floor work, and across-the-space combinations. The class focuses on developing strength, balance, coordination, and movement quality.
Ashley Akhavan has been performing with LITVAKdance since its inception in 2017, after studying dance at MiraCosta College and San Diego State University. With LITVAKdance, Ashley has toured in the United States, choreographed, taught in workshops and master classes and worked with over a dozen guest choreographers. Her personal style has been deeply influenced by the artists she has worked with while a dancer for LITVAKdance. Outside of dance, she teaches fitness classes and is completing an internship in healthcare QI. Ashley is also the Artistic Director of Bella Lux Entertainment based in Encinitas, CA
Photo Credit: Ryan Orion Beck