I dance and make dances in an attempt to make sense of the world around me. I am a full-time faculty member at UCSD, in the Department of Theatre and Dance, where the courses I guide question what dance is and can be. I was a company member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, The Lyon Opera Ballet, and McCaleb Dance, directed by Nancy McCaleb . As a Feldenkrais Method practitioner, I have come to understand how to move using only as much effort as needed, moment to moment. As a dancemaker, I am a collaborator. I’ve made dances with Anya Cloud, Karen Schaffman, Liam Clancy, Leslie Seiters and my most frequent collaborator and dance partner Jess Humphrey.

Chloë Freeman is a dancer, musician, and teacher. Unschooled her entire life until attending college, she developed a passion for intuitive learning and alternative education, and she explores these interests in her teaching and dance making. Formal instruction during childhood was exclusively in music (classical piano) which she began training in at the age of eight and teaching at the age of fourteen. Ten years later, Chloë now runs her own business teaching piano. In 2015, Chloe received her BFA in Dance from San Diego State University. She was recognized as Outstanding Graduate in Dance in 2015 and a Dance Alumni to Watch in 2017. Chloe is part of LIVE, a group of dance artists in San Diego devoted to spontaneous dance making. This is Chloë’s first semester as a lecturer in Dance at SDSU.

Nhu Nguyen began her professional dance career at the age of eight in her hometown, Vietnam. For over seven years, she worked with Hochiminh city’s Ballet Symphony and Orchestra (Vietnam) while pursuing her education at Vietnam’s National School of Dance and Choreography. Since her migration to the United States in 2012, she had joined transcenDANCE Youth Art Project as a youth performer before she became their teaching artist and choreographer. In 2017, Nguyen was named the Outstanding Graduate of San Diego State University’s Dance Division and received her BFA in Dance and minor in Visual Art. She has since co-produced Make It, a process of dancemaking and peer discussion with alumni of SDSU Dance Division and other regional artists. Nguyen is a teaching artist for several creative youth art organizations in San Diego including transcenDANCE Youth Art Project and A Step Beyond, and is a teaching artist in residence at Hoover High and a member of San Diego Dance Connect Steering Committee. One of Nguyen’s ongoing interest is create unique works that stem from her on-going practice of exploring and exposing the human instincts through Contact Improvisation and live problem solving.

Dimitris Paganos Koukakis was born in Athens, Greece and took his first private piano lessons and Greek traditional dance lessons at the age of seven. He holds a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from the Ionian University, Department of Music Studies and a Master of Music in Music Performance (Piano) from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. He is currently a DMA candidate in Contemporary Music Performance at the University of California in San Diego. He is a teaching assistant, piano instructor and active performer working for music and dance productions in Greece and the USA.