People

ELENA MARTINS

Elena Martins, from Boston, MA., received her early training at Donna Miceli Dance Center and The Academy of Ballet Arts and went on to graduate magna cum laude from SUNYBuffalo with a BA in dance and a minor in speech and hearing sciences. Elena has performed nationally and internationally with dance companies from both coasts of the US including Prometheus Dance (Boston), Lorraine Chapman The Company (Boston), LEVYdance (SF), Sarah Berges Dance (Oakland), Axis Dance Company (Oakland), RAWdance (SF), West Edge Opera (Oakland), Bellwether Dance Project (SF), and Robert Moses’ KIN (SF), among others. When not dancing, she has the privilege of teaching youth and adults at studios across the Bay Area including Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (Berkeley, CA), ODC School (San Francisco, CA), The East Bay Center for Performing Arts (Richmond, CA), and Piedmont Ballet Academy. Elena is excited for her first performances with Liss Fain Dance. elenamartins.com

BETHANY MITCHELL

Bethany Mitchell was raised in Mission Viejo, California, where she studied dance from the age of four at the Ballet Conservatory under the direction of Alan McCarter. She began her professional career in 2004 with regional ballet companies in California including Ballet Pacifica, State Street Ballet, and City Ballet of San Diego. After moving to San Francisco in 2007, Bethany performed and toured internationally with Liss Fain Dance while on faculty at ODC and Blue Bear School of Music. She moved to New York City in 2012 to further her career, and danced with Battery Dance and Indelible Dance while teaching at the Mark Morris Dance Center and Harlem School of the Arts. She has toured to over forty countries as a professional dancer, and taught masterclasses and creative workshops in over twenty countries as a teaching artist with Battery Dance. She recently completed a Fulbright Scholar Award creating a new piece of choreography on the B.F.A. students at the Escuela Profesional de Mazatlan in Mexico in May, 2022. She enjoys writing and performing her own music around the city, and is thrilled to be dancing with Liss Fain Dance once more.

KATHERINE NEUMANN

Katherine Neumann is a San Francisco-based dance artist. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Katherine received her early dance training at Danspace in Oakland, under the guidance of Beth Hoge. She holds a BFA in contemporary dance from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Katherine has worked with Robert Moses’ Kin, the Mari Meade Dance Collective, ka·nei·see | collective, and Stephanie Unger & Artists. She is currently a company member of both FACT/SF and Liss Fain Dance. In addition to her work as a dancer, Katherine is a certified classical Pilates instructor.

LIVANNA MARISSA

Livanna Marissa Maislen is an immersive dance-theatre performer (Sleep No More; Emursive Productions; Company SBB; Francesca Harper Project, Collective Attention SF) and yoga-movement instructor with roots in New York and the Northwest. She was Dancer and Rehearsal Assistant for Nick Cave's Bessie-Award Winning show “The Let Go”, Nona Hendryx & Carrie Mae Weem's "Refrigerated Dreams" and Austria’s Bregenzer Fruehling’s Tanzfestival. Maislen has performed internationally and has worked with Nicole von Arx, Yin Yue, Karole Armitage, the San Francisco Opera, the Seattle Opera and . She is currently finishing a Master's Degree in Somatic Psychotherapy at CIIS where she is in Practicum at The Center of Somatic Psychotherapy in San Francisco. In tandem, Maislen is developing a sensate-focused practice interweaving her knowledge of movement, mindfulness, meaning-making, and sound and has taught her workshops in San Francisco, Seattle, New York and abroad.

ISABEL ROSENSTOCK

Isabel, a native San Franciscan, is a dancer and Pilates instructor.  She holds a BFA in Dance from California State University, Long Beach and received further training under Summer Lee Rhatigan at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. She has freelanced with various companies in the Bay Area and has worked with Liss Fain Dance since 2022.  In addition to her work as a dancer, she owns a small Pilates studio where she works closely with clients reconnect to and heal their moving bodies.

MATTHEW ANTAKY, INSTALLATION & LIGHTING DESIGN

While pursuing a degree in the fine arts in Southern California, Mr. Antaky turned his interests to the performing arts and in 1983 moved to San Francisco to study visual and theatrical design at San Francisco State University. Since then, and for over thirty years, he has created installations, scenic, lighting and video designs for all of the performing arts including theater, opera, dance, and music. His work has been presented throughout the United States and in many countries around the world.

His extensive work in the dance world includes twenty years of designs and installations for Liss Fain Dance and many designs for companies such as ODC/SF, Flyaway Productions, Oklahoma City Ballet, Smuin Ballet, Robert Moses Kin, SjDanceCo, La Tania Flamenco, Lily Cai Dance, Chitresh Das Dance Company, Li Chaio Ping Dance, Mark Foehringer Dance Project, Caminos Flamenco and RAWdance, among many others. For opera and music, Mr. Antaky has designed multiple productions for Opera Parallèle, Utah Opera and Symphony, Opera San Jose, Opera Pacific, Festival Opera, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Oakland Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Cabrillo Music Festival, and the San Francisco World Music Festival, to mention a few. Mr. Antaky is a nine-time nominee and four-time recipient of the Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Visual Design. Please visit matthewantakydesign.com for more information.

DAN WOOL, COMPOSER

Originally from St. Louis Missouri, Dan Wool is a San Francisco, California, based composer and sound designer who has worked in New York, Los Angeles, London, Mexico City and Anhui China creating scores and sound design for broadcast television projects, multichannel-audio theme park installations and more than 35 feature films, including seven films for celebrated cult filmmaker Alex Cox (director of Repo Man, Sid & Nancy). He is perhaps best known as the principal composer in the soundtrack-group Pray for Rain. Dan has also worked extensively creating sound and music for international and domestic advertising and sound branding and also as sound-designer for short films and documentaries, including several for the BBC and Channel 4 (UK). As a music producer, and engineer, Dan has collaborated with international artists such as Bernie Worrell (Parliament-Funkadelic), Philip Chevron and James Fearnley (The Pogues); Debra Harry (Blondie); and many Bay-Area artists, including All My Pretty Ones, Meredith Axelrod, essence, The Glowing Stars, Indianna Hale, Joe Lewis, The Mermen and Kally Price.

In the Arts, Dan has created scores and sound-design compositions for The Architecture and Design Museum (A+D Museum), Los Angeles, Amy Seiwert’s Imagery Dance (Sketch Series),  AXIS Dance Company,  Liss Fain Dance, RAWdance, choreographer Sonsherée Giles, choreographer Alice Sheppard and Ballet de la Compasión. In 2018 his music and sound design work for Phil Tippett and Lucy Raven’s experimental film OUT THERE screened at MoMA (NYC). He has also worked as a sound engineer and sound-designer on dance-compositions with composer Beth Custer (Joe Goode, Jo Kreiter), composer Rob Reich (Circus Bella, Gaucho, Tin Hat). Dan has performed in composer Jem Finer’s “Longplayer” installation, sponsored by the Longnow Foundation at YBCA. For the years 2015 thru 2018 Dan was engaged by the U.S. Olympic Synchronized Swimming Team for ongoing composition and musical services.

Dan has twice been nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award (Izzie Award) for Outstanding Achievement in Music/Sound/Text, in 2017 for his work with Liss Fain Dance and in 2013 for his work with AXIS Dance Company.

FRÉDÉRIC O. BOULAY, PROJECTION DESIGNER

Frédéric O. Boulay has worked with Liss Fain Dance since 2002, but this is his second collaboration as Projection Designer after The Water Is Clear And Still. His design work is at the intersection of art, technology, and innovation. Frédéric loves challenges and pushing the boundaries of what can be done on stage using new technology. He has worked with companies such as Opera Parallele, Rork Music, West Bay Opera, TEDx, and Youth America Grand Prix, to name a few; his designs have been seen throughout San Francisco, the Bay Area, and New York. Upcoming engagements as Projection Designer include the 15th anniversary remount of Dead Man Walking with Opera Parallele in February 2015.  Frédéric is a native of France; he is a member of United Scenic Artist Local 829 and holds both a Masters of Arts in Theatre Design & Production and an Executive MBA. Frédéric is the owner and founder of Oaktown Productions, which has provided design services and production management for performing arts organizations since 2005.

FLORENTINA MOCANU

Florentina Mocanu-Schendel — SAG-AFTRA — began her career by writing, directing, performing for theatre and radio shows. By 18, she earned awards as best actress, entered the People’s School of Art in Bucharest and the University of Theater Arts in Targu Mures graduating with a Diploma in Acting for theatre and film. In her native Romania, she became part of the National Theatre, Comedy Theatre of Bucharest, and Romanian Film Studio ensembles. In the United States she continued her work in theatre and film while completing her education with an MA in Drama from San Francisco State University and a PhD in Theater and Performing Studies from Stanford University.  Presently she teaches Classical Dramatic Literature at University of San Francisco, and freelances as an actor, director, and writer.

Special Note: Florentina would like to thank David Schendel and Davia Mira Schendel for the constant love and support, Diane Frank and Liss Fain for this marvelous project.