Green Street Studios is home to some of Boston’s most engaging and experienced movement artists and teachers. Our founding and long time artistic residents engage students on many levels, offering work in classical and innovative movement approaches to contemporary dance.
Katie Dealy (Parent-Child Dance & Creative Dance)
Sarah Mae Gibbons (Introduction to Modern)
Najmat (Middle Eastern Dance/Belly Dance)
Nicole Pierce (Int/Adv Modern)
Marcus Schulkind (Int/Adv Ballet, Int/Adv Modern, & Back to the Marley)
Liz Roncka (Movement Improvisation)
Andy Taylor-Blenis (Int. Modern Jazz)
Jody Weber (Adv. Beginning Modern & Int/Adv Modern)
Helena Chang
Paa Seck
Tarikh Campbell (Hip Hop)
Tarikh Campbell was born in New York City and raised in Teaneck, NJ. Tarikh began dancing in his freshman year at MIT where he joined the school’s Dance Troupe. Throughout his college years, Tarikh focused on hip hop, jazz, and contemporary training with fellow MIT students. Only a year into his dance life, Tarikh decided to branch out from MIT and check out dance groups in the Greater Boston area, where he was introduced to teams like The Rainbow Tribe Dance Company and B Side. With time, Tarikh felt confident enough to audition for Boston’s competitive hip hop scene and joined MIT’s Ridonkulous, which he later captained for a year. Toward the end of his college days, Tarikh and a few male hip hop dancers came together and formed Side Project, a crew that takes performance as seriously as a professional company but runs like a group of friends. After graduating from MIT, Tarikh went on to join Static Noyze, which took 1st place at Fusion’s Elements X, 3rd at Best of the East 2010, and 2nd at The Main Event: Round 2. Tarikh’s most recent project is PROject Nailz, a small hip hop crew consisting of female dancers, led by Tarikh and his long-time friend/first mentor, Adlai Grayson. At the moment, Tarikh dances with SidePro, Static, PRONailz, MIT Dance Troupe and teaches classes at the Jeanette Neil Dance Studio, The Dance Academy Of Siagel Productions, and Green Street Studios.
Katie Dealy (Creative Dance)
Katie Dealy has taught dance and creative movement to children in the Boston/Cambridge area for many years. She holds a Masters in Education from Simmons College and a Masters in Dance Education from George Washington University. In addition to teaching for CPP, Katie also teaches at the Cambridge Performance Project and several pre-schools. Katie likes to use props and create story dances in her energetic and imaginative classes.
Sarah Mae Gibbons (Intro to Modern)
Sarah Mae Gibbons, originally from Athens, Ohio, earned her BFA in dance and minored in education at The Ohio State University. While there, she performed in works by numerous faculty members including; Bebe Miller, Ming Lung Yang and Victoria Uris as well as independent works by Annie Kloppenberg, Shawn Hove and Foreground Dance. Sarah Mae’s aesthetic and interests lie in reinvesting attention to the practice of improvisation as a performance form, dance as a means of education and discovering links between choreography and research. Sarah Mae currently dances for Annie Kloppenberg, Deadfall Dance, Zoe Dance, Quicksilver Dance and other independent choreographers as well as teaching at the “Dance Place” , “Green Street Studios” and for the “Cambridge Performance Project” as well as coordinating other youth dance programming. In addition, Sarah Mae’s choreography has been shown and received recognition through the Green Street Emerging Artist Program, Boston Raw Artists as well the Ohio Christian Dance Assembly. She is one of the founding members of P.I.E. (Performance Improvisation Ensemble) a touring compositional improvisation community. Certified in Vinyasa Yoga and studying Massage Therapy at the Cortiva Institute of Massage.
Matei Livianu (Salsa)
Matei started dancing ballroom in 2000 in Los Angeles with the Clarement Colleges Ballroom Dance Company. Competing in International Latin events around the country, he and his partner won the Collegiate Open Paso Doble Championship, and with the tour team, the Collegiate Formation Team Championship in 2003. Inspired by the salsa scene, he spent many evenings learning and dancing in the Los Angeles area clubs. Since 2004, he has been teaching salsa, cha-cha, bachata, and merengue, starting in Los Angeles, then Atlanta, and now Boston. In 2006, he co-founded the Salsa Club at Georgia Tech and, together with a stellar group of dedicated volunteers, built a thriving campus organization, complete with weekly classes, salsa socials with live music, and a performance group, for which he helped choreograph a 6-couple salsa routine. Over the years, he has taught many new dancers not only dance steps, but to move with rhythm and style that grabs attention on the dance floor. Matei’s genuine interest in the improvement of his students’ skills has contributed greatly the evolution of his own skills as a dancer, performer, and teacher. For more information visit www.salsamatei.com
Marta Moussa (Hawaiian)
Marta Moussa has over 30 years of experience in ethnic dance as a performer, teacher, and choreographer. She co-founded and directed the International Academy of Ethnic Dance (the only dance studio in New England to offer Hula and Tahitian dance) and was co-artistic director of Anjali Ethnic Dance Company. In 1985, Marta founded Polynesian Dance Arts. She continues to direct the professional performance group and teach PDA’s Polynesian dance classes. Marta first studied hula with ethnic dance great, La Meri. Marta subsequently studied hula with the late Kumu Hula Rose Kapulani Joshua and her daughter Lorraine of Honolulu, Hawai’i. Marta continues her study of hula with Kumu Hula Keith Awai. Marta was a guest performer for Ethnic Dance Arts under the direction of La Meri. Marta has performed with Polynesian Dance Arts, Ethnic Dance Arts, and Anjali Ethnic Dance Co. to name just a few. Marta was a dance major at Boston Conservatory of Music and a Theater Education major at Emerson College.
Najmat (Middle Eastern/Belly Dance)
Najmat is a Brazilian-born, Boston-based dancer. She is widely known for her strong and compelling performances and expert drum solos. As a teacher, Najmat sees the therapeutic side of middle eastern dance — it is a healing dance designed to awaken the feminine spirit and unleash women’s sensuality and inner power.
Peter Petrov (Balkan Dance)
Peter received his Master’s Degree in Movement and Dance from The Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts, Plovdiv, Bulgaria and his massage certification from The Muscular Therapy Institute/Cortiva Institute, Boston MA. As a professional dancer throughout high school and college, Peter became interested in injury prevention and alternative medicine after suffering two serious leg and hip injuries.
Peter’s fitness and muscular therapy experience includes 5 years with WAVE Health & Fitness, where he worked as an assistant manager, massage therapist, and personal trainer. He implemented exercise programs for his clients and taught various fitness classes such as Total Body Conditioning, Full Body Stretch, Spinning, Yoga and Body Pump. In his 5 years as a chiropractic assistant, Peter developed stretching and strengthening programs for patients with acute and chronic pain issues. In his spare time Peter teaches dance and directs his own dance company.
Nicole Pierce (Int/Adv Modern)
Nicole Pierce is the Artistic Director of EgoArt, Inc. which she founded in 1999 to pursue self-discovery, universal truth and cultural paradoxes through dance, theater, music and multimedia. She serves on the dance faculty at Emerson College and Green Street Studios where she also served as the Co-Executive Director from 2000 to 2005. Pierce teaches music with her own private practice in the Boston area. She has taught master classes in dance technique at Harvard University, Tufts University, Emerson College, Salem State College and the Chelmsford Academy of Ballet Arts. Pierce has danced locally for Marcus Schulkind, Caitlin Corbett and Jody Weber among others.
Marcus Schulkind (Int/Adv Ballet & Int/Adv Modern)
Marcus Schulkind is a founding director of Green Street Studios and has been dancing, teaching, and performing for over thirty-three years. Originally trained in Graham Technique and Graham based variants (Norman Walker, May O’Donnell, Pearl Lang), he went on to study ballet with Antony Tudor and Maggie Black at Julliard, bodywork with Zena Rommett (for whom he taught in New York), and Pilates Technique with Kathy Grant. He has performed nationally and internationally with many major modern dance companies including Lar Lubovitch, Kathy Posin, and Batsheva Dance Company of Isreal. He has taught in the United States, Europe, Canada, and the Middle East. Mr. Schulkind is a nationally recognized dancer, teacher, and choreographer, having received grants from the N.E.A., N.Y.S.C.A., Affiliate Artists Inc., Bank Boston Celebrity Series, and First Night. He has choreographed for Dennis Wayne’s Company, Princeton Ballet, David Brown, Elisa Monte, 5 by 2 Plus, People Dancing, Pick of the Crop, Little Feet, Peanut Butter and Jelly Dance Company, and in Canada for Dance Partout and the National Ballet of Egypt. Since seriously injuring his knee twelve years ago, he has been integrating physical therapies and his five year training of Pilates into his floor barre, modern, and ballet technique classes. Marcus is also a practicing acupuncturist.
Rebecca Rice (Int/Adv Modern)
Rebecca Rice is an award winning choreographer and respected teacher in the Boston community. She taught modern dance and creative process at the Boston Ballet for almost 20 years and created numerous works on BBII as well as organized Boston Ballet’s first choreography workshops, “Studio 7 @ Boston Ballet.”. She developed modern and choreography programs at MIT, Winsor and the Dana Hall School and was artist-in-residence at Green Street Studios during the summer of 2007. Her company, Rebecca Rice Dance, has been presented in MA by various organizations including Boston Ballet, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Bank of America Celebrity Series, The Boston Pops, World Music and CMAC and made its New York City debut in 2006. Rebecca graduated with honors in modern dance performance from the University of Utah where she studied and worked with Bill Evans, Ron Ruby, Ririe-Woodbury and the Utah Repertory Dance Theatre. In New York City she worked with Viola Farber as well as studied at the Limon and Ailey Schools.She was a graduate teaching fellow at the University of Pittsburgh where she was a founding member of the Pittsburgh Dance Alloy Company where she performed and choreographed for six years. She performed with various artists and companies throughout the United States including Pittsburgh Dance Alloy, Gerri Houlihan, Stephen Pelton, Bill Evans and Marianne Goldberg as well as participated in choreography workshops at Jacob’s Pillow with Bessie Schonberg. Coming from a small town in Massachusetts, she grew up studying and performing the work of Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis with her grandmother, Marion Rice. rebeccaricedance.com. For more information on classes with Rebecca Rice, please contact riceflan@gmail.com.
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Liz Roncka (Movement Improvisation)
Liz Roncka is an avid practitioner and teacher of movement improvisation and contemporary dance. She has taught improvisation locally at Green Street Studios, Boston College, Bridgewater State College as well as in Paris at CANAL DANSE. Ms. Roncka is the director of lizroncka/Real-Time Performance Project, a founding member of the international improvisational collaborative Sounds and Signs, a collaborating artist with Emma Jupe, a Paris-based improvisation collective and a Mobius Artists Group member. Her work has been presented in Boston, NYC, San Francisco, Budapest and Paris. Liz has studied improvisation with Chris Aiken, Andrew Harwood, Julyen Hamilton, Jennifer Monson, Kirstie Simson, and Debra Bluth among others. Liz has had the pleasure of performing modern dance and improvisational work under the direction of: Ramelle Adams, Emily Beattie, Ruth Benson-Levin, Debra Bluth, Alissa Cardone, Sean Curran, Sara June, Andrew Harwood, Michael Jahoda/White Box Project, Dawn Kramer, Light Motion, Karen Murphy-Fitch and Micki Taylor-Pinney. Ms. Roncka was a company member of the Dance Collective of Boston from 1998-2005 and the Falling Flight Project from 2007-2009. Liz is also a licensed physical therapist and the owner of Axis Pilates, LLC in Brookline.
Andy Taylor-Blenis (Int. Modern Jazz)
Andy started dancing with her parents in International Folk Dance at age 0. Her early Creative Movement experiences were with Ruth Wheeler, co-founder of Dance Collective, and with Ann Brown-Allen. After receiving her BFA in Dance from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, she came to Boston and danced with Danny Sloane Dance, Paradigm Dance, Concert Dance Company, Dance Collective, Micki Taylor-Pinney, Dawn Kramer, Miguel Lopez, Milton Myers, Julie Ince-Thompson, ACE Entertainment, and has been with Prometheus Dance Company for 19 years.
She has taught International Dance through the Folk Arts Center of New England, Modern and Jazz Dance at Northwestern and Northeastern Universities, Harvard, Emerson, Boston University, Boston Conservatory and the Jeannette Neill Dance Studio. Andy is the artistic director of Mladost Dance Ensamble and the RSCDS Demonstration Team and loves teaching school residencies thru Mass Movement and Revels Inc. Andy is an adoring admirer of Lynn Simonson. Dance is a musical, satisfying, overwhelming, strengthening, challenging, freeing discipline that applies to and enhances each day of our lives. Enjoy!
Dean Vollick (Int/Adv Ballet)
Dean Vollick began his ballet training at the late age of twenty, already a college student in Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. It became obvious that with good professional training, he could make up for lost time. A move to Toronto led him to many fine Canadian teachers including Lois Smith, Glen Gilmour, Luc Amyot, and Mavis Staines, the Artistic Director of Canada’s National Ballet School. He also had the good fortune to be under the tutelage of Laura Alonso (daughter of Alicia Alonso) for 3 summers at the Banff School of Fine Arts. His career as a classical dancer spanned several years and included work with Ontario Ballet Theatre, Ballet Omaha, and Ballet Florida. Though he loved the classics, he found that contemporary dance was his forte, and decided to pursue studies in modern dance. He acquired a thorough training in Graham based technique while working with Toronto Dance Theatre. It was there that he also began to explore his desire to choreograph, and has created works for various venues from liturgical celebrations, to sales demonstrations for the Swarovski Crystal Company. As a company dancer and freelance artist Mr. Vollick danced across Canada and many parts of the US and Europe.
A desire to teach led him back to the National Ballet School where he completed the two- year teacher-training course for professional dancers, and graduated valedictorian of his class in June of 2001. That summer he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Ballet and continues to be an instructor at their Summer School of Excellence, held at SUNY College in Purchase New York. He spent four years as a full time teacher at Boston Ballet and was Principal of Boston Ballet’s ground breaking Citydance outreach program for three of those years. Currently Mr. Vollick is working as a freelance teacher and choreographer in the Boston Area, and is on the faculty of Ballet Arts Worcester, Walnut Hill Academy, and Boston Conservatory. He is a certified Gryrotonic® instructor, and is enjoying working as a trainer with dancers and non-dancers alike. Dean has also trained with Paul Horvath in theraputic applications with Gyrotonic®.
Jody Weber (Adv. Beginning Modern & Int/Adv Modern)
Dr. Jody Weber received a BFA from SUNY Purchase in 1988, an M.A. from American University in 1992, and a Ph.D. in dance history from Boston University in 2005. Her choreography has been presented through numerous local outlets as well as venues in New York City, Maine, Washington D.C., Central Florida and Alaska. In the 2001, 2005, and 2009 seasons, DR. Weber received an Artist Fellowship Grant from the Somerville Arts Council to support her choreography. She has also been the recipient of a choreographic fellowship for a two residencies at the Workspace for Choreographers in Virginia. From 2000-2005, she worked as Co-Executive Director of Green Street Studios Center for Movement and Dance where she continues to teach technique classes. Dr. Weber has worked as part time faculty at Stonehill College, Bates College, Emerson College, Salem State College and The College of the Holy Cross. Currently, she is Associate Professor of Dance at Bridgewater State College. Dr. Weber’s historical research has been presented through the Dance History Scholars Conference held at the New York Public Library in 1993 and through the Hall of Black Achievement at Bridgewater State College in 1999. Her first book, The Evolution of Aesthetic and Expressive Dance in Boston, was published in 2009 by Cambria Press.
Helena Chang (Pilates Mat Class)
Helena Chang is known for clear, effective, upbeat pilates instruction based on anatomy-
specific cues. She was certified by Stott pilates in 2008 and is a longtime MA-licensed
massage therapist, practicing neuromuscular massage therapy since 1993. Her clientele
ranges from internationally-ranked athletes to severely de-conditioned individuals. In a
previous life decades ago, she was a committed modern dancer/performance artist.
Paa Seck (West African Class)
Yeumougor “Paa” Seck Diery is a dancer from Kaolack, Senegal. He teaches the dances and rhythms called Sabar, the popular dance of Senegal, West Africa. Paa grew up in a griot family and began learning dancing and drumming at age 3 with his father. He has toured and performed in Europe, Japan, United States, and many countries in Africa. His classes start with a thorough warm up, followed by choreography that is broken down section by section, focusing on technique, execution and comprehension of the Sabar rhythms. The class then follows the African Dance Class format of dancing with live drummers. Paa’s style of teaching is clear, clean and precise, filled with the warmth, enthusiasm and the unique stylistic qualities that are found in the traditional and contemporary styles of Sabar. His expertise as a drummer, musician and dance performer make the classes a fun and thorough learning experience. All levels of students are welcome.