Visual Art

Barthelemy Atsin is from Philadelphia and currently lives in Harlem. He graduated from Marymount Manhattan College and continued his studies at the School of Visual Arts. Since he was a child, he was always fascinated by many artists. Some of his favorites are Paul Cezzane, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat. He felt that these and many others were not only amazing painters but also great storytellers who channeled their emotions into every ounce of their work. This is what he hopes to accomplish when teaching, and in his own creative practices.

Visual Art

Vincent Ballentine is a multi-disciplined visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. With a degree in film and education from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and continued study in film at Cleveland Institute of Art, Vincent’s media range from digital illustration and animation, to large-scale murals and street art. As an independent contractor, Vincent has worked with organizations including Groundswell, Progressive Arts Alliance, and Creative Art Works—through which he has created work for Whole Foods, the NYC Housing Authority, a myriad of schools throughout the five boroughs, and at Rikers Island. As a freelance artist, Vincent has traveled internationally and been commissioned to create work for the likes of the NCAA, MTV, BET, and festivals such as Wall Therapy, O-positive, and Meeting of Styles in Germany. Vincent earned an Emmy for his performance in MLB Network’s Fall Colors, where a time-lapse recording of himself painting creates the backdrop for post animations. Vincent’s work never stops evolving, as demonstrated by his 2020 US State Department residency in Ethiopia as an ambassador for hip hop. His company, Matlock Studios, has built relationships with local business-developing organizations, and the NYC Departments of Education and Transportation. Thriving through personal and artistic growth, Vincent aims to contribute his brand of style and vision to the art community through mentorship and youth guidance.

Music

Alicia Bennett has lived in New York since 2001 and is active as a clarinetist and private music teacher in the New York area. In addition to a private studio, Alicia teaches at the 92nd Street Y and the Music Academy of Long Island; she has also taught for Stony Brook University's Pre-College Music Program and Suffolk Community College; in summers she contributes her teaching skills to the Hummingbird Music Camp in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. Alicia plays with New York City-based orchestra Camerata Notturna and the clarinet quartet Utopia Winds. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of New Mexico, and her M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in clarinet performance from Stony Brook University. Past notable engagements include an Artist Residency at the Banff Center for Performing Arts; Bang-On-A-Can's 20th Anniversary Concert; and a Merkin Hall performance with the Contemporary Chamber Players of Stony Brook.

Musical Theater

Stephanie Bishop has a BFA in Musical Theatre from SUNY Fredonia, graduating Cum Laude. Steph has been teaching dance and movement for over 30 years, including jazz, tap, ballet, theatre dance barre, and Pilates. She performed internationally with 42nd Street and On the Town. Her Equity theatre roles include A Chorus Line, The Will Rogers Follies, Disney, and Company. Stephanie is the owner of Well-Balanced Pilates on the UES and continues to perform with the Rockette Alumnae Dancers, Legacy36 Dancers, and at Theatre Zone an Equity theatre in Naples, Florida.

Dance

Dawn DiPasquale is a choreographer, performer and dance educator. She holds a Master of Arts in Dance Education from NYU and is a former Assistant Professor of Dance at Wichita State University, where she served on the faculty of both the Dance and Musical Theatre/Opera programs. As a choreographer for Musical Theatre, she has worked with composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz on productions of Children of Eden at Paper Mill Playhouse and North Shore Music Theatre, as well as a revival of Working at the Long Wharf Theatre. Other venues include Santa Barbara CLO, Folly Theatre of Kansas City, Music Theatre of Wichita, Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, and the College of Charleston, University of Michigan and Music Theatre West. As a dancer she has worked with choreographers Carl Paris, Douglas Dunn, Trish Doherty, Deborah Damast and Elissaveta Iordanova, with performances at DTW, PS 122, Circum-Arts, Riverside Church, Gowanus, Green Space, Manhattan Movement and Arts Center, NYC Fringe Festival and at the Strada Facendo in Pisa, Italy. She is a grant recipient from The Koch Cultural Trust and is a member of The Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.

Her work as a teaching artist in NYC public schools includes residencies in early childhood dance and musical theatre. She has participated in programs through Parents As Arts Partners and Creative After School Adventures and currently teaches for 92nd Street Y, NY City Center and Together In Dance.  Her programming for 92nd Street Y Outreach Education includes WonderDance and Art Collectors.

Music

A native of Poughkeepsie, Katherine Doe is an active performer and music teacher based in Queens. As an opera singer, she has performed with local groups such as Regina Opera, Encompass New Opera Theatre, CantantiPROJECT, Sandbox Opera, and New York Opera Forum. She made several role debuts last season, including Mercédès in Bizet’s Carmen, the Secretary in Menotti’s The Consul, Arcane in Handel’s Teseo, and Meg Page in Verdi’s Falstaff.

A lifelong choral artist, Katy has sung with the Brooklyn-based contemporary choir Os Ensemble, Queens College Vocal Ensemble, Hudson Valley Singers, Hudson Valley Bach Fest chamber choirs, and Vassar College’s Cappella Festiva Choir. She is a former director of the Intergenerational Women's Choir, an multi-generational vocal ensemble in Poughkeepsie NY.

In addition to pursuing her passion for the arts, Katy maintains a private music studio in Queens and Manhattan. She is one of the founding teachers of the Miredo Yamaha Music School in Flushing, where she teaches group keyboard and singing classes using the internationally esteemed Yamaha method. She has served as Artistic Director of the Summer Piano Institute and Performing Arts Institute at Dutchess Community College, and as the primary K-9 Music teacher at the Graham School in Hastings on Hudson.

Music

Liz Faure is a guitarist and composer exploring the new music world, fresh out of her master’s degree from the Yale School of Music. Though her education is primarily in solo classical guitar performance, Liz plays electric guitar in several groups including her band, SugarCave, her guitar and percussion duo, Party of One, and young and emerging composer, Tanner Porter. She has studied with renowned names in the new music and guitar communities such as Ben Verdery, Fred Hand, Molly Joyce, and David Lang.

Though Liz primarily focuses on new music, she still celebrates the intimacy and vulnerability of the classical guitar, performing as a soloist and accompanist. Ever seeking to expand the guitar repertoire, she is always on the lookout for lesser known guitar works, and composing and arranging pieces for herself.

Blending classical technique with electronic possibilities, Liz hopes to help break the barriers between classical and more widely accepted styles of music, avoiding genre labels and reaching new audiences. Liz loves hiking, Maine blueberry pie, and her cat Petunia.

Visual Art

Victoria Febrer is a fine artist based in New York City. Her artwork has been exhibited in the United States, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Ireland and Japan, with solo exhibitions in New York, Valencia and Madrid. Her interest in visual images centers around the relationship of the universal and the personal, and the way that repeated images and icons have influenced our understandings of our place in the world. She works in a variety of media including paint, film projection and red wine (through a process of her own invention called vinography).

As an educator, Victoria is committed to the vital role of visual art education as a force for lasting positive social change. She believes that a critical arts practice empowers us by helping us not only to explore and appreciate the world we live in, but also to share our unique discoveries and points of view with our communities. Victoria has taught courses and workshops for youth, children and families through various non-profit organizations in NYC, including the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Free Arts NYC, the Cooper Union Saturday Program, the Center for Arts Education, and the 92Y Art Center. Victoria Febrer holds an MFA from SUNY at Stony Brook and is a proud graduate of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. She is also a recipient of the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders of Higher Education Award.

Visual Art

Paul Ferrara’s work as a teaching artist has placed him in a diversity of community settings throughout the New York Metropolitan area, such as the New York Public Library, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. As an award-winning teaching artist, he has received grants through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York Department for the Aging, Lifetime Arts, and the New York Public Library.

An Ohio native, he received his B.A. in Theatre from Kent State University, and his M.S. in Art and Design Education from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn Campus. Paul has presented his findings, in regards to the field of Creative Aging at various national conferences; National Association of Art Educators, American Society on Aging, and National Center for Creative Aging.

He has taught at various social service organizations including: SAGE Center Mid-town and Harlem location, Weill Cornell Medical Center; Geriatric and Palliative Medicine Division. He has also collaborated with Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, and Polo Grounds Senior Center to create an art making program titled, Memory Books and Memory Boxes. Most recently he completed a SU-CASA artist residency at Carter Burden Senior Center, a program funded by New York City Council and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Music

Reneé Flemings is originally from Louisville, Kentucky, and currently resides in New York, by way of Lansing, Michigan. Reneé spent the summers of her childhood in the small southern towns that populate her plays and live in her memory. She has been the writer for ZINC, a private organization that specializes in utilizing drama as part of their life skills programs. Her plays have been produced in New York City and various regional theatre festivals, and her work has been seen and featured on several national sports programs, as they focus on the NFL, NBA and other professional development programs for athletes. Reneé is also an educator, working with several arts in education programs in New York City public Schools, including 92nd Street Y’s Musical Introduction Series. In addition to her work as an actor and writer, Reneé is a singer/director and co-producer of SoReel Productions, whose latest project is entitled Wine Noir.

Music

Born in NH to French-Canadian parents, Brooklyn-based flutist, pianist, and composer Dominique Gagné specializes in combining traditional dance-based musical genres with world music and jazz. Her current summer projects include directing the National Flute Association’s Jazz Flute Big Band at their national convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, studying dance accompaniment and composition for dance in Florence, Italy at the NYU-based Toscano Dance Hub, and performing with her jazz quartet in Grenollers, Spain.

As a full-time musician, Dominique divides her time between teaching piano and flute in her Brooklyn-based studio, teaching composition and music in public schools and senior centers in the New York area, and performing and touring with bands both nationally and internationally. Her most recent tour was with Rio-based Casuarina, a samba band from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She plans to release her second album as a leader in 2020. As a recording artist she has also appeared on many albums by both Vermont and New York-based artists.

Dominique is a teaching artist for Little Orchestra Society, 92nd St Y, and a former teaching artist for the Afro-Latin Jazz Alliance, founded by Arturo O’Farrill.

She has her Bachelors in Music Education from Oberlin Conservatory. She also has a Masters in Jazz Composition and Arranging from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Masters in Studio Jazz Writing from the Frost School at the University of Miami.

As an amateur competitive Masters runner, Dominique qualified for the Boston Marathon in 2012. She also enjoys dancing salsa and samba, nature photography, cooking, and traveling. She loves learning languages, and speaks Indonesian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Dance

Kenna has had a performing and teaching career that has taken her all over the world. After graduating from the Youth Performing Arts School (Louisville, KY), she attended the University of Oklahoma where she studied modern dance and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physical Therapy. Kenna continued her dance training in New York after being accepted to the Certificate Program of The Ailey School. Her diverse training in modern, jazz, musical theater, ballet and tap has allowed her to have a long and diverse performing career. She has performed with recording artists such as Missy Elliott, Pharrell, Diddy and Ludacris. Her film/television credits include Saturday Night Live, MTV Video Music Awards, America’s Got Talent and feature films Idlewild, Bolden and Sisters. Kenna has also performed in various Broadway national tours, Off-Broadway and regional theater productions including the 1st national tour of Memphis (Dance Captain/Swing), The Wiz (City Center Encores) and the Radio City Christmas Spectacular as a Radio City Rockette. Most recently, she works with the Verdon Fosse Legacy LLC reconstructing and preserving the works of Bob Fosse. As an instructor, Kenna has been teaching various forms of dance for over 20 years in studios across New York, Oklahoma, Kentucky, North Carolina, Japan and Europe. She was the assistant choreographer for the national tour of Memphis, choreographed regional musical theater productions and worked with such choreographers as Sergio Trujillo, Marguerite Derricks, Andy Blankenbuehler and Hinton Battle.

Musical Theater

Chris Giordano been a teaching artist for over eight years. He’s currently on the Acting faculty at AMDA and the Producing Director of Theatre Now New York. He has worked with: Inside Broadway, AMDA’s High School Summer Conservatory, Camp Broadway, Kidville, The Boys and Girls Club, The Putney School Summer Programs. He’s directed Disney’s The Little Mermaid Jr. at TexARTS and Seussical Jr. at Brooklyn Acting Lab. As lyricist, and member of BMI, he wrote the jazzy, musical theatre song, "Kristy's Lament (Another Awful Day with the MTA)”, sung by Broadway’s Kristy Cates, which is available on iTunes. As an actor, some of his credits include the national tours of Broadway Christmas Wonderland and The Berenstain Bears Live! Other selected TYA credits include: The Polar Express Train Ride, Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka as Willy Wonka, Seussical, Disney's High School Musical, and The Commedia Pinocchio. He's also a member of New York City Arts in Education Roundtable and the Educational Theatre Association. He holds a M.S.Ed. in Educational Theatre from The City College of New York and a B.F.A. in Musical Theatre and B.A. in Theatre Arts Directing from Pace University. www.chrisgiordano.net

Music

Montreal native Gabriel Globus-Hoenich's career reflects forays into the worlds of jazz, classical music and world music as a drummer, percussionist, composer and teaching artist. Currently based in New York City, Gabriel performs frequently with some of the top players in Latin music, including John Benitez, Axel Laugart and Luisito Quintero. A busy jazz drummer, Mr. Globus-Hoenich has performed with a multitude of jazz greats, and has been featured on drum-set with the Philly Pops and orchestras of Detroit, Louisville, Illinois and Curtis Institute. He collaborates frequently with Teddy Abrams and the Sixth Floor Trio, serving as principal percussionist and education director at the trio’s chamber music festival, GardenMusic, in South Miami. An active composer and arranger, Gabriel has written for Achilles Liarmakopolous of the Canadian Brass, grammy nominated Tiempo Libre and the Louisville Orchestra.

Visual Art

Andrea Goldman is an artist and educator who is continually inspired by children. She teaches visual art, photography, animation, and filmmaking in schools across New York City. Andrea aims to create an educational space where students can explore materials, make connections, and engage in dialogue with a renewed sense of openness and curiosity.

Andrea's own art practice is interdisciplinary: she makes video, photographs, drawings, and music, often in collaboration with other artists. She is currently working on several projects, including me and ooooo, a collaborative music/video project about books and the possibility of dialogue, empathy, and betterment. With full merit scholarship, she received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Andrea has shown her work at venues such as Performing Arts Chicago, The Reading Room in Dallas, Apex Art in New York, The 2011 Texas Biennial, Swarm Gallery in Oakland, and the Custor Observatory in Long Island.

Music

Jesse Greenberg is a Queens-based percussionist, composer and arts educator. He has toured internationally as the glockenspiel player for Zamler-Carhart/Rauh/Greenberg, an improvised chamber trio that sets poetic texts both ancient and modern. He is the vibraphonist and composer-in-residence with the new music ensemble, ShoutHouse, collaborating with classical, hip-hop, jazz and world musicians. As a performer and composer, he has been featured in Festival Les Troubadours chantent l’art roman, Composers Now, Harlem Arts Festival, the 44 Charlton Series at the Greene Space, WNYC, WBAI and ModFest. Jesse’s composition and performance practices are largely grounded in his work as an educator, working as a teaching artist through 92Y’s Musical Introduction Series, as a lead teacher at an early childhood school and as a private piano, percussion and theory instructor.

Music

Everton Isidoro was born and raised in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. He began studying percussion in 1999, and he has completed his Bachelors degree in Percussion at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in 2012. His work has consisted of 10 years as a percussion teacher and musician at Neojibá project, percussion teacher at Espaço Cultural Pierre Verger, musician at Orchestra Afro-Sinfônica, the Orchestra Soteropolifônica, Leitieres Leite & the Afro Latin Jazz Orquestra, as well as teacher and coordinator of the percussion group Tom de Percussão. He has played with artists such as Maria Bethânia, Ivete Sangalo, Caetano Veloso, Susana Baca, Carlinhos Brown, Mercedes Sosa, Cecília Todd, Ramiro Musotto, Camila Cabello, and others. Everton has completed many tours with Neojibá in Europe, the US, and South America.

Everton has built his career around his love for the rhythms native to his country, specifically those from Northeastern Brazil. Despite his young age, he is already well respected as both a master player and teacher by musicians world wide. Now in New York, Everton teaches in public schools around the city, in summer camps, gives workshops, and participates in many music festivals, recordings, and weekly shows.

Dance

Eli Kababa’s dance career began when he discovered his love of hip-hop culture while earning his black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Martial arts helped hone his skills of mental discipline, focus and dexterity. When Eli combined those with passion, devotion, and experimentation, he was on his way. Learning how to break-dance from local crews in Bayonne, New Jersey was his first form. Studying under Souljerz Crew he explored other techniques like gliding, waving, popping & locking. In a dance battle at his local college Eli was spotted by the dance professor which launched his studies in Fine Arts. Soon after graduating he was hired by New York City Ballet's Education Department where he worked as a Teaching Artist for 11 years in their Nutcracker, Ballet Bridges and Project Ballet Programs.

During this time Eli co-founded Garden State Dance Project, a successful dance company devoted to cultivating community through various arts and entertainment projects. As the company in residence at the Y in Wayne New Jersey from 2007 to 2011 Eli and his dancers hosted school assemblies and taught in their School of Dance. Along with instruction they would meet weekly to create fusion dance works. Mixing fine arts like ballet and modern dance with street styles to create new works. They hosted annual dance performances and performed at venues such as 42nd Street Port Authority, Grounds for Sculpture, Ceres Art Gallery, Bickford Theatre and the County College of Morris, his alma-mater.

For the past 5 years Eli has been working for the 92nd Street Y. His company performed for students in the Dance Introduction Series. He taught hip-hop for Harkness Dance Center students in their School of Arts and was a student and graduate of DEL, the Dance Education Laboratory. Eventually becoming a DEL Facilitator he learned ways to share his work within CALL, the Center for Arts Learning and Leadership. For the past three years he has developed, pioneered and is refining the curriculum he co-authored for them titled "Hip-Hop to the Top" which now serves over 1,000 students in New York City public schools annually. Eli loves to share the power hip-hop has to transform the lives of his students, schools and communities. You can read more about his work in Dance Teacher Magazine and if you want to join his hip-hop community you can find him on the "Eli Kababa YouTube Channel".

Dance

Hetty King is a native New Yorker. Since graduating from the H. S. of Performing Arts in 1982, she has been a part of the NYC dance and performance world as a performer, choreographer, dance educator, writer, and scholar. Her work has been presented in NYC and across Canada. As a performer, Ms. King danced in the companies of numerous choreographers; Ralph Lemon and David Dorfman to name a few. She has been working in the field of dance education since 2000 as a teaching artist and as a licensed NYS Dance Educator. She has worked in both public and private schools primarily with grades PreK-5. As a devoted student of the late somatic movement pioneer Nancy Topf, Hetty has nurtured a deep love of the somatic arts as they relate to dance, embodiment and the education of the whole child. Currently, she is a student in the EdD Dance Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is under contract to finish the posthumous manuscript of Nancy Topf. Ms. King lives in Brooklyn with her husband, a theatre technician at the Metropolitan Opera, their two adopted daughters, two international students from China, and their cat, Clyde.

Music

Raquel Acevedo Klein is an active music educator, conductor and performing musician. She has been a member and subsequent conductor for the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus. She has participated in the premieres of works by Philip Glass, John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Paola Prestini, Bryce Dessner, Missy Mazzoli, Shara Nova and Aleksandra Vrebalov, to name a few. Raquel has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Town Hall, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Celebrate Brooklyn!, National Sawdust and elsewhere. She has recorded and performed with the likes of Glen Hansard, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, The National, Grizzly Bear, The Knights, the NY Philharmonic and the Marinsky Orchestra among others.

Ms. Klein completed her B.M. in Music Education with Advanced Honors at the Crane School of Music, concentrating in Choral Conducting and Classroom General Music under the tutelage of Dr. Ching-Chun Lai and Dr. Heather Eyerly. She has conducted choral workshops for the American Choral Directors Association and has completed research on microtonal singing in choral music education, drawing from traditional and classical music of North Africa. Ms. Klein produced several online choral music education modules for Carnegie Hall in an effort to their expand their audience outreach to New York City public school students. Ms. Klein conducted several middle school and elementary school level ensembles within New York City public schools.

Music

Bonita Labossiere has been a teaching artist for almost 40 years. During the 1970s, Bonita was one of a small group of performers exploring the impact of academic integration through the arts, in Virginia and Massachusetts. Since that time, the field has opened and expanded to such a degree that it has afforded Bonita wonderful opportunities which have included travel and academic work not only in the United States, but also in Canada and Finland as the Program Director in New York City for Learning Through the Arts, out of The Royal Conservatory of Music, in Toronto.

As a professional singer, writer, coach, director and producer, Bonita has built an umbrella organization called The Visualized Voice which creates original theatrical productions that have been seen at The Duplex and The Producer’s Club, as well as other New York City theaters, over the last 3 decades. She also sits on the Board of Directors of Art/No Art Productions which has produced the comedic short film Naked Boy, which Bonita directed.

Currently, Ms. Labossiere is working as a teaching artist with a focus on integrating academics through Choral Music and Musical Theatre, and is thrilled to have been given this opportunity by 92Y.

Music

Israeli pianist Ilya Laskin has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in both Europe and the United States. Recent highlights include chamber music performances at The Harvard Club of New York City, Carnegie Hall and South Orange Performing Arts Center. This past summer, Ilya attended the prestigious Aspen Music Festival and School and has received scholarships from the America-Israeli Cultural Foundation for the past eight years. Prior to moving to the United States, Ilya received 2nd Prize at the Tel-Hai Piano Concerto Competition and the Buchmann-Mehta Chamber Music Competition.

Ilya has performed with many orchestras including the Buchmann-Mehta Orchestra, where he performed Ravel’s Left Hand Concerto, under the baton of Zubin Mehta. That same year, Ilya performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 with the Rishon-Lezion Orchestra conducted by Noam Zur. Ilya has participated in many masterclasses with musicians such as Andras Schiff, Boris Berman, Anton Nel, Victor Derivianko and Dimitry Bashkirov.

Originally from Israel, Ilya started his piano studies with his grandfather at age six. At age 17, he continued his studies with Dr. Mark Shaviner at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music. Ilya received his Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School studying under Julian Martin in May 2019.

Visual Art

Carol Grocki Lewis studied ceramics at Buffalo State College while earning a Bachelor of Science in Art Education. She furthered her study of ceramics at 92Y with Polly Ann Martin, Frank Martin and various visiting ceramic artists. Grocki Lewis taught ceramics at Marymount Manhattan College and has been teaching ceramics and art at 92nd Street YM-YWHA since 1995 and at Earthworks Pottery in New York City. Before coming to NYC in 1980 she taught art in the public schools in Rochester NY.

While working from 1982-1992 as a registrar and collections manager for various private art collectors she earned a Master of Arts degree from New York University in the Gallatin Division, an independent study program. She focused on Museum Studies and Art History. Graduate thesis: Caring For Cultural Property: A Guide for the Private Art Collector. (1992)

Carol has been teaching through the Educational Outreach Program at the 92Y at River East, a K-5 school in Harlem. Using clay, glazes and the kiln at the school the students have had an opportunity to express their creative ideas in a new medium.

Architectural Design

Lee is an architectural designer, a design educator and an English language teacher. Lee received his Master of Architecture degree from Wentworth Institute of Technology in 2009. Lee has designed at various scales, from small objects to large building projects. What he loves most with architecture, is to design following the concept, less is more and to use architecture to direct us towards harmony with nature and mindful lifestyle. He believes the process of design can be a very informative tool and provides a way of thinking that can be applied to all art forms and can even help us improve the way we live. He has interests in exploring various modes of expression simultaneously, as one medium is not ideal for all people. He is a musician, practices theatre/improve, makes short films, draws and water color paints. Lee wishes to explore ideas and art with students to encourage a perspective of life that reminds us why learning and knowledge is fun and is something to cherish.

Music

Maurizio Najt graduated from the "Conservatorio Nacional de Música de Buenos Aires", Argentina.

Dance

Judith Nelson, of New York City, is a master teacher of dance for children with over 35 years of experience in studios, public schools and higher education. She danced with the Jose Limon Dance Company, the David Gordon Pick-Up Company (with whom she appeared on PBS in Dance in America) and toured the US and Europe as a solo artist and in musical theatre. Judith has taught at many colleges and universities including Auburn University, Missouri State University and Carleton College. Her extensive work with children's dance includes numerous Pre-K-12 residencies across the country, lecture demonstrations, student performances and teaching for community arts programs, including many programs for students with disabilities. Judith is a senior faculty member at the Mark Morris Dance School in Brooklyn, where she teaches creative dance, modern and ballet for children of all ages and abilities, as well as ballet for adults. Judith has taught preschoolers with vision impairment and other disabilities at Helen Keller Services for many years. Frequently requested to lead professional development workshops for dance educators, Judith has conducted workshops at 92nd Street Y, the Mark Morris Dance Center, NYC public schools, the New York Dance Teacher Summit and at many national conferences. An expert in the BrainDance, she has worked closely for many years with its creator, renowned author and dance educator, Anne Green Gilbert, and has choreographed numerous dances for Gilbert’s children’s dance company in Seattle. As Adjunct Associate Professor at Hofstra University, Judith was the dance education supervisor, mentoring students in their teaching practicum. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona, and a BFA, magna cum laude, from the University of Utah.

Dance

Lauriane immersed herself in Hip-Hop culture as a teenager in Switzerland. Eager to perfect her craft in the style of the movement, she went from school to school to finally find the real underground Hip-Hop establishment she was looking for: “First Move” School.

She has traveled to France, Portugal, Spain, Austria and Belgium to participate in events, parties and workshops surrounding Hip-Hop. In 2008, during her first trip to New York, Lauriane furthered her passion for Hip-Hop and House culture. Her instructors include Tony McGregor, Brian Green, Sekou, Ejoe and Caleaf.

During her time in Switzerland, Lauriane became a member of the association "Reprezent Yourself" and Go-Nuts in Lausanne. She organized hip-hop events and parties in order to promote the culture in her country. In 2012, Lauriane officially move to the USA. Since then, she has been a part of DFF (Dance Fusion Family), ATF Collective (All About The Feeling) and Passion Fruit Dance Company. Lauriane enjoys training, teaching and performing as her lifestyle.

Music

Artemisz Polonyi is a singer and composer, originally from Hungary, currently living in New York City.

Her musical training includes classical, jazz, improvisation, and folk and early music. She gets a kick out of bringing all these styles together in her performing and teaching.

Currently she can be seen singing and playing percussion with her world music group: Asaran Earth Trio. She also performs with the professional chorus of Brick Presbyterian Church of NYC and the progressive-indie-jazz orchestra, The Delegation.

She has been pursuing her passion for teaching by leading her voice studio for more than a decade, teaching private voice lessons and helping students find their own, unique, beautifully fearless voices.

She considers herself very lucky to be able to bring music and the joy of singing to the public schools of New York City through the Musical Introduction program of 92Y, and the Students Compose Opera program of the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

Visual Art

Stina Puotinen is an artist, educator and occasional curator from New York City. Her work explores questions of communication & relationships, the (mis)interpretation of objects, actions of spontaneous collaboration and the creation of social space through sculpture, installation and sometimes performance. She holds an MFA in Collaborative Practice from Manchester School of Art 2015-2017.

Digital Design

Casey Alexander Smith is a native New Yorker and advocate of the arts. As an artist and designer he has worked with clients of varying sizes, from Viacom Networks to independent sole proprietors. As an arts educator he has spent over a decade trying to encourage the naturally collaborative and interdisciplinary spirit of arts in education. The arts have been a means for change, an avenue of therapy and uplifting celebration for the joys that surround us. Casey is extremely happy to be working with 92Y and looks forward to many more creative projects.

Music

guitarist, visiting artist

Pete Smith is a New York City-based guitarist who performs and teaches in a wide range of musical settings. As a founding member of Grupo los Santos, a vanguard Afro-Cuban and Brazilian-style quartet, he has played New York’s Town Hall and concerts throughout the U.S., Cuba & Europe. With Hazmat Modine he has performed at the Berlin Jazz Festival and Montreal Jazz Festival, as well as concerts in thirty countries throughout Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia. He has worked and/or recorded with Norah Jones, trumpeter Donald Byrd, Cuban trombone master Juan Pablo Torres, Michael Feinstein, Andrew Hill, Kat Edmonson, Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks, the Moonlighters, Madeline Peyroux, Natalie Merchant and Huun-Huur-Tu. Pete has a great deal of experience as an educator, having presented workshops in guitar and improvisation in Russia, Austria, Denmark, as well as the U.S. For over ten years, he has been a regular participant in the Music Introduction Series at 92nd Street Y, which brings music from all over the world to NYC public school children. In addition to private teaching, he was three years a classroom instructor of guitar at 92nd Street Y, as well as a teaching assistant to Donald Byrd in New York’s Jazzmobile program.

Dance

Susan Thomasson, dancer/choreographer, holds a BFA degree from the University of Utah, where she served an apprenticeship with Repertory Dance Theatre. She has performed a wide variety of modern dance styles, dancing and touring with the companies of Kathryn Posin, Raymond Johnson, Bill T. Jones, Bill Evans and Rosalind Newman. Since 1983 she has been a soloist with Anna Sokolow’s Players’ Project, performing nationally and internationally with the company, and assisting in reconstruction of Ms. Sokolow’s repertory. Susan also tours a solo/duet concert of Pilobolus Dance Theatre’s work, originally created for Lincoln Center Institute. In addition to her own work, she performs with Claire Porter, Elissaveta Iordanova and Mark DeGarmo.

A teaching artist for the Lincoln Center Institute since 1980, she has been involved in the development of many of the Institute’s national affiliates as a performer, teaching artist and consultant. She has been a faculty member of Brooklyn College, the Rutgers University system, Hofstra University, Manhattanville College, Fairleigh Dickinson University, the University of Northern Iowa and Brooklyn’s Berkeley Carroll School. In addition to Lincoln Center and many independent teaching residencies, she is an artist-in-residence and teaching artist for 92nd Street Y, NY City Center, the Joyce Theater, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Theater Development Fund. Currently Susan is a researcher and mentor for Arts Achieve, an educational innovation grant administered by the NYC and US Departments of Education.

She received a Choreography Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for 2011. Her work has been presented at DanceNow, NY’s 40Up Series, Dance Theater Workshop, the 92nd Street Y’s Harkness Dance Series, the American Dance Guild, NY International Fringe Festival, Flea Theater, New York’s Riverside Dance Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, Hopkins Theatre at Dartmouth College and Iowa’s Cedar Arts Forum.

She was a contributing writer to a biography of Ms. Sokolow, which won the 1992 Torre del Bueno literature prize. A frequent master teacher and panelist, she writes arts and arts education materials for Lincoln Center, New Jersey Performing Arts Center and music publisher Silver Burdett. In 2006 Susan received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Teaching Artists and the New York State Council on the Arts and a Governor’s Award in the Arts from the State of New Jersey. She received a Choreography Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for 2011-12.

Dance

Courtney is an avid lover and promoter of the African Diaspora who continuously gravitates towards expressing her African Roots through her first love, Dance. Her first memories include the stage, confirming her purpose on earth as a passion-filled performer. She has been performing on dance teams, troupes and organizations since the age of 4. One of her most memorable troupes was via her college tenure at Howard University, where she became captain of a world renowned traveling dance troupe, Omoge. They performed for campus events, celebrities and award shows. She continued studying dance at Alvin Ailey (NY) and eventually gained certification in Kukuwa African Dance Fitness to use her creativity in her offerings to the world as a professional NYC Based teaching artist. She has had the opportunity to teach children dance of all ages in various charter, public schools and preschools. She expanded her classes to include family classes where adults and children can learn and dance together. She also has a passion for the senior population and has taught at various senior centers of NY. Currently she now teaches dance to elementary and pre-school students, offers availability to move to adults via high intensity African dance fitness classes, families through family dance classes, seniors through manageable movement and yoga to adults and children.

By focusing on her holistic health, she developed a self-care routine to relieve excess stress and weight. She lost a total of 70lbs as a direct physical effect of her taking control over her life by adopting a plant based diet, exercising through dance and relieving stress through yoga. Courtney has a driven passion to heal herself and her community. She consistently aims to positively influence anyone to find the enjoyment, empowerment, and life-long benefits of holistic wellness through our ancestral roots and philosophies whether expressed via African dance fitness or African (Egyptian) Yoga. Courtney is always enthusiastic to share the Pan-African power of healing with the anyone demonstrated daily by an African Proverb she lives by; Each one, Teach one!

Visual Art

Udondian’s work is driven by her interest in textiles and the potential for clothing to shape identity, informed by the histories and tacit meanings embedded in everyday materials. Her works have been exhibited internationally in Lagos, Venice, New York, UK etc. This includes, The Inaugural Nigerian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennial-An Excerpt, Fisher Landau Centre for the Arts, New York; The Children Museum of Manhattan, New York; National Museum, Lagos; Whitworth Gallery in Manchester etc. Some of her Artist Residencies include, Instituto Sacatar, Bahia, Brazil; Mass Moca, Massachusetts, USA; Fine Arts Work Centre (FAWC), Provincetown; USA; Fondazione di Venezia, Venice and Bag Factory Studios, Johannesburg. Udondian received an MFA in Sculpture and New Genres from Columbia University, New York and a BA in painting from the University of Uyo, Nigeria.

Visual Art

Marjorie Victor is a New York City based jewelry artist and educator. She earned a BA in Art History and Visual Arts from Barnard College of Columbia University and continued her education with time spent studying sculpture at a bronze foundry in France, jewelry design in Mexico, and working alongside industrial designer Eva Zeisel in New York.

After completing an apprenticeship with a silversmith, Marjorie founded her design studio and focused her creative efforts on handcrafting jewelry. Since launching her first jewelry collection in 2003, her work has been exhibited in galleries, museum stores and boutiques throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

Motivated by her curious daughter and a firm belief in the essential nature of a strong arts education, Marjorie began her teaching career as an educator at The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City in 2016. Currently, in addition to maintaining her jewelry studio in NYC, she teaches art to families, community, and school groups at The Noguchi Museum. She is proud to join the team of educators at 92Y in helping the next generation of artists grow and discover what inspires them.

Music

Hailed by the New York Times for her “magnificently sweet tone,” oboist Keve Wilson would skip music theory and history as a kid to practice Irish jigs and reels instead. Recently oboist with the Broadway revival Carousel, Keve inspires high school band and orchestra students from around the country with her original show Believe NYC—from the Band Room to Broadway. A past winner of Concert Artists Guild and former dancer, she danced in the European Tour of Bernstein’s On the Town after studying Broadway dance with Phil Black. Keve lived in Los Angeles for six years where she played piano for the Henry Mancini and Heart of Los Angeles outreach programs and oboe in Opera Pacific as well as for film and television scores. Keve left Los Angeles for the mountains of Breckenridge for two years where she taught piano privately and hosted a radio show, A Couple of Musicians with her husband. Upon returning to NYC, Keve became oboist with the Tony Award winning show A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, subbed on 12 Broadway shows, and has performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall to Feinstein’s/54Below. From Hyde Park, NY and a graduate of Eastman School of Music, Keve studied oboe with Richard Killmer, piano with Judith Handman, and dance with Elizabeth Clark. She lives in New York City with her husband Kerry Farrell.

Music

Lynne is an accomplished singer-actress-writer-director, having directed numerous ensembles aged 5 to 85 in musical theatre productions, choruses, cabarets and benefits. She was lead singer for the jazz vocal group, ZAZ, heard on CDBaby, and has written/performed for USA network.  She is a member of AEA, AFTRA, and SAG. 

Lynne is a teaching artist for 92Y’s Discover Music Series, Chorus and the CASA after school program. Honored with the 2007 'Founding Teacher' Award at City Lights Youth Theatre in New York, her passion for music and theatre is enthusiastically shared with her students.  Lynne received her BA in Music Ed from Millsaps College in Jackson, MS. and MEd from Columbus University in Columbus, GA. She is currently working on a novel and resides in NYC with her daughter, Alexandra.

Music

Violinist Jocelyn Zhu’s work has taken her across the globe to over thirty countries, bringing features on Good Morning America, PBS, The Today Show and WQXR’s Young Artist Showcase. Her collaborators and instructors include Catherine Cho, David Finckel, Alan Gilbert, Hyo Kang, Joseph Kalichstein and Itzhak Perlman. She is the recipient of the Juilliard School Career Grant, the McGraw Hill Robert Sherman Award, the National Trustees Grant, the Tarisio Trust Young Artists Grant and the US Department of State Federal Assistance Award. A passionate advocate of arts in society, she founded and is the co-director of Concerts for Compassion, a non-for-profit benefiting refugees worldwide.

Jocelyn began her university studies at fourteen at Belhaven University in pre-medical studies while playing for their Women’s Soccer Team, graduating Cum Laude. She subsequently earned her Master of Music Degree from The Juilliard School in 2017.