Artists' Bios

Yannis Adoniou, Artistic Director and Choreographer

Yannis Adoniou is the artistic director of KUNST-STOFF and a native of Athens, Greece. He has lived in San Francisco for nearly 15 years and has become a vital part of the Bay Area dance community, as an Izzie award winning dancer, a choreographer and as member of the faculty at San Francisco Dance Center, LINES Ballet School Pre-Professional Program and the LINES/Dominican University BFA program.

Adoniou began his passion for dance at an early age at family gatherings and discos. The freedom and expression that he found through movement swiftly transformed into a calling that led him to more intensive study at The State School of Dance in Athens and then John Neumeier's Hamburg Ballet School in Germany. There he immersed himself in ballet and technique, but soon found that what he was seeking lay beyond the classical codified movement forms. In contemporary dance he found a place where experimentation and discovery were encouraged and his own voice could take root and grow.

Following this calling even farther from home, Yannis moved to San Francisco to join LINES Ballet where he was a member of the company from 1993-1998. Throughout his career in Europe and the US, Adoniou continually created works of his own, collaborating with other artists, often alternating between the roles of choreographer and filmmaker.

These creative endeavors found a permanent home in 1998, when Adoniou left LINES Ballet to co-found his own company KUNST-STOFF. Since then, he has premiered over 20 new works in the Bay Area, frequently in collaboration with nationally known visual and media artists and composers. His work embodies the curiosity of a true seeker. It challenges the viewer to reconsider the established knowledge and social behavior they have been taught and find their own personal truth. It encourages dancers and audiences alike to open their senses and be present in the moment.

Adoniou's work has been commissioned and presented by the Bonn Ballet, Summerfest/Dance, Burning Man, the Herbst Dance Festival in Heidelberg, Germany, Dance Forum Monaco, the Dimitria International Dance Festival in Thessalonica, Greece, the Athens International Festival and Ballet Frankfurt among others. He has received support and acknowledgement for his work as a Dancer/Director and Choreographer from the Isadora Duncan Awards, the Irvine Foundation and Dance/USA, the 2005 Goldie Awards, and the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Tomi Paasonen, Choreographer

Tomi Paasonen is a choreographer, director and multimedia artist based in Berlin and born in Helsinki, Finland. He shares his time making pieces for KUNST-STOFF and directing stage art, creating choreographic structures, making video installations, interactive works, taking photographs and teaching dance in Europe where he operates under the name PAA (Public Artistic Affairs).

Paasonen was a soloist dancer with Hamburg Ballet, LINES Ballet San Francisco and The Joffrey Ballet, and he is known for bridging his classical background with avant-guard experimentalism. His deep knowledge of both Balanchine, Vaganova and contemporary ballet techniques combined with release technique, improvisation methods and documentary dance-theatre device methods that nurture individual expression and conceptual thinking makes Paasonen a rare hybrid in the dance world. For years he has develop his interactive visual art concepts and choreographic systems and dance improvisation techniques that can be used universally by dancers from different kinds of backgrounds.

Throughout his dance career in Hamburg, San Francisco and Chicago, Paasonen continually created works of his own before co-founding KUNST-STOFF. After creating 15 pieces in the course of almost 4 years, he moved to Berlin in 2001. There he expanded his stage, film and photo works to involve documentary layers working with peripheral societies. These works include award-winning productions such as State of Being with disabled and professional dancers and Icarus- Departure Tegel, a coproduction with Germany's largest male prison.

The photo exhibition Gala Dress, with 70-year old disabled artist Tuuli Helkky Helle was followed by an opera direction in Kiasma, Helsinki, based on unfinished fragments by Claude Debussy and Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Fall of the House of Usher.

During the last year, his pieces have studied new ways of defining the role between spectator and performer and playing with justifiable dramaturgic relationships between live video installations and performers. The Berlin-based identity trilogy consisting of PRESENTATION-don't let us surprise you!, MeMoRe-searching for the red thread and D.I.D.-a choir piece for one man explore self image and relationship to the self: first through the doctrine of repetition and difference and self-projection, then through the lens of memory and the relationship to the past and lastly through multiple personality syndrome, torn inner dialogues, schizophrenia and extreme states.

Paasonen is currently interested in directing his stage-art structures, improvisation methods and media work practices toward exploring interactivity and expressing what the physical body of the 21st century has to say, while also reconnecting with ballet, to see what this accumulated knowledge could bring to it.

www.paa.to
www.paasonen.com

Dancers

Nicole Bonadonna - founding member

Nicole is a founding member of KUNST-STOFF. She has danced with the company since 1998.

Kara Davis - founding member

A native of Hutchinson, Kansas, Kara Davis has danced for Ballet Met, Atlanta Ballet, Ohio Ballet, the San Francisco Opera Ballet and Ballet Jorgen in Toronto, Ontario. For the past ten years she has lived in San Francisco and has danced for Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Pearl Ubungen Dancers & Musicians, Mary Carbonara, Robert Moses, and Kathleen Hermesdorf. She is a founding member of KUNST-STOFF and Janice Garrett & Dancers. She won an "Izzie" in 2003 for "Outstanding Achievement in Individual Performance" and was Bay Area dance critic Rachel Howard's pick for 2005's MVP. She has taught at the San Francisco Ballet School, Berkeley Ballet, Atlanta Ballet School, ODC, Guangdong Modern Dance Academy in Guang Zhou, China and Alonzo Kings' Lines Pre-Professional Program. She currently teaches at the SF Dance Center & Castro Valley Performing Arts. Her work has been shown at ODC Theater, the Headlands Center for the Arts, Jon Sims, the banks of the Eel River (Camp KUNST-STOFF) and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Spencer Gregory Dickhaus - dancer

Spencer was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He began training at the age of eleven, studying under Linda Muir-Finney. He has won numerous competition awards including top three high scores at Youth America Grand Prix, Chicago. Spencer has trained with The San Francisco Ballet School, The Harid Conservatory, and The Juilliard School during summers. He graduated early from the St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists to study with The LINES Ballet Repertory Ensemble. Spencer will be earning his BFA at The Juilliard School beginning fall of 2008.

Marina Fukushima - dancer

Marina Fukushima, a native of Tokyo, Japan, came to the United States when she was fifteen years old to study dance under the direction of Bonnie Mathis in Minnesota. She received her BFA in Dance from Butler University in Indiana and continued her studies at the University of Iowa, where she received her MFA in Dance. She has danced with ODC/San Francisco and Mark Foehringer Dance Project. She is currently a member of Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers. Her work has been presented at the American College Dance Festival in Boulder, Colorado, ODC Theater and Project Artaud Theater. In addition to performing and choreographing, she enjoys teaching Advanced Beginning Ballet at ODC/Dance Commons.

Justin Kennedy - dancer

Justin F. Kennedy hails from St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands where his passions for the performing arts were cultivated. Kennedy began his formal dance training at Wesleyan University where he earned a dual degree in dance and ethnic studies in May 2006. During his college career, Kennedy studied ballet, modern dance, dance composition, Bharatanatyam, West African Dance and Flamenco in addition to performing in several hip-hop and modern dance groups on campus. Over the last few years, he has attended various dance intensives including Barnard Summer Dance Study, Nutmeg Ballet School, the Ailey School and American Ballet Theater. Recently Kennedy attended the Jacob's Pillow Cultural Traditions Program where he studied Afro-Cuban Dance, Afro Haitian Dance, the traditional dances of the Dominican Republic and Bomba and Plena. Since moving to the Bay Area, he has danced with Alonzo King's LINES Ballet Repertory Ensemble, Alayo Dance Company and Deep Waters Dance Theater directed by Amara Tabor Smith, former associate artistic director of Urban Bush Women. As a LEAP Artist-in-Residence, Kennedy has taught Conga to students at Marshall Elementary after which he and his students performed in the 2007 Carnival parade. In addition to his work with LEAP, he also teaches hip-hop dance to high school and middle school students in the Bay Area through the Jamestown Community Center and the ODC Youth Program. He is very pleased and honored to be performing with KUNST-STOFF during its 10th anniversary.

Erin Kraemer - dancer

Erin Kraemer, born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, has studied dance since she was three years old. Her training, including three years with The Atlanta Ballet Centre for Dance Education, consisted of mostly ballet, but she always had an underlying love for modern dance. It wasn't until she attended the LINES Ballet Summer Intensive in 2005 that her eyes were opened to the world of contemporary work. Since then she's been a resident of San Francisco training with the LINES Ballet Ensemble for two years, and she recently danced for the San Francisco Opera's 2007 season. Erin hopes to continue dancing professionally in the bay area, as it has become her home away from home.

John Mercke - dancer

John Mercke was born and raised in northern Virginia. He has enjoyed dancing since a very young age, but has only recently become focused and passionate about it. After having trained in multiple other cities in various styles of dance John moved to San Francisco in Fall 2006 to train in the LINES Ballet Ensemble & Training Program. John has morphed in his love for dance from living room dancing, to classical ballet, to commercial jazz, and has now fallen in love with contemporary dance. He first performed with KUNST-STOFF as a guest in December 2006 and joined the Company as a full member in 2007. Along with dance John also enjoys rock climbing, biking, and eating! John would like to thank his family for all the support he is given in pursuing his passion.

Leslie Schickel - founding member

Leslie Schickel was born and began dancing in Little Rock, Arkansas. At age fifteen she moved from home to further her formal training at the Boston Ballet School. She danced with the Boston Ballet, Ballet Eddie Toussant in Quebec and the Charleston Ballet before taking a break from dance to study English Literature at Yale University. She moved to San Francisco in 1996 and became a founding member of KUNST-STOFF. During this time she has also been a member of Ledoh's Salt Farm, a Butoh Dance Company, and performed with The Foundry. Leslie is a Master Trainer of the GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEM ^®, which she has taught for ten years, and is currently honing her skills as a teacher of Svaroopa ^® yoga and of Macrobiotic cooking. Leslie founded and produced the annual Camp KUNST-STOFF from 1999 to 2004. This event fed her passion for bringing people together to share, create and enjoy. Leslie has also presented her own choreography and looks forward to future participation in the community through healthful and artistic endeavors. This year, she and co-founder David Petrelli, debuted the first creation of their new dance collaboration, Love Works, Inc.

Nol Simonse - founding member

Nol Simonse grew up in Washington, D.C. He started dancing at age nine in a small studio with Alison Miller and continued his training at the Boston Conservatory of Music. He has been dancing on and off his whole life. Since moving to San Francisco Nol has also had the pleasure of dancing with Sue Roginski, Eric Kupers, Stephen Pelton Dance Theatre, Della Davidson and Janice Garrett & Dancers.

Guest Artists

Marlowe Bassett - costume designer

Marlowe Bassett is a fashion designer, dancer and the creative director of Springloaded productions in San Francisco. A Native of San Diego, California, she began her dance training at the California Ballet School at the age of three. Ms. Bassett continued her education in the San Diego School of Performing Arts and joined the California Ballet Company in 1999. She has also trained on full scholarship with Pacific Northwest Ballet School, School of American Ballet, The Kirov Academy, Jacobs Pillow Dance, ODC, and Alonzo King's Lines Ballet School. Ms. Bassett has performed with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Lawrence Peck Dance Company, Alonzo King's Lines Ballet, Liss Fain Dance, Capacitor, and the San Francisco Opera.

Ms. Bassett recently received her Associate of Arts Degree from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. She began sewing at an early age on occasional visits with her grandmother, while her design career began four years ago using scrap fabrics to create one of a kind garments for a fall fashion show in 2004. She then realized designing beautiful clothes was a passion that she must fulfill. Ms Basset decided to attend the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising to study fashion design. During this time she was honored to receive the Fashion Group International Foundation Scholarship award, and created the Springloaded Fashion Shows to showcase the work of emerging Bay Area designers, performers and multimedia artists. In addition to producing Springloaded Fashion Shows Ms. Bassett has designed costumes for Gregory Dawson choreographer for School of the Arts as well as a Flowtoys performance for the official DTC (Diamond Trading Company) fashion show in Hong Kong. Ms. Bassett is excited to collaborate with KUNST-STOFF in their 10th anniversary season.

Jethro DeHart - music director, composer, musician

Jethro DeHart has been know to cameo as musical director off and on for KUNST-STOFF for the past 10 years, composing, mixing/engineering, designing sound, and on occasion, performing live with them in various pieces, such as Yia Yia and Cross Currents. Mr. DeHart has also been spotted from time to time, fronting the San Francisco alternative band "Habitforming" on the center microphone while dangerously wielding an electric guitar at the same time. Jethro has spent much of the last seven tenths of is his life in the deep end of the music dept.: writing, rehearsing, recording, engineering, wiring, twisting knobs and performing live using any available instrument in his path to harness the forces. To date, there are 3 full length releases, "Habitat" , "Involved" and "Slow Motion Drifting" which is a 14 song compilation of instrumentals created for various dance/theater performances over the past 10 years. A forth release, "Freezer Burn" is in progress.

Julian De Leon - dancer

Born in Manila, Philippines, Julian grew up in Los Angeles, California, and began his dance training at age 16 at the Los Angeles County School of The Arts. Upon graduation, he was accepted to the Laban Center in London, England. In 2000, Julian joined Random Dance Company headed by Wayne McGregor. As well as touring McGregor's repertory, Julian's work with the company included collaboration with the Royal Ballet, teaching workshops and creating performances for youth in the UK, Eastern and Western Europe, and the US. In October 2002, he moved to the Bay Area where he worked with KUNST-STOFF and Janice Garrett & Dancers. Julian also practices as a Certified Massage Therapist. He currently dances with Steven Petronio Company in New York.

Perry Hallinen - producer/videographer/editor

Perry Hallinan has 10 yrs film and video production experience. He is a Rhode Island School of Design graduate (1998) with a BFA in film/video. After graduation he was a full time editor at Northern Lights Production Company in Boston MA. (2000-2001). He edited documentaries and Museum installations for The Smithsonian Institute of Natural History, Court TV and The BBC. As a freelance video producer he has worked for the Nature Conservancy of Canada, The City of San Francisco and the Guide Dog School for the Blind, San Rafael, California, SF Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Eileen West Fashion.

He founded the video program at Gateway High School a public charter school in San Francisco and has taught there for 6 years.

As a videographer / media artist and performer Perry has worked with the S.F. Butoh company Salt Farm, Mary Sano Duncan Dance and Yannis Adoniou's KUNST-STOFF.

Perry is also in the final stages of production for a 30min documentary about a Japanese American man, now in his 70s, who emigrated from Japan to the United States after the atomic bomb destroyed his birth city of Hiroshima. Part Oral History part Road Movie, the story focuses on the individual's process of healing physical, emotional and spiritual wounds.

www.heartattackvideo.com

Click HERE to view an excerpt from Dance Your Heart Out, a documentary work-in-progress about KUNST-STOFF created by Mr. Hallinan.

Kathleen Hermesdorf - dancer

Kathleen Hermesdorf is a San Francisco-based movement artist.  She directs MOTION LAB, a vehicle for training, improvisation, choreography, performance and music production, with musician Albert Mathias, and dances in the companies of Sara Shelton Mann and Bebe Miller.

She directed Hermesdorf & Wells Dance Company with Scott Wells from 1992-94.  The company received a San Francisco Bay Guardian GOLDIE Award in 1994.  From 1993-95 and 1997-98, she was a member of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.  The ensemble received an Isadora Duncan Award for performance in 1999.  She was a collaborator in Shelton Mann's Contraband from 1994-96.

Hermesdorf and Mathias met in Contraband, have been on the faculty of ODC School in San Francisco since 1996 and formed MOTION LAB in 1998.  They have been guest artists at Glenwood Springs Dance Festival/Colorado, West Coast Contact Improvisation Festival/Berkeley, Bates Dance Festival/Maine, Links Hall/Chicago, Movement Research/New York, Western Michigan University, University of Illinois/Urbana, Goucher College/Baltimore, Velocity/Seattle and Dancers' Group Summer Intensives. 

She has been a guest artist at Stanford University, Sonoma State University, University of California/Santa Cruz, University of Illinois, Dancers Workshop/ Wyoming, Links Hall, K77/Berlin, Movement Research, Michigan Womyns Music Festival, WCCIF, Kelemanis/Marseille and the Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance and Improvisation.  She has taught workshops for Contraband, Dancers' Group, ODC School, Company and Kid's Program and MOTION LAB. Hermesdorf has studied with Sara Shelton Mann, Contraband, Kirstie Simson, Wally Cardona, Joe Goode Performance Group, Margaret Jenkins, Ellie Klopp, Susan Klein & Barbara Mahler, Bill T. Jones and DV8 Physical Theater in San Francisco.

www.motion-lab.net

Dohee Lee - composer, vocalist, musician and artist

Dohee Lee studied Korean traditional dance and traditional drumming music at the master level in Korea. Since her arrival in the US, she has been a vital contributor to both the traditional and contemporary Asian American Cultural arts landscape of the Bay Area and beyond. Her many accomplishments from the past few years include being the resident artist and instructor of the Korean Youth Cultural Center, a community-based organization focused on Korean arts. She has performed in various ethnic dance festivals, including the Asian American Dance Performance and the Asian American Jazz Festival in San Francisco and Chicago. Since 2001, she has worked on projects with leaders of the Asian American Creative Arts scene, including dancer/choreographer Sue Li-Jue's Facing East Dance and Music, Butoh dancer/choreographer Shinichi Momo Koga's inkboat, saxophonist/composer Francis Wong, Jeff Chan, Pianist Jon Jang, Chicago bassist Tatsu Aoki. She also has collaborated on new works with Nanos Operetta and the Kronos Quartet.

Through her experiences, Lee developed her own style of expression, combining her own artistic voice with her heritage into a unique new art form. In 2004, Dohee founded the Puri Project to give a home to this form. The Puri Project's goal is to present elements of dance, music, spoken word, visual art, and audience participation as a single art form. The project name plays on the Korean word Puri, which refers to an emotional and physical release: it is a deliberate emancipation of the spirit. The Puri Project provides an opportunity for artists to explore and cross stylistic boundaries between traditional and contemporary art forms in an organic manner. The Puri Project also serves the Korean American and larger Asian American communities by contributing to the self-determination and self-defi nition of Asian American identity.

www.puriproject.com

Lisa J. Pinkham - lighting designer

Lisa J. Pinkham has designed lighting for over two hundred ballets, operas, and plays. Her lighting can be seen in the repertories of many national companies. For San Francisco Ballet she designed the lighting Stanton Welch's Maninyas, Taiko, Tutu and Falling, Julia Adam's Night, Angelo and Imaginal Disk. She works frequently with Val Caniporoli, having designed the lighting for his signature work; Lambarena, and many other ballets. For Boston Ballet, Stanton Welch’s Madam Butterfly and Rudi van Danzig's Romeo and Juliet. For American Ballet Theatre, Stanton Welch’s Clear. For Houston Ballet Mr. Welch's new production of Swan Lake. From 1994 until 1999 Ms. Pinkham was the lighting designer for Alonzo King's LINES Contemporary Ballet.

David Jude Thomas - composer and artist

David Jude Thomas is artistically compelled by obsessive compulsions derived from personal, historical, cultural and socially relevant events to express himself in multiple medias from his private studio in San Francisco, California. Music, illustration, painting, photography, film and video are just a few of the disciplines he pulls from. Thomas has worked with KUNST-STOFF as a sound and video designer, performer and graphic designer. As a video artist he recently worked with the band Bauhaus. Presently, he's involved with several documentary/narrative projects, one of them, for musician and songwriter David J. In 2006, as visiting video artist at California Institute of the Arts, he created a visual interpretation of movement and dance for multi-screen projections for the CalArts Dance Ensemble's 29th Season.

Thomas describes himself as "A practitioner of much, a master of none." He likes it that way. He hates bossing people or inanimate objects around (much).

Dwayne Worthington - dancer

Dwayne Worthington, a Paterson New Jersey native, hails from Durham, North Carolina. Dwayne received his MFA in dance from California State University Long Beach and his BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts. He is currently touring with Robert Moses' Kin and has also been a company member of Randy James Dance Works and Nicholas Leichter Dance. Dwayne has had the great pleasure of working with such choreographers as Betty Jones, Sherone Price, Lynn Jackson, Mark Dendy, and Dominique Boivin.